Filming in Central London is always a pleasure, but the morning of 13th July was a truly glorious day to have rescheduled the shoot for St James’s Church in Piccadilly.
The perfect day to be shooting in Central London
Blue sky, the occasional fluffy cloud and not too hot – a far cry from the other days we had scheduled in to shoot this location. It really was a fine day to be up on a roof shooting the guys from Eiger Safety doing a routine inspection of the clock tower they had recently helped renovate.
I’m sure the Eiger chaps have become a little complacent about the places they get to work in (or should I say “on”) – but for me its a real privilege. I’m sure they think I’m a little slow off the blocks when it comes to getting the filming job done but for the first few minutes I’m just gawking at the view.
Going over the edge of St James’s Church clock tower
There’s only one filming location left on the Eiger project now – namely the guys working the chains on the Clifton Suspension Bridge at Bristol. That’s coming up in a couple of weeks and, thankfully, I should be filming most of it from a cherry picker platform. However, there’s also some talk of filming some of their fabrication works at the Force India F1 team works – which will be very interesting if it comes off.
Really looking forward to getting this on the edit suite – but equally hope that I’m soon back filming in Central London very soon!
Having had a comparatively slow couple of days this week it has given me time to get a more detailed information page together on my VHS to DVD conversion services.
Mind out, your VHS machine might want to chew up your precious memories!!!
Though some conversions had already started filtering through from my original “passing mention” on my facilities page, I really wanted to get something more substantial together as VHS to DVD is one of those services that’s just getting bigger and bigger. I’m also geared up for many other video and file conversions – and if I can’t do it myself I certainly know someone who can!
Convert your VHS to DVD before its too late
When I first got involved in the video business back in 1985 it was all Cine to Video conversions (which I can still do). Over the years I’ve converted many thousands of feet of cine film, stacks of 35mm slides and just about every other form of redundant media to the current day media. Whilst this has mainly been for the home market I’ve also carried out many conversions for businesses and local authorities.
We’ve now reached a point where people’s VHS machines are dying, tapes are breaking up and all those precious memories are at risk of being lost forever. Whilst we were all led to believe that VHS recordings were going to last for hundreds of years the truth is that poor handling, storage and (most commonly) defective players can swiftly bring an end to the images and sound recorded on videotape. Once lost there is very little you can do to bring them back – so getting them converted to DVD is a great way to archive them and enable today’s generation to enjoy the wonders of the past.
Get the low-down on our VHS to DVD services
See – not only am I a great videographer but I’m also a bit of a superhero too!!! Contact me today for more details or simply check out the VHS to DVD section in the main menu above. Please also contact me if you have any other conversion, duplication or specialist media requirements.
I’ve just completed my 3rd video for Supadance – and this time it’s not a web video!
Supadance – big believers in the power of video!
Having produced the Blackpool Dance Festival web video for them last month I wasn’t expecting any more commissions from Supadance until the end of the year – so I was chuffed to get the call asking me to cut a 30-second advertising film for them.
Whilst both previous commissions have been used off-web too, their main purpose was for online delivery as part of their website and those of their dealer network. They are also building their own YouTube presence too so every video ends up adding to their search engine visibility. They really understand the fact that if you have web video content on your site (properly tagged) then you will rank higher than those that don’t… Simples!!!
This 30-second video was for an advertising slot they have booked on the screens playing at the German Open Championships in Stuttgart – for which they are one of the main sponsoring companies. I’ve no doubt that it will be used online too, but the main distribution for this video was for large screen playback. The brief was to further augment their brand as the leading manufacturer of dance shoes and to further establish them as a London/UK-based manufacturer. The video would have no narration, should be cut to music, be attention-grabbing and include visuals of their factory and dancers in competition action. In the words of the client – “Every second must count!”
It was great fun to produce and the client was chuffed with the result. Their German office also wanted a combination DVD to play at the event with all three Supadance films on it – so its looking like video is going to continue to play a major role in their marketing strategy going forward.
I hope the event is a great success for them and look forward to working with them again later this year.
With only two shooting days left on the Eiger Safety film schedule (one of which isn’t until mid August) I’ve started on the editing process. I’m glad I did as this highlighted a couple of “nice-to-have” shots that I haven’t got. Nothing vital, but it would have been great to have an establishing shot of the Science Museum and a street-view shot of Trinity House. It also gave me the chance to test out my 5D MkII.
Ahoy there! Trinity House, Tower Hill, London
Trinity House was (if you’ll excuse the nautical pun) my first port of call. This is the official General Lighthouse Authority for England, Wales and other British territorial waters and is located just behind Tower Hill tube station. Eiger install and maintain all the roof safety systems here and also a roof walkway system to protect the lead work and make it easier for their general maintenance guys to carry out inspections. Anyhow, when we filmed there in May (see blog here) I had got plenty of shots of the stuff atop of Trinity House but nothing from the street.
My weapon of choice here was the L-series Canon 24-105mm f4 lens. Not a particularly fast lens but still capable of producing nice shots – and with its built-in image stabilisation it’s a popular choice for shooting video. When using this on the 550D I’d lose a lot off the wide end of the lens because of the 1.6 crop factor (giving me about 40mm at the widest end – so not really a wide at all) so it was great to be able to get the full width on the 5D.
With that one in the bag it was then back on the District Line and off to Kensington High Street and the Science Museum in Exhibition Road. I used the Canon lens here too but also tried out my Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 aspherical lens – which was made specifically for cropped sensor cameras.
Shooting with the Tokina at 16mm on the Canon 5D
The above shot was taken using the Tokina set to 16mm. Apart from the obvious aspherical distortion you can also see the lens barrel edges in the four corners. Though not ideal, I think this is still a very useful “FX shot” lens on a full-frame camera camera. You can obviously crop into the picture slightly for stills purposes – and on video it naturally crops slightly anyway so you can get away with it.
Zooming out to the 11mm end of the lens is a different story…
A proper “barrel” effect when set to 11mm
It was a useful day for testing out my 5D with its Magic Lantern hack. It also proved once again how easy it is for me to go shooting in London with a DSLR, backpack and Oyster Card. It only took me about 30-minutes to get to Trinity House from my Loughton studio, and about 20-mins from there on to the Science Museum.
So, if you need some general shots of London and don’t want the hassle and limitations of buying in stock footage – I’m your man!!
I’ve been dead chuffed with the performance of my Canon 550D but I have to admit to something – I’ve been suffering from ‘Sensor Envy’. With so many of my comrades shooting on full-frame sensor cameras I always felt a little shy at the stools with my 550D’s cropped sensor in hand. It’s not that my video production clients have had any complaints, but I have to admit that size does matter when in comes to a man’s sensor! So – I’ve been shopping and bought myself a rather tidy Canon 5DMkII.
Canon 5D MkII ready for action on the next corporate video production
I’d obviously weighed up a number of other options (including the 5D MkIII and Nikon D800) but there are other near future “investments” afoot here at Video Artisan so I opted for something that was going to get me into a full-frame sensor at a less than full-frame cost. My only challenge was finding someone looking to rid of theirs who hadn’t raced or rallied it – and local IOV member Dave Bass of Pro-motion Video Productions of Hadleigh, Essex came up with a corker. He’s just bought a shiny new MkIII so the MkII was up for grabs – and I grabbed it.
The first task on getting it back to the studio was to install the Unified version of Magic Lantern. I’ve got this installed on my 550D and have to admit that I’d have not given the 5D a second thought if it wasn’t possible to install this hack on it. It turns the camera into something usable and more akin to a proper video production tool.
Magic Lantern hack installed and running
It’s especially helpful in addressing the shortcomings of the audio side to DSLRs enabling you to control digital and audio gain levels, assign channels to external and internal inputs and allows you to send audio out through the USB port for monitoring. There are also a range of facilities and tools for controlling and tweaking the video – including live histograms, waveform monitors, ISO range changes, bitrate control…. in fact far too many to list here. There’s even a HDR video and stills utility – yet to be understood and tried by me!
The full install and firmware update process was a bit of a rigmarole (nothing to do with Magic Lantern) which I’ll not go into here – so email me if you are thinking of going down this route. It is well worth the leg work and the stress of the warnings all over the Magic Lantern site saying that you might “brick” your camera if you don’t install things correctly.
So – the 5D MkII is now part of the team. Don’t bother asking about whether I want to get rid of the 550D as its not going anywhere. There are still some jobs where that little beauty works best.
If you are in need of a 5D shooter you know where I am!
