Author: Kevin

The Eiger Safety film is nearing the point of being in the can – after which we’ll move on to the mammoth edit.  We recently shot some really nice scenes at Christ Church Oxford where Eiger have installed and maintain their roof and high level latch-way systems.  This includes the main college buildings, Tom Tower and the Cathedral Church.

I must admit – I felt very privileged to be climbing over one of this country’s finest buildings.  On arrival we climbed Christopher Wren’s Tom Tower (so named after Great Tom – the bell itself) which was built in 1682.  This area is not accessible to the general public and is accessed via an amazing wooden spiral staircase which takes you right up to the bell itself and is covered in graffiti from every century since construction.  I reckon if you studied the graffiti long enough you’d discover some very famous names amongst them.

Besides being nosy the point of climbing Tom Tower was to get an idea of the various points around the site that we wanted to get shots of. I knew then that this was going to be a full day – and a whole lot of fun.  On the way back down we caught Tom striking the hour and I filmed it on my mobile. Beware – this is loud…

We started shooting video on the main building roof as it enabled me to get shots of the guys working on Tom Tower and on the Cathedral from the same spot.  The following pictures gives you a better idea of scale and also shows the point from which we had reconnoitered the site earlier – plus the team posing for a shot on the Cathedral.

The day ended inside with some shots of the guys working in the upper archways within the Cathedral.  This was a brilliant experience for a couple of reasons.  Firstly, this is an impressive building and to be walking around above the tourists and visitors below was just amazing.  Secondly, there was a recital being performed and recorded whilst we was there so we had a wonderful soundtrack to work to as well.

The day eventually came to an end with a fun shot that you’ll have to wait and see in the final film.  I hope it works!  There’s still a couple of shooting days left, including a couple of Central London sites and the Clifton Suspension Bridge at Bristol (which got cancelled last time due bad weather).  There’s also a chance that I might have to film some work at the Force India Formula 1 centre – which I’m keeping my fingers crossed for.

What a great project this has been.

I had a very short filming session at Fusion Ironworks in the beautiful countryside setting of Matching Green, Essex this week. This was a side-shoot shoot of the Eiger Safety promotional video as Fusion carry out all their fabrication work on bespoke walkways, staircase and man-safe roof systems.

A little warning for those of you that have not done this type of work before – it can be fraught with danger!  Apart from not being able to wear welding glasses (otherwise you couldn’t see what you was filming) there is also a fair bit of debris flying around when the grinding stage starts – some of which is white hot!  One of these little blighters could do some nasty damage to the face of your lens if you are not careful – not to mention your eyes.

Lucky I got away without either of these but I did get the odd reminder here and there that there was molten metal flying around.  Don’t you just love the smell of burning human skin and hair?!

I’ve done a fair bit of weld filming in the past and I still find it fascinating as you can see so much detail as you close the iris down. I even remember trying to film some welding with an old 3-tube camera and spending the next few hours trying to remove the burns from the tube surfaces by shooting a white sheet with full lights and iris open to the max.  The older shooters will know what I’m talking about.

I also find that the rules of colour balance go completely out of the window as the blue cast from the weld makes for more dramatic images. Trying to balance this out is just bonkers.

Anyway – if you are looking for a steel fabricator then do get in contact with Wayne at Fusion.  He’s a very nice chap to deal with.

Just to prove it’s not all dance shoes, web design and abseiling at Video Artisan, I’ve been in Cardiff this week working for Dilip Patel at Double-Barrelled (one of my dear IOV contacts) as a freelance shooter editor at a medical conference in Cardiff.

The brief was quite straightforward – although challenging.  Dilip had to provide two-camera coverage of the main presentations taking place in the ballroom suite at the Cardiff Hilton – plus he also had to shoot some separate talking-head interviews with key presenters and attendees in a break-out room. This was all for Lundbeck, a Denmark-based pharmaceutical company and was in relation to the treatment and effects of Alzheimer’s disease.  I must admit the most of the content went over my head but it wasn’t aimed at me but rather those involved in the diagnosis, treatment and care of those suffering from this terrible disease.

I must admit it was really nice working with professionals.  Dilip is a belt and braces kind of guy and had organised a rig in the main presentation area consisting of two Canon XF105s which were feeding two separate Samurai recorders via HD-SDI cable and recording in Pro-Res (all nice bits of kit by the way).  The cameras were also recording to internal Compact Flash cards in their native MXF file format (35MB – 1920×1080 res).  Audio was being recorded straight to the cameras via a front-of-house mix from the AV desk plus I’d also wired up our main presenters with a separate radio mic (in addition to on-board mics for room ambient).

My job was to keep an eye on the two cameras whilst Dilip was recording the talking head stuff on his Canon 5D DSLR.  He’d obviously done his homework as all worked faultlessly on the day.  I also had to edit two of the presentation sessions on the day so had brought along my entire Edius edit suite which could work with the MXF files straight out of the camera.  With one session lasting around 40-mins and the second around 20 it was no mean achievement cutting the two camera coverage, plus around 60 PowerPoint slides, into a sleek master and then outputting it to Windows Media at the end of the day (the format requested by the AV company).

The reason this had to be done, and completed the same day, was that this particular presenter couldn’t make it to another event they were holding in Leeds a couple of days later.  The reason for the Samurai recorders (besides providing a little security and backup) was that Dilip also has to edit together all the other presentations later so that the attendees can watch them back at their leisure after the event – and his Apple system much prefers the ProRes codec.

The team at Lundbeck were also a dream to work for as they were well organised and knew exactly what they wanted at the end.  Even though we all had an early start (on set for 6am) they were very understanding when they were still with us in the hotel at about 8pm that evening when the final presentation was finished being edited and encoded – after which we all faced a similar drive back home!

Anyway – a challenging day which was fun and rewarding.

My second film for Supadance was signed off this morning – this time a short cut to music to capture the buzz of their stand during at the Blackpool Dance Festival.

I was there for two days in total which gave me the chance to capture some of the dancing too.  After all – that is what it’s all about isn’t it?  It’s certainly seems to be what people from within the dance world want to see in any video aimed at them.

I had worried about tracking down the right music score and had lots of help from other videographers in my quest to find a suitable copyright-free Cha Cha track (what I thought they were dancing to).  To help me get on with the edit I used a Latin-style track I had in stock already although I wasn’t sure of its style (of if it had one!!).  My concern was that the dancers were dancing to something completely different and those in the know would spot this straight away.  I was wrong – the client said the Samba track I’d used fitted perfectly with the Samba dancing!  Hey ho – you live and you learn!

The upshot is there’s another two jobs for Supadance in the pipeline.  An alternate edit taken from the material of both videos I’ve produced for them so far and then back up to Blackpool in November to film a competition they sponsor.

What a great client!