Category: Video Artisan

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.

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.

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…

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!!

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.