Category: Video Artisan

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!

An example of a promotional video that was shot in one day, edited in two – and pretty much immediately signed off by the client with no major changes (other than correcting the spelling the MD’s name!).

I’ll not deny that this was a long day’s filming for a single-handed DSLR shoot – starting at about 7.30am and ending at about 8.30pm once all the files were downloaded off the cards – but it was all worth it.  One very happy customer who is now talking about two or three more videos and, more importantly, they are going to be incorporating my services within their offerings to their extensive client database.

If you could see my face now its looking like my name is ‘Mr. Chuffed’!

And, if you are looking for a visual communications company then you could get a lot, lot worse than N2.  A fantastic team of very talented and enthusiastic people to work with.

I’m not ignoring you… honest!  Here’s a run down on what’s been keeping me away from my blogging duties for the past couple of weeks.

The Eiger Safety film is still going on though it has been hampered by bad weather and date clashes.  Having said that I’ve just packed my rucksack and I’m about to head down to the tube station as I’m filming the guys on the roof of St James’s Church in Piccadilly today.  Eiger worked on the church tower restoration there and its a fabulous building to get some material of.

Tomorrow I’m going back to Claridge’s with Eiger to film them showing the BBC how to work safely at height!  The Beeb are in the middle of producing a documentary about a year at Claridge’s and as Eiger are Claridge’s safety boys everything that’s filmed at height has to be done under their supervision.  Should be interesting!

The Beaver84 job is all done and dusted – apart from waiting to hear back from end client on delivery.  The brief on this job was to simply record an open day they were holding at their new branch in Cardiff but the weather was so appalling that only a handful of customers turned up – leaving me nothing much to capture on camera.  To save the day I shot a couple of interviews with the MD and branch manager and cut these together with some general views and shots of their yard area (in the few moments of relative dryness).  The cut is now more akin to a short video production about the branch which they can send out to those who were unable (or un-motived) to attend.  You never know – it might just have made all their hard work worthwhile.

There might be some final changes to be made – but I’ve just un-passworded the most recent version on Vimeo…

Last week was my busiest yet – where I completed the filming for the N2 Visual Communications promotional video.  This was an extremely knackering shoot which included interviewing key personnel from the three main divisions within the company, an interview with the MD plus general views around their offices, factory, design studio, large format print works and digital creation offices. This made me hot and tired but I’m gagging to get this one on the edit suite as it could lead on to much, much more work for me.

The week was finished off with my trip to the Blackpool Dance Festival at the Winter Gardens to film the Supadance stand in full frenzy when the doors opened for their sale.  It was, as they’d explained, total bonkers.  Worldwide recession… what recession?!

With some of their shoes selling at half their normal price dancers often save up and buy stacks of them at this event (the world’s largest dance festival) and then struggle to get them home.  “Home” could be pretty much anywhere on the planet as the event attracts a worldwide list of competitors – with a massive Far East and Eastern European contingent.  A whole new and different world to me – which I hope continue to learn about in the coming years.

Another full-on day’s filming with Eiger Safety last Friday – this time heading to theatre land, Claridges and then on to Trinity House.

Eiger have installed and maintain various man-safe systems in theatres throughout the West End of London.  The two examples they wanted to show in their promotional video were those installed in St Martins Theatre (home of the Mousetrap) and the neighbouring Ambassadors Theatre.

The St Martins Theatre latch-way installation is located over the glass dome above the auditorium and allows for safe cleaning and maintenance.  It was a very tight, dusty space with virtually no light other than a couple of dim, coloured highlighters and the natural light coming in from the small entrance hatch.  The aim was to “show it how it was” as it was a challenging installation let alone a difficult space to film in.  Adding my own light was therefore not an option – plus like all the other Eiger Safety locations we don’t have all day to get the shot.

Admittedly, the picture below is tweaked a little in Photoshop but it’s pretty much how it looked to the naked eye.  The ISO was set to 2,500 so its as noisy as you’d expect – but I’m convinced had I used a normal video camera it just wouldn’t have given me any pictures at all (another big plus point for shooting on DSLR).

There was just one simple shot required at the neighbouring Ambassadors Theatre and that was of a ladder system which connects two of the roof levels – again to allow easy and safe maintenance of the roof and gutters.  The best place to get this was from one of the actor’s changing rooms in St Martins Theatre – which looks directly over the Ambassadors Theatre roof.

Claridges should have been a flying visit as it was a simple job of taking a couple of still photos of a specific type of latch point they have installed in this hotel.  Clients seem to think you do both stills and video these days – and whilst they’re happy to pay me for what I can do stills-wise then I’m not turning the work away!  But as usual its always the simple jobs that get you bogged down as it took nearly two hours to a/ Convince the management to allow us to film (although we’d already arranged this), b/ Find an empty room, and c/ Find a room with the right kind of latch point.  Needless to say we got what was needed in the end – but what was it Robert Burns said in his poem.. “The best laid schemes of mice and men often go awry”.

Our final location on Friday was the roof system at Trinity House. If you don’t know where Trinity House is there’s no prizes for guessing from the photo below that its located opposite the Tower of London.  The view was as impressive as I was hoping for and it enabled us to get some footage of the guys working and testing the walkway and latch-way system.   I think our appearance was a little shocking though for the chap who was standing in his hotel bedroom opposite the roof with nothing more than a smile on his face!

Fingers crossed that we are now heading into a better spell of weather.  The list of remaining locations includes Oxford, Bristol, Bishops Stortford and at least another day’s worth in Central London.  I do love a client who keeps adding to the task at hand – especially when it is this interesting.