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Toolbank 2015

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Another year, another record breaking Toolbank ‘Real Deals for You’ campaign: The Christmas Collection.

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This year’s design included present boxes wrapped in shiny foil, which I built as 3D models in Cinema 4D.

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Then creating various coloured versions as looping quicktime files, converting them into particle effects in Motion and making them fly towards camera. Also I built custom box transitions in Motion with full rigging into Final Cut Pro X. This meant I could change the direction and colour of the box wipe transition using just a simple pull down inside FCPX.

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After three days of workshop filming back in April, I started putting the main campaign video together, which at over 30 minutes long is versioned in two currencies – Sterling and Euros.

We also filmed over 60 Social Media product demos which are presented ‘to camera’ by Andy or Nigel from Toolbank. These get embedding in the product pages on the Real Deals website

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Then, in August I filmed the TV commercial at Prime Studios in Leeds. This time filmed as a chromakey.

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Using my new JVC LS300 I fed an SDI picture to my 23 inch location monitor, and also streamed a Wi-Fi video feed to a laptop for timecode logging. Our great pal Vic McCullagh was on hand to light the set and provide his unique perspective on proceedings.

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Love that guy!

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admin

Toolbank’s Legs 11

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Another year, another Toolbank campaign, and I’ve just uploaded this year’s introduction video:

The full loop video shown in stores this year is 25 minutes long with 9 fully featured products, as well as 72 additional products and prices. All of this produced in two currencies as usual:

Year on year the campaign has grown to include more and more products, most recently gaining a significant social media presence as well. To help with this I’ve been tasked with making social media video for almost every product in the campaign in both Sterling and Euros currencies. Due to stock availability and time constraints I film most, but not all of the footage, however I do edit it all adding the campaign graphics that I build each year. In total I’ve uploaded 155 Toolbank videos to YouTube this year!

This year the creative agency ‘Shine’ designed a cloche and dinner table setting style. So I decided the only way I could bring it life with a transitioning animation was to have the cloche lift, revealing the brand logo which then transitions to the video.  My wife kindly provided the butlers arm which I shot against my Chromakey screen. Thanks Chuck!

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admin

Ten years of Toolbank

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Today was my last day working on Toolbank’s 2013 Christmas campaign.

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I first worked with them back in 2003 when I was Senior Editor at CBF in Leeds editing their TV commercial. From then on I worked with various agencies to create their campaigns.
In the early days 3000 VHS videos were distributed across their UK dealers together with VHS combi TV’s. I started filming on my VX2000 and authoring DVD on the early Final Cut Studio software.

These days it’s distributed on DVD, SD cards and via Social Media and the Internet. The bulk of the work is an in-store loop video running at over 20 minutes in two versions – Sterling and Euros.

The online campaign will be rolled out a week from now, and the thirty or more individual videos I made will start going live.


Lastly, today we filmed the TV commercials in Leeds with the team from Dark Horse Media. After helping rig the lighting the day before we got an early start and filmed all 10 adverts in a day, plus some additional footage!

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Toolbank on TV

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Toolbank are now running their TV adverts in the UK promoting their yearly Christmas campaign.

In the summer, as usual, I produced the sales video with Andy from Toolbank and also shot the studio segments in Leeds with Dark Horse.

Now the 16 finished adverts are made and on air. Here’s a couple of examples:

I shot the workshop footage as well as the white studio shoot.

Dark Horse looked after the post production (with technical input from yours truly) and airtime was managed by John at Dark Horse.

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Toolbank in the Studio

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This year as well as making my usual Toolbank instore video loops in Sterling and Euros, I was asked to get involved in the TV commercials too.

I got the team at Dark Horse involved as together we have years of experience in producing commercials, and they now have an airtime sales expert onboard too.
A perfect match for Toolbank’s needs.

We shot the commercials in the white cyc studio at Prime Studios, Leeds. Vic M. lit it with a bit of help from yours truly.

I’ll post some videos when they’re on air.
(around Christmas 2012)

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admin

Tooled up for Santa

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toolbank1I’ve just shot Toolbank UK’s Christmas promotional video for the eighth year in row. This time, two days of filming in 1080p on the EX1. It’s come a long way from the days of shooting on the 4:3 VX2000 in a glorified shed in Sheffield and duping 1000 or so VHS tapes to send around the UK.
These days I shoot HD and the final videos are in multiple currencies ending up on DVD and SD cards. Once the final voiceover script is received I’ll get the voiceover recorded and start on the 2 weeks of editing and encoding required to finish the job.

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