SoftBrick

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Today was my second day of filming for SoftBrick, the UK’s biggest manufacturer of soft play equipment for children’s play centres. Using my FS100 and 11mm ultra wide lens I’ve been able to film inside these huge and amazingly complex structures that they’ve created. Also also worth mentioning that the low light capabilities of the camera are a massive help as some areas are designed to be really dark and atmospheric.

The first day of filming was at Bubbles World of Play in Liverpool, followed by filming at the factory in Manchester. Today I visited a huge, newly opened play centre in Northampton – The Riverside Hub. These venues are amazing, I wish there was something like them in Leeds as I’d love to take my two year old along. I’ve also used the GoPro to shoot factory timelapse and I had the opportunity to use the full length mode of my 4 metre jib, which doesn’t often happen as it’s too long for most venues.

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Softbrick are using various edited videos to show at trade conferences across the EU. These videos are mute and create a seamless loop when played back on a solid state media player.

Below is a typical section of an exhibition loop.

Putting words on your mouth

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The guys at IdeasBynet are always asking me for something a little out of the ordinary. This time we were making a TV commercial to promote their rebrand, something fresh and fun with loads of character.

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This was shot in their photo studio, lit with two 1.2kw MSRs through my diffuser frames and Dedos as backlighting. The performers were two staff members and one semi-pro actress. They were holding sticks with cardboard sheet and tracking markers drawn on. The shoot was fairly simple, the only difficulty was ensuring that the actors didn’t move their mouths too much behind the cardboard and that they didn’t turn their heads too much or their mouths would be visible.

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The post production process was obviously quite complex as you’d expect…

-Get the voice performances edited and signed off by the client.
-Edit the actor’s background footage to match the voice recording.
-Save each dialogue line as individual Quicktime files.
-Motion track the individual mouths for each file.
-Edit the mouth movement images to match the voice recording.
-Apply the mouth images edits with the motion tracking to the ordinal background files.
-Put it all back together in Final Cut Pro.
-Apply colour corrections, add strobing/weaving effect.

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I’m really happy with the end result:

Park It Mister!

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Stress Free

The lovely folks at Stress Free Parking asked me for a quick turn around video to demonstrate the new valet parking at their Luton Airport facility. After agreeing an initial filming outline, I arrived on the Friday – one of the hottest days of the year and the shoot went better than planned.

Once I’d made a rough cut the clients provided graphics in the style of their newest website branding.
By Monday lunchtime the video was signed off and uploaded to YouTube. Super Fast!

Kirklees Kids

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I’ve just complete a further 11 adoption films for Kirkless Adoption services.
This time the children were all much younger, which has it’s challenges…

Again, I’m finding the work to be really meaningful and humbling.

York Work

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Steve PoppleAntique Restoration is a well established and respected business in the city of York.

Recently the team have learned new skills to help create bespoke furniture for their new venture – Man of Art.

After a days shooting at the York workshop earlier in the year, today I returned for a morning of additional filming.

 

After completing the first draft of both films, we knew that we should wait until they had built a new showroom and tidied up their stores then return to film at the new locations. The first shoot was on a snowy day, fortunately the workshop is heated! So returning in June was a very different experience, anyway the additional half day provided all the footage we needed.

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I also suggested that I could create a longer, looping video that could play in the workshop window to encourage passing trade. This loop video plays from a tiny media player and looks great in HD on a large flatscreen TV.

I’m really happy with the finished videos, written, directed, shot and edited by yours truly:

It’s a Student’s Life

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The Italian Job

We were commissioned by Kent University in Brussels to make another film – this time promoting student life. Life at BSIS is clearly very different from typical uni life as the students are generally older and more experienced and hail from all corners of the world. That made the production more challenging in terms of creating the concept yet more rewarding working with the guys from the university. Howard and I drove to Brussels as we often do and shot the film over two days. I created a few Final Cut Pro templates for the opening sequences and used some built in effects too.

Oh the Humanity!

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Another trip to Brussels! ~ Crikey ~

This time we’ve combined shooting two films into one trip.
This meant filming 24 interviews in one day, as well as filming around the city and an awards ceremony. A crazy day.

– Humanity in Action commissioned Howard Foster and myself to produce a promotion film for their Pat Cox Fellowship. An internship programme which culminates in a cosy award ceremony at the top of the European Parliament Building.

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– Next up, our old friend Mona from Kent Uni asked us to make a promo film for her key2advance business.
This combined interviews and setups around the city with archive footage shot by Mona across Europe.

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Open Doors

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I’ve been working with Open Doors Garden Furniture to create a video showing the range of products they produce and distribute.

It was snowing in Leeds when I left in the morning to drive to the Oldham location, and it was still snowing when I arrived. Luckily the weather broke and the rain held off until I wrapped after 7pm. It was blowing a gale most of the day though, the jib was getting slightly buffered during the shoot but not enough to affect the filming too badly.

I remade and animated the company logo in Apple Motion and edited in Final Cut Pro X with a master grade and vignette. The folks at Open Doors are really happy with the final film, and it’s been embedded into their website for the Easter holidays.

Post Grad Post

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Our second job in Brussels saw us making a film for The University of Kent – Brussels School of International Studies.

The brief was to promote the school from the perspective of getting a job once a student has graduated.
This involved filming career tutors and many former students now working in Brussels.

The film is now live on the client’s website.

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This was the first time I used my GoPro in a paid job.
The Wi-Fi monitoring came in really useful as I was able to place the camera above the bar before the event and start recording remotely once the venue opened it’s doors.

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Please take a seat – in fact take 30,000

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titan

Today I started two days of filming with Mark at The New Media Company.

Titan Furniture are an innovative manufacturer specialising in advanced school furniture. And I was asked to film around their facilities – production in Cambridgeshire, distribution in the Midlands and administration in Devon.

Mark made great use of his GoPros, and managed to get the best out of my footage in the edit. I used the jib in the production and distribution sections, where the my camera had to get into high and difficult locations. Overall the video gives a great indication of the size of the business.