It’s been a while since our last one of these and countless great music videos and adverts have popped up. The Superbowl ad’s were a particular highlight of the past month, as they usually are. But there were also a lot of great creative videos too and with that in mind here’s the first of those…

Theme park city

A great video that has clearly taken a lot of time and effort and looks awesome. Cities around the world would be so much more awesome with invisible coasters no?

Lens whacking

This is a great little film showcasing a interesting and skilled new film making technique in which the camera operator holds the lens in front of the camera rather than attaching it fully which leads to some great natural ‘film burn’ effects as well as some interesting focus effects.

OK Go Needing/Getting music video

A couple of superb car based music videos for you now. The first is from the band that is legendary for their incredibly creative and awesome music videos. Ever since their infamous first big attempt involving the treadmills they’ve been constantly trying to out do themselves. Well this time they may have done it. Apparently taking over 4 months to prepare and countless takes (but then what OK Go video is going to be done within two takes) this video features them driving about in the desert with a specially prepared car and circuit that well… let’s just say the driving makes the music.

MIA Bad Girls music video

I’m not exactly the biggest fan of this song, but the video is something else. Probably in my top ten of videos of all time. It’s cool, there’s some great shots (check MIA lying on top of a moving car whilst two-wheeling), some cool dance routines and more. Well worth a watch.

Photoshop Rap

We’d like to think this’ll be a new feature in Photoshop CS6

Battlefield 3: Operation Cars

Bit of a geeky one this but if you’re fans of the Battlefield 3 video game you may enjoy this.

Bonny Bear

So the Grammy awards happened weekend before last and fellow Brit Adele scooped up more awards than she could hold but also office fave Bon Iver won a couple of awards, much to the displeasure of people not knowing who he is or how to pronounce his name correctly which lead to this great video being created.

Those poor cooling towers

This video by Ecotricity is trying to promote the use of green energy sources in various countries that still use Fossil Fuels and Nuclear. It’s a great ad and well worth watching but it makes us feel sorry for the power stations and smoke stacks rather than them being bad for us and we’re meant to be glad they’re gone. Great concept but a missed goal we feel.

Lumberjacks

Another sketch from Barats and Bereta. This time featuring lumberjacks and all the plays on that word.

Careless Whisper

This hilarious video features a man with a massive mullet wig (or at least we hope it’s a wig) and some very tight leather trousers playing that legendary saxophone riff from George Michael song ‘Careless Whisper’ in inappropriate places like shopping malls and lecture halls. Enjoy!

Over the last few years internet speeds have changed the way that we browse the internet, and the way that we consume data. No longer is it acceptable to read thousands of words off a website, but it is acceptable to watch a short video production about a company.

A picture says a thousand words…

Well, if one picture can say a thousand words, think about what 25 pictures per second can communicate. I know that this is a cliche, but there is some great meaning in this statement. Video content can engage a viewer on multiple levels at the same time, reinforcing your message to them. Visual stimulation for the viewer comes from the video, and audible stimulation is delivered from the audio, either as a voice over, music, speech.

So what can video do for you?

Video can be the most effective way to commentate a message. Here is an example of video being used to deliver a very powerful message.

The video content here is featured as the main function on the website. No longer is video just for television and high end corporate video production. Video is for everybody if you’re selling a new tooth-pick, delivering an internal message to staff, selling a home, or simply showing off your companies abilities then video is right for you.

Video will help to position you where you want to be.  For example if your company wishes to appear global – we’ll create a video that shows you to be a global company, subtly suggesting to your web visitors your amazing global positioning. There are so many applications of video that it is impossible to list them all in a simple blog post. We’d love to talk to you about video application for your company / school / charity / anything else!

Video Production quality

Due to the rise in video production standards both in television, film and corporate video, it’s no longer acceptable to produce low quality videos. Viewers are wise to video quality whether they realise it or not. We always recommend making videos as good as a budget possibly allows it to be. We also have a policy to put as much of your budget on screen as possible. That means that your video will look and feel like a bigger budget production whatever the budget was. It is so important not to cut corners / rush out a video production before it’s ready.

Video delivery

The way you deliver your video to your viewers will vary greatly from; YouTube, trade shows, websites, DVDs etc etc. Each video will have a different application. One thing that we would encourage, is to think about timing. For example we were involved in an online YouTube project that included many many YouTube training videos aimed at Joe Blogs. Rather than releasing them all in one hit, we trickle feed them into the market, meaning that a bit of excitement and anticipation could be built for the next video. Just something simple to think about.

Summary

So in summary, your company / charity / school / business / project (delete as appropriate), does need video!

The dreaded Err 30.

On a shoot recently, after checking the camera in the morning and all being fine, arrived powered up to get this message.

Unfortunately there is nothing that you can do to get rid of it. You have to send the camera back to Canon. When I did this, they were not very helpful at all, and were actually very rude to me on the phone. It took about 2 weeks, but they did fix the problem.

I have since found out that about 1 in every 1000 units has this this error. That is not good Mr Canon!

This is why we always insist on having a spare camera.

This month our blog is one year old!
We first blogged about the Broadcast Video Expo last year, and just got back from this years event.
How quickly 1 year goes!

The Broadcast Video Expo

The Canon C300 was the highlight of BVE for me this year. I must admit, getting my hands on the camera for the first time, it is a great bit of kit. Feels very solid and can be used handheld unlike the F3.

We will be ordering one soon, but might not be until April until we get our hands on it!

Once we get it you’ll get a full review / info on the camera. But we don’t have enough to go on right now!

Sennheiser HD25 Review

This has to be the simplest kit review I have ever written. Before I explain why, let me say that we only use these headphones for video production, and this review relates to use for video production only.

Simply put, these headphones are brilliant. Excellent build quality, great sound and reliable. The individual components can be replaced if you break them, meaning that they will be in your video production kit bag for years and you can just replace the bits that break – if they do at all!

Of course the most important thing about any headphones is the sound. The HD25 headphones have excellent sound monitoring. They block enough external sound to make them accurate, and the sound is very true to the recording. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they sound the best but it does mean that you are hearing what you are recording, not a nicely EQ’d warm sound that the headphones are adding.

In a nut-shell, get these headphones if you are doing any video production that requires professional sound recording.

Below is an example of a short film shot entirely on the iPhone 4S graded in Magic Bullet and cut in Final Cut Pro 7

Pretty good no? Zacuto wrote a piece about it here including a little interview and some production shots.

It’s starting to take off for sure but I can’t see it genuinely causing the same kind of revolution that DSLR’s and their massive sensors brought about, but they’re beginning to be used as essential add ons to film shoots. You can story board with apps as well as slate, edit and grade. Give it a couple of years though and we might see something special coming from the newest iPhones and HTC’s and given that the iPhone 4S’s current sensor can technically shoot 4K at 24p already the future maybe isn’t far off!

But for now we’ll have to settle on using the iPhone as an assistant rather than the camera and as such we’ve listed some of the best apps below. Enjoy.

To help you out on set

Movie Slate

This app by Pureblend software is primarily a digital slate for professional film makers but the reason it’s got a lot of attention is because it does a whole host of other things as well. It also logs all the data for you and can send you reports that you can either print out or send directly into your NLE software of choice (Avid, FCP7 or Adobe Premiere). It’s additional plug ins such as Sound Department, which intelligently logs and tracks all your sound for you saving time on set, makes this a worthwhile investment for any professional in this industry.

Price: £17.49 (plug ins are seperate)
Website: www.movie-slate.com

 Easy Release

Another app that will save on a lot of paperwork and move your entire workflow into a digital format. Easy Release is a way of quickly and efficiently getting the signature of the person you are filming or photographing. They sign on the phone

and then an email with the full release form and signature is then emailed to you in a PDF format. So easy.

Price: £6.99
Website: www.applicationgap.com/apps/easyrelease/

Adobe Story

 You’re writing a script for a short film, you’re out and about and then think up a great bit for your story. Well this is where Adobe Story comes in. It works with the desktop app (which is free until April 2012) and means when you sign in you can update your script on the go and when you get back to your computer the changes you made will all be there.

Price: Free (Need account with Adobe Story)
Website: story.adobe.com/en-us/?promoid=GHUMT

PocketLD

The gaffers best friend this one. PocketLD is a “photometric database and calculation tool for theatrical and TV/Film lighting professionals” featuring a comprehensive database of many brands of light and all their models and what they put out.

Price: £13.99
Website: www.lightingiphoneapps.com/pocketLD

Cinemek Storyboard Composer.

I’m not a fan of making story boards, not because I don’t think they’re useful or anything, they’re vital when filming. I’m just not very good at drawing and thus can’t really get the images in my head out on paper properly. This app does away with all that and makes it incredibly easy to create great looking storyboards in half the time.

Price: £10.49
Website: http://cinemek.com/storyboard/

Artemis

This app is a digital viewfinder for the iPhone that replicates what normal viewfinders do but much more effectively and conveniently. Chose the aspect ratio, format and lens type and Artemis will simulate what different lenses would look like with different lenses. A great and useful app that will no doubt come in handy on film sets.

Price: £20.99
Website:  www.chemicalwedding.tv

Pro Prompter

You’d have to fairly comfortable with doing a bit of DIY film making for this one to work properly. Obviously having a prompter on your phone rather than carrying around an entire auto cue set would be pretty useful but because of the way auto cue works the subjects eyes will never be looking down the lens if they’re reading from a phone. But as has been pointed out to us on our Facebook page there is indeed a way to get round this fault as long as you’ve got a small 15cm square piece of glass. Watch this video to see how: www.youtube.com/watch?v=JT7JvpNfSuc. This app also works great with the iPad.

Price: £6.99
Website: apps.bodelin.com/proprompter/producer

To film with

Filmic Pro.

A very intuitive app taking full advantage of the iPhones rather good camera and lens. Loads of features that are found on actual cameras have been moved into here like being able to set exposure and focus as well as frame rate and frame size. As well as the ability to slate, monitor audio, add colour bars for post work and more. And for only a couple of quid you’d be silly not to pick this one up.

Price: £1.99
Website:  www.filmicpro.com

TimeLapse

 A neat little app that easily allows you to create great time lapses with your phone. You can either allow the app to take the photos and make the film or take the photos ready for post processing for later.

Price: £1.49
Website:  xyster.net/timelapse/index.php

TiltShift Video

This app easily re-creates the great looking Tilt shift effect that’s become very popular in recent times. It’s an effect that usually would cost several hundred pounds to re-create due to the Tilt Shift lenses need are very expensive indeed. Recreating the effect digitally has become the done thing with films like The Social Network applying the effect in post so don’t feel like your cheating!

Price: £1.49
Website: web.me.com/flainez/TiltShiftVideo

Movie Looks

Red Giant, the company that makes a silly amount of great plug ins for professional film editing software has tried their hand at making iPhone apps with a couple of photography ones aiming squarely at the likes of Instagram and Hipstamatic. With Movie Looks they’ve brought along their very popular Magic Bullet Looks presets and given you the ability to shoot, cut and grade films all on the iPhone.

Price: £1.49
Website: www.redgiantsoftware.com/products/all/movie-looks/ 

Is this the future?

These are just some of our favourite apps we’ve found but we’d love to know what you think about people using iPhones as a camera or using them to assist on set with apps like Movie Slate on the iPad we can definitely see being a massive advantage on a film set but film with them for paid work may be a little far off yet.

We’d love to know what you think about this! Please comment in the box below.

On a recent production the ‘call sheet’ was over 12 pages in length. Although this took hours to put together it pays off on the day. The ‘call sheet’ tells each crew member exactly where to be and when they need to be there.

Back in the days of being a freelancer I worked on one too many video productions without proper planning. It’s all too common for crew to have no idea of what is happening and when. All this means is that the producer has saved time before, and the final video production will suffer.

This is why any video production project that we undertake, will have pre-production scheduled into the production plan, and on the estimate. It is exactly the same with Motion Graphics projects too. Often the art worker, the director and the animator have to collectively work together around one another. With the right planning this process is significantly more efficient.

On Friday we were filming a trailer for a new musical called Love Beyond. There were nearly 25 crew and cast involved on the day, and I must admit it was a great fun shoot!

There will be many behind the scenes blogs coming about the production but here is one photograph.

We’ve also put some pictures on our FaceBook if you’re interested!

The video included 2 actors, 4 street dancers, a contemporary dancer, a violinist and crew!

More to follow!

Here we are on set in Bath filming some product videos for T2 direct. This video can be viewed here.

The Setup

Here we are shooting with the Canon 7D. We’ve found that the 7D, all things considered, for this application is better than the 5D. One of the main reasons for this is the HD monitoring via HDMI.

On top of the camera is a Marshal 7″ field monitor. Here we were using the 24-70mm Canon L lens and the Shoot 35 matte box and filters, filming with a polariser. As you can see there is frost on the ground, and we wanted to add vibrancy to the colours, so the polariser was perfect.

Under the camera is the amazing Glidetrack (click here for our Glidetrack review).

Here is a closer image of the camera setup. I can’t sing the praises of Shoot 35 highly enough. Everything we own from them is of excellent quality, and a joy to work with.

Filming Inside…

After filming the ladder we moved inside to shoot a video with a photo scanner.

One thing I love about this setup, is that it is easy to move around and very lightweight. Once the lights were setup, the camera setup largely stays the same.

More behind the scenes blogs to follow!

Chronicle

This low budget film has got sleeper hit written all over it. It’s about 3 high school kids who make an “incredible discovery” in a woods (check out the trailer for more) and then find they have all got super powers. Sure it’s not the most original of premises, normal ‘real’ kids getting super powers was done with Misfits and the way it’s been shot has received a number of “copycat” shouts from fans of Cloverfield and Paranormal Activity even though Chronicle isn’t shot with one of the characters holding the camera. This film, to me still looks cool and well worth a trip to the cinema to see it. Apparently it only cost $15,000,000 and given it’s fairly widespread exposure already I’d say the production company is likely going to make a tidy profit from this.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

This film centres around the fact that Abraham Lincoln was in fact a vampire hunter in his spare time fighting at night against them and their slave owning helpers. Yes the plot is ridiculous but this could be all kinds of fun.

Brave

It’s been a while since the last great Pixar film (no I don’t count Cars 2 as one) so it’s nice to see them taking a gamble on a completely new plot with new characters and not only that basing it entirely around humans, something the animation masters at Pixar have never really done. Sure there’s plenty of scenes in past Pixar films involving human characters but never the protagonist. Brave tells the story of a young Scottish princess and excellent archer who “makes a reckless choice that unleashes unintended peril and forces her to spring into action to set things right”. Here’s hoping it’ll have the same Pixar magic that classics like Toy Story, Wall.E and Finding Nemo had.

Moonrise Kingdom

The king of brilliant but wonderfully odd films Wes Anderson is back with the story of a pair of young lovers who run away together leaving an all star cast form a search party and go looking for them with what looks like a lot of odd stuff happening on the way. It looks all kinds of brilliant.

Skyfall

It’s been 4 years since the last Bond film and I’m very happy James is returning. And from looking at the cast list in fine form too! Daniel Craig is back for his 3rd outing as 007, Judi Dench is of course returning in the role of M but the cast also features the talents of Javier Bardem, Ralph Fiennes, Maggie Smith, Albert Finney and Ben Whishaw is resurrecting the role of Q the gadget master. I’m looking forward to this one in particular as the people producing it have said it would hark back to the days of Connery which is good because I’d rather they left the super depressing plot of Quantum Of Solace behind. Am expecting stunts and stupid and over the top as the one liners please.

(no trailer sorry!)

Prometheus

The films got me all excited for a number of reasons. Firstly it’s a Ridley Scott film, set in space, it has an excellent cast featuring Michael Fassbender, Noomi Rapace, Idris Elba and Charlize Theron, it’s got a former Lost writer on board (I loved Lost) and it’s got more than a few Alien clues in it. Everyone and their mother reckon this is a Alien prequel in all but name. Oh and this trailer is probably the best on this list. Gives nothing about the plot away, has a great score and sound effects being used and is more tense than, well, a really tense thing.

The Hobbit

After years and years of delays and directors quitting the project, filming for the Hobbit finally got underway last year and Peter Jackson treated us at the end of the year with a trailer for his much anticipated Lord Of The Rings prequel. It’s been 11 years since The Fellowship Of The Ring and this looks like it’ll slot right in quite nicely.

The Avengers

Marvel has been building up the release of this film since the release of the first Iron Man film in 2008 and with any luck it’ll be more than worth the wait. Featuring all the relevant cast from all the films featuring the Avengers this looks to be the super hero film to end all super hero films, unless the following film has anything to say about it…

Dark Knight Rises

The final part of Nolan’s Batman trilogy looks to be by far the most epic of the lot. The Dark Knight would’ve needed quite a lot to top and it seems that Nolan has poured everything he can into making his trilogy end on a bang. I’m getting tickets to see this in IMAX as soon as they’re released.

We’d love to know what you all think about the choices we’ve made and we’d love to know if you think we’ve missed out on anything in particular. Please comment in the box below.