2009 photography

This year has been a bit weird, I came into it thinking Id be doing more photograph than video and strangely I’ve done less photography this year than I have done in the last 3. When I say I’ve done less I’ve actually done more commercial work than I have done in the last 3 years but less of my own stuff. Bizarrely its only now as the year is coming to an end I’ve started to look at what I’ve shot this year also for the first time ever I’m actually happy with the my look and style. In 2004 when I started to seriously get in to photography I hated doing people pictures now it’s the main focus of what I do.

Below are what I consider to be my 3 best shots of 2009 all taken with a few weeks of the summer.

2009 a year of transitional video production!

2009 has been a wired year. To start off with I had the transition of switching from pc to Mac and was still getting used to it and developing HD work flows.

Form a video point of view I’ve had the opportunity to do some fantastic jobs ranging from hart surgery to long running projects documenting and capturing different parts of culture ranging form one-day events to community projects.

HD acquisition has now become the norm HD video content is really taking off on the web and the last part of the HD work flow left to become standard is the delivery at the moment every one wants SD DVDS and HD web clips.

I’ve also noticed a changing in how clients use media both as part of the promotion and there documentation. People now seem to value their media presence much more. This year has been the first time I’ve seen clients take advantage of media convergence where we have shot stills for them and then produced a video. The value for the client is they get stills which can be used in numerous ways but also we can turn them in to video which can be delivered on numerous platforms such as mobile devices the web and disks. For the client this is a grate time you can maximize you commission.

Below are 2 examples of videos I have produced with out shooting video. To the eagle eyed you’ll notice a short piece of video in the one and other video, this was actually shot on the 5dmk2 so although its video it still follows the convergence theme as it’s a still camera not a dedicated video camera!

Inertia flatland BMX promo film

I got into film making and video production though extreme sports, it’s a subject I wish I could shoot and edit every day however living in the uk its not something I get to do every day. Id been trying to make a bmx video for years apart form to Russia with love and park sessions 2004 this is the first proper bmx related oriented video I’ve produced, when I say proper I mean with the skills and equipment I’ve got now and the standard of the rider.

The rider is keelan Phillips who is one of the best flatlanders in the world. Check his web site out www.inertiashows.com

The video was shot in different locations’ across Leicester over 3 days.

. The video was shot on a sony z1 which is a 1080i HDV camera. Sadly I don’t have a fish eye for this camera so it meant I was shooting conventionally from a tripod.

Day1

Very lucky with the weather manages to go filming for 2 hours and clock 23 mins of footage. On this day we shot in a school using a z1 set to “cinine look” it was decided that we wanted a contemporary look.  The cine function on a z1 give a really jittery look kind of like the film 28days later.

At the end of filming it was arranged that we go shooting the following day. I suggested going early and 9am is deemed early, not quite what Id consider early but there you go.

Day 2

I get a text at 1.34am keelan has had nearly 3 sandy’s and wants to put back filming by an hour. Mistake as I no the tennis courts at kington park in Leicester will be being used. We get there and get 18mins before the second court is taken over by tennis players.

For this shoot Iain Jaques the second cameraman is using a canon 5dmk2.

Day 3 scheduled for kigton park again on the tennis courts. We tried doing moving footage but it was unsuccessful. Only one clip made it in to the video.

In the end the footage from the 5d was binned. There were some exposure issues. The 5d sees white as being white with zero detail, where as the z1 sees white at 108%. This means its possible to recover highlights detail on the z1.

Editing took about 1 and half days.

keelan phillips flatland bmx from stewart charles on Vimeo.

shooting the woods a film by Dan Craddock

Day 1

Totally gutted about this, its something Id been looking forward to for weeks but the muscle injury was still too bad for me to do the filming. In fact it was so bad I couldn’t even use a boom. The reason I was looking forward to it so much is because it’s being shot on a canon 5dmk2. Now being shot by Iain Jacques and I’m doing the location sound.

The film is being filmed using to cameras the main camera is a canon 5dmk2 the second camera is a sony z1. This is going to be a nightmare in postproduction due to the 5dmk2 being full Rasta and having square pixels and the z1 being 1080i HDV which is an anamorphic format. The second camera is being used by lura Wilkinson. The second camera is there to provide 2 angels but to also give us a back up to the 5d. Andy whitehead had raised the issue of artifact and moray patterns so we decided to play it safe and shoot it on 2 cameras.

The sound is being recorded using a shennhiser me66 mic and sound devices 302 filed mixer. The sound is being recorded on to a zoom 4Hn recorder. The sound recorded by the z1 and the 5d is just for reference.

the zoom 4 recorder

We didn’t get hold of the zoom recorder till late in the day prior to the first day of shooting, to start of with we did have problems with it being over loaded by the 302 mixer, we solved this by using xlr to jack leads. At the moment tit seems to be going well as in we have recorded sound. 

the cables

sound devices 302 mixer and zoom 4 recorder

iain jaques witht eh 5dmk2 70-200mm lens and 2x converter

Shooting the woods day 2

We had a small crew due to people’s schedules. Every one had to do a bit of every thing, Andy whitehead did boom and brought and set up track. Iain carried on the 5dmk2 and lura and fred shard the z1. Fred also did a bit of boom and making of doc, as well as his designated role of clapper boarding. After checking the levels from day one I made some minor adjustments to the zoom 4 recorder. After the second day of filming we have now clocked 24Gbs of 5d footage and almost 1Gb of sound, and about 1.5hours of HDV.

We are now waiting for a 1Tb Gtech drive to arrive so we can start transferring the data. 

HDV to SD DVD new work flow!

Having had lots of problems and having to try out lots of methods of making dvds from HDV Ive now started using the following work flow.

Capture as HDV edit and then go file>export with compresser

it takes about the same amount of time as the other way but the qulity is so much better and its cutting out a process.

For now I will be using this method.

HDV 1080I to SD DVD

Until recently I hadn’t had to make a high quality DVD which had been shot on HDV. This hasn’t been an easy time working out the best workflow.

Footage shot on a Sony z1 at 1080 50i

Captured as HDV

Edited as HDV with rendering set to proress in final cup pro 6 using a late 08 macbook pro.

Initially I was doing the following workflow, completing the edit rendering the time line exporting a self contained quick time file using compressor to make the DVD authoring files.

The issue I was having was all the video on v2 or higher in fcp was showing artifacting that looked like it was over sharpened, and had aliasing when the final SD DVD was played. I’m making the assumption that there’s some issue with the way video is rendered on tracks 2 and above and must have something to do with the long GOP structure of HDV? Or it’s the mpeg 2 compression to mpeg 2 compression?.

I’m now using the following workflow.

Film capture and edit in HDV. When the edit is complete select the files in the time line then go file>export>quick time conversion.

Select proress and check interlace.

Once the file has been completed go to compressor and render the authoring files and your DVD should look a lot better!.

This method is the same as the one on ken stone web site except I check the interlace box. I have tried it with and with out and it dose make a difference!

Just in case its me I’m going to look into the settings of compressor!.

HDV to DV in final cut pro

Late 2008 I started working in HDV since then I haven’t done any thing in DV how ever recently I was asked to convert HDV to DV and this is how I did it. There seems to be more than one way I was on a tight deadline and this was the first method that worked.

6 min film on the time line in fcp. The source material was spread of 2 1Tb drives I don’t know if this had any thing to do with some of the problems I encountered.

The footage was shot in HDV edited in HDV the render sitting for the sequence was set to proress 422.

The computer is a late 08 macbook pro.

First method, exporting it form the time line as a QuickTime movie by going file>export quicktime movie.

Checked the make self-contained.

In the settings selected PAL DV anamorphic.

Opened a new project and imported the clip. Dragged and dropped the clip on to the time line but found when playing it back it appeared the filed order was wrong and gave it a bad jittery look. HDV has upper filed dominance DV pal has lower field dominance so for some reason the conversion wasn’t working.

Back to the original sequence and exported a self-contained movie using the sequence settings. This produced a HDV clip. I then made a new project and imported the clip. I dropped it on to the time line and exported a self contained QuickTime file. In the settings option I selected DV PAL 48Khz anamorphic.

I created a new project and set the settings to DV PAL 48Khz anamorphic. I imported the DV clip I had made in the previous stage and dropped it on to the time line. I then used print to video and it recorded to DV tape.

There is another way of doing this using compressor that I haven’t used yet. The next time I have to do this Ill try that method.

long exposure

A long exposure

Shot in 2007 on bw film. I think this shot worked really well. It was a freezing cold night no cloud cover and a full moon. The image was exposed for about 30mins starting at 11.40pm.

I was hoping not to have any traffic but there was a crazy rush at midnight. It’s worked out quite well. I did a few more shots but this is the best of all of them.

As soon as I’ve finished sorting out my image archive I’m planning on doing more.

2009 where am I? Why am I blogging?

Humm well where do I start? Currently I’m working as a video producer for thin-king media and as a photographer for photofinale. I also work as a cameraman and editor and hopefully by this time next year a sound recordist the only thing stopping me doing that at the moment is equipment I just need a few more bits but the kit I need is going to be quite expensive.

I’ve been curious about blogging for about a year now and I’m in the process of trying to sort out 2 company web sites, as there web presence is appalling. (To see what I mean check out www.photofinale.co.uk and www.thin-kingmedia.co.uk) and people keep telling me Ill need to get a blog(s). I’ve looked at wordpress and found it a bit overwhelming I’ve even installed in on a server but have not made any progress. I haven’t had a go with it on the wordprss site, so I might be missing out. I looked at blogger about a year and a half ago and I still like it so this blog is going to be a bit of an experiment. I find it hard to imagine any one will ever be interested in any thing that gets put on this or any which I may mange in the future. I thought Id start with this one and just let it evolve. I joined twitter early this year and I really like using that, however that could be due to the fact I have an iphone, which is a good tool for killing time whilst waiting. From what I gather blogs are really about seo in business terms.

So getting back to business I’ve been told that the ideal posting ratio is about once every other week, right now I’m feeling lucky I’m not a plumber as I canrt imagine that would be easy to write about, at least my weeks and workflows are different every week, and every week is usually packed with disasters, you never no it may even be of use to some one.

I’m based in the UK