I hadn’t realised that Promax had country dependant awards but now I do know, and how do I know you may well ask? The very talented Gemma Baukham has just won another 2 silver Promax awards for a trail I shot with her for BBC WorldWide trail showcasing ‘Come dine with me, South Africa’. This trail has already won an award for the photography from the New York Festivals 2014 so it’s lovely that it won another 2 in the categories of ‘Best Entertainment Promo’ and ‘Best Promo not using programme footage’ ( a nice catchy title there). Here it is;

It was shot on an Arri Alexa using Cooke S4’s. We shot in south London but the brief was for it to look hot morning in South Africa so we lit mostly from outside with large sources. It was shot in a day which caused a certain level of panic as there was –  A. a lot to shoot and B. an odd bird that initially refused to do as was asked of it! There is one shot in the promo that I have always hated but there is no way I’m going to tell you which one and overall I think the promo works really well. It was a brave direction for Gemma to take by not having voice over or an clips and I know she met with some opposition but I really think it paid off.

Just before I sign off I thought I’d put this one up as well. It’s a promo for an exhibition at the ‘London Museum’ that looks at Sherlock Holmes. Again shot in a day with half at the Museum and half in a greenscreen studio it was a tough call but all got done with time for a coffee at the end. We shot it on an Epic with our rehoused Nikon primes. The film was posted by FGreat in London who did a splendid job of it.

Granted this is not a catchy title and as it suggests might not be everybody’s cup of tea but for slightly fixated people like myself it’s an endless source of joy and fun. In fact there is something about the tools that we use to make films that causes constant argument and infatuation. I was on speaker phone to my business partner the other day and we were getting very excited about different benefits of tripod makes when eventually his wife spoke up and asked us to question whether we actually had a life? I think she might have a point?!  However, when it comes to lenses, well that’s a whole different kettle of fish – surely anyone can see that?

So, for Lighthouse, what lenses and why? To start this story we really have to go back to way before Lighthouse as the choices ultimately came from a period of testing and experimenting that started with the last feature I shot with Chris Crow, Viking Saga – The Darkest Day. With this film we used a lot of 1970’s Canon FD stills lenses and placed glass objects in front to distort and diffract the light. We also used a lensbaby for one scene. We loved the layering that this gave as it became more of a texture than an effect, anything that looked like an effect was immediately binned but what we were left with we loved. After Darkest Day we shot a couple of pop promos and then a tease for Lighthouse, both of which built on these lens choices, pushing them more into the world of visual texture. Chris sent me quite a few references with distortions and foreground details that he liked and I started thinking about how they could work for Lighthouse. For the tease and the pop promos we had become a bit fixated with lens whacking (shooting with the lens removed from the camera body so that you allow light to leak through from the camera mount). Here’s the one of the pop promos to give you an idea – you will also see use of the lensbaby on it as we were exploring how far you could go before it becomes a definite effect.

The problem we discovered with the lens whacking was that you could not focus on anything far away as you could not get the lens close enough to the camera body without losing the flare as the lens clashed with the camera body. To solve this I bought an old 35mm Tokina lens with a Nikon mount and took it apart so that only the central lens housing remained. This meant that you could move the lens right in towards the sensor without clashing with the body and hence could focus at any distance. I’ve put in a picture of it below, the crew affectionately labelled it, ‘the skinny one’.

Lens with reversed front element

Central barrel of a lens taken out to lens whack

Chris also showed me a vimeo film where someone had reversed the front element of a lens which blurs the outside edge of the picture. I blatantly ripped  off this idea (sorry I can’t name check you as I can’t remember the link now) and made my own reverse element lens which the crew imaginatively named ‘the reverse element lens’ (who says we are not a kooky bunch!) I will put some frame grabs of the reverse element lens and the lensbaby below but framegrabs do not really work for the lens whacking as it is the collective effect of the moving image which gives the look. I should mention that we decided to only use the lensbaby in the most unobtrusive mode – ie with the lens straight in it’s mount and a deepish stop. Before we see the examples I would like to say a special thanks to my team who not only put up with all this nonsense, but embraced it and even suggested how we could take it further, they were an amazing crew to have on board and I’m thankful to them all for their commitment, skill and wonderful approach to the continual pressure of the Lighthouse shoot. They were;  Camera team, Keefa Chan – focus puller, Steve Owen – 2nd assistant, Jonny Mason – Camera Trainee, Jordan Wallace – Camera and DiT Trainee, Grip was Sean Harding and the Gaffer was Vern Raye with Spark Edmund McKay. I salute you all. Here are some example of the modified lenses.

Reverse element lens example

Reverse element lens example

Reverse element lens example

Lens Baby example

These modified lenses worked well with our main set of lenses which were a set of rehoused Nikon prime stills lenses dating to the 1980’s. These lenses are less sharp than the Masterprimes or Ultraprimes that I would use for a more action based film and they flared beautifully. That said there were times that we wanted to create some additional artificial flare but both myself and Chris always favour creating this in camera if we can. To achieve this I asked my local glass cutter to cut 10 x  4″ x 4″ squares of good quality glass. I then asked my camera team to tape them around the edges and crack them in as many different ways that they could. It was Sean who really took this on board and attacked them with style. We then put these one by one in the matt box and looked at the effect they gave.

Filter test Lighthouse

Broken filters to create flare

Whenever a direct light source hit them they flared rather beautifully but we ended up using the less broken ones as the end result could be too heavy. This is definitely something  I’ll do again when the right film presents. Here are a couple of framegrabs that show the effect.

Filter test Lighthouse

Broken filters to create flare

Broken glass filter example framegrab

Broken glass filter example framegrab

And finally a first rough grade test that show you what the Nikon lenses look like;

Exterior style guide for final grade

Time has just disappeared. It seems that we are having breakfast one moment and then the first is calling a wrap on the day with everything in-between being just a blur. It was, without a doubt, a punishing schedule and we were just making the day by minutes each time. There was no allowance for pick up days so it was essential that we didn’t fall behind. Making this film has really reminded me of the fundamental differences between long form and short form work. With short form, commercials etc, we basically try to make each shot count as an entity in its own. They obviously still have to add together all the pieces to make a whole but the  consistency is second to the impact of each shot. When you have 30 seconds to sell a product there is no space for a shot that does not powerfully reinforce that aim. With features it’s much more of a slowburner and so shots, and indeed scenes, can exist to subtly reinforce character traits without necessarily moving the story as a whole forwards. With Lighthouse we had a very clear visual structure which moved with the character arcs and we shot as close to chronologically as was practical. This helped in keeping the consistency of the visuals going but equally was frustrating in the sense that for the first part of the shooting I always had a nagging feeling that we were holding back on the energy of the photography. The photography starts  in a documentary feel, then develops into a very structured solid framing style before moving into the final phase of visual chaos where the basic rules of focus, lines and framing were well and truly thrown in the bin. I constantly had to remind myself of an interview I had read with either Conrad Hall ASC or Gordan Willis ASC, I forget which, where they said that the mark of successful photography in a feature was consistency. Making a beautiful image is not such a difficult thing, making an image that remains true to the story and is consistent to the needs of the story is much more difficult. My feeling with Lighthouse is that we succeeded in this but only the edit will tell!

The documentary feel

The structured phase of Lighthouse photography

The angles get more acute as we progress through the film

We tried to make some scenes feel off axis in their balance

Without doubt we had an amazing team, I don’t think there was a single HoD who didn’t commit 110% to the film and who didn’t produce really exceptional work (excluding me, of course, as I am certainly not the best judge of that!). Chris Crow, who wrote, directed and was one of the producers was a dream to work with again. He has such a clear vision of how the film should be but still allows his collaborators the freedom to explore. Production Designer, Tim Dickel, really gave us a set that we couldn’t wait to put on the screen. Costume ( Sian Jenkins) and Make up (Cat Williams) both designed beautifully and my gaffer Vern rigged the most amazing green and lights all on rope.

Rope supported greenscreen and lights

Rope supported greenscreen and lights

For those of you who my wife would categorise as a ‘photography nerd’ I’ll talk now about some of the challenges and some of the ways we explored the visual style. During prep we boldly decided that the set should be claustrophobic, whilst this did work, it also made life very difficult! If I stood on tip toes my head touched the beams so lighting from above was completely out of the question, even moving lights on stands in the set was difficult as we couldn’t lift them more than 20cm before they clashed with the beams.

My head touched the beams when standing on tip toe

candle test for Lighthouse

On top of this the film is set in a storm so it felt wrong to put light coming in from the windows. What we mainly ended up doing was raking light across the walls for the daylight scenes and adding a little fill and smoke to spread the light around a bit. For nightime we used the candles and stove as sources adding flicker from a home made ficker box that worked tremendously. These sources were generally placed at floor level to hide them. I looked at ways of focusing the candle light which we hoped to use as the film became darker. The best method came from a tool I discovered whilst shooting a documentary. The documentary was based on Artisans and one of the contributors was a shoemaker who told me that shoemakers traditionally used a ball filled with water which acted as an organic way of focusing the light from a candle. I had a ball blown and tried it out, there’s a picture above to show you the results. Sadly as the schedule was so demanding on set this was one of the tools that never made it although I’m storing it away for use on something else one day. As the film progresses the widows get boarded up which restricted the practical light even more. To still get some justified light in I asked the art department to break some of the panels that made up the exterior of the set and we pushed in some light through all the cracks that were made. This created a very different look for the last few scenes.  It took a while to find a good lighting scheme but by the last day we had it pretty much nailed!

If I’m honest with you I was a nervous man when thinking about the first week of shooting on Lighthouse. The week was all the location scenes in the film and the majority were beach exteriors. The problem with being on a beach is there is nowhere to hide! If it rains, it rains, if the sun shows its face, it shines, if it’s windy it…. well you get the idea. However, we were very,very,very lucky and almost had the weather we wanted on cue, just as the first called scene complete the weather would morph into what we needed for the next set up. Amazing and surprising. It’s an absolute pleasure to be shooting with Chris Crow again who always manages to get the best from everybody and the performances from the leads Mike Jibson and Mark Lewis Jones certainly back this up. Here are a couple of framegrabs from this weeks shooting;

Framegrab Lighthouse

Lighthouse Framegrab

The look we are getting is very much what we’d set out to achieve. We are shooting on a RED Epic with the Dragon sensor coupled with some old 1980’s Nikon glass. These lenses really flare beautifully and allow the super sharp sensor to lose some of the hard edged resolution that it can give. It’s working very well for us although my focus puller, Keefa Chan, has to work double hard as they are a bit of a bitch to use. We are mainly shooting 4K but move to 5 or 6K when we are shooting plates or need the shot to be a little wider. As you use more of the sensor in 6K than 4K the same lens will give a wider shot. To give you an idea of where we are going with the visual style I thought it might be interesting to share the mood film that we originally made to show the backers.

This was achieved by using a rather large amount of lens whacking and also throwing on a lens baby every now and then. As we move further into the deterioration of one of our characters minds we will be employing a lot more of these techniques which I’ll chat about when we get to it. I’ve modified a few lenses to help this along but again I’ll talk more about this when we start using them. Finally I thought I’d show you a few of the references that I found to start off discussions on the look with Chris. I always find it useful to have these as a starting point and can’t wait to emulate them more and more as we move on with Lighthouse.

Reference still for Lighthouse

Reference still for Lighthouse

Reference still for Lighthouse

Reference still for Lighthouse

Reference still for Lighthouse

Reference still for Lighthouse

Reference still for Lighthouse

Well it’s all in the title isn’t it? We were all delighted when it was announced that Playing Burton won the Welsh BAFTA in the 2014 category of Best Film/Single Drama. Even if I say so myself, it is a terrific film. Headed up beautifully by director Wyndham Price combined with a fantastic performance by Josh Richards as Burton. It’s a winning combination and the judges did well to recognise it. This was shot on a RED ONE with the original sensor and really has a lovely feel to it. We used old Nikon lenses which allow the flares and imperfections to add a certain texture that suited this subject well. It has been on Sky Arts about 100 times but never had a theatrical release, it would be lovely if this gave it enough of a push to get it there as it really is a big screen film.

Framegrab ‘Playing Burton’

Framegrab ‘Playing Burton’

In the grade, Playing Burton

Wyndham Price enjoys the atmosphere on a car shot

Framegrab ‘Playing Burton’

Framegrab ‘Playing Burton’

Well it has hasn’t it? But I suppose all good things need to end and now the shooting schedule is properly building up. I haven’t posted for a while which is mainly as I’ve enjoyed a relaxing holiday and returned to find most of my clients doing the same! With the absence of any work for my RED I decided to take a documentary for NHK, the Japanese broadcaster. I like to do at least one documentary a year as they remind me of skills which can be forgotten when you have big teams of people with you. It’s not just that though, it’s also a bit self-indulgent as I really love shooting them – what’s not to like? Firstly you, almost always, learn something or see a different reality to the world that you think exists and secondly you have to make instant decisions about how the story should be photographed. You enter a space and often have only a matter of seconds to work out the best camera position to tell the story in the most interesting way. It’s a rollercoaster of risk versus coverage – do you shoot using the best of the light even if it risks not getting all the coverage, or do you settle with a flatter light or background but cover all the action. Well this documentary was very sedate.  It was a behind the scenes look at the British Museum and their enormous Japanese collection which I have to say was fascinating. A far cry from my last documentary which was directed by acclaimed director, Penny Woolcock, and looked at the fragile peace process being brokered by two of the most notorious gangs in Birmingham (UK).  This was an amazing film and won the Michael Powell award for feature documentary although I can honestly say that my part was a small one and Penny ended up shooting 50% of the film herself as the gang members became increasingly suspicious of any additional people throughout the difficult process.

Documentary by Penny Woolcock

So, what’s coming up now? Firstly a quick look back at the last few projects. Dr Who has started again and I was brought in to record all the greenscreen promo material for worldwide sales, as you can see from the photo I took the opportunity to have a spin in the Tardis!

Fun in the Tardis

The Travel Channel asked me to shoot a promo for them to show off their new series with Henry Cole on his world wide bike adventures. We had an absolute ball as Henry took advice from a select group of over the top individuals in a fast cut comedy trail. I can show you some stills but the trail is still under wraps, although I promise to put it up as soon as I can.

Screengrab from a promo for Travel Channel

Screengrab from a promo for Travel Channel

Screengrab from a promo for Travel Channel

Screengrab from a promo for Travel Channel

Screengrab from a promo for Travel Channel

From a promo for Travel Channel

Finally, UEFA, needed a commercial to showcase their new multi-platform streaming system which was a complex greenscreen shoot. Again, no finished product that I am allowed to show, but a few frame grabs. The premise was that a fan is sitting in his living room and, through the device, is transported into the middle of a stadium. This was all virtual with the guys at FGreat doing a tremendous job of the post, creating a photo-real  environment for our actor to be in.

Screengrab from UEFA Commercial

Screengrab from UEFA Commercial

Screengrab from UEFA Commercial

Screengrab from UEFA Commercial

From UEFA Commercial

Coming up there is an advert for cinema release to promote an exhibition on Sherlock Holmes, another greenscreen extravaganza for contactless payment, and hopefully another set of idents for BBC Worldwide.  The big excitement though is that it looks like we start principle photography on Chris Crow’s next feature, The Lighthouse, in November of this year.  Much, much more on this as we start getting into pre production. It’s getting busy so I look forward to more news soon.

I’ve never really specialised in any area or genre of film making. It’s always been that if a project comes my way and I find it interesting then I’ll do it, however it is funny how things tend to come in cycles. This year I have shot a lot more food based projects than normal. Recently I have had the two opposite ends of the scale, one spot for luxury chocolate maker ‘Artisan du Chocolat’ and then a test comercial for a healthy eating campaign to play out in Abu Dhabi. The Abu Dhabi campaign is a centrally funded project where they, of course, want to make the food look as fresh and delicious as possible but it also needed to be accessible. It’s about saying ‘you don’t need to be a fantastic chef to make healthy and delicious food’. Each spot will hang off a vignette showing everyday life which will inter-cut with the food being prepared. We decided to shoot the preparation of the food at 200fps so that each glint of water or fibre of meat looked as appealing as possible, the slicing of a tomato captured as it slowly topples sideways. I can’t put the final film up yet but they have agreed to let me show you some framegrabs.

Framegrab

Framegrab

Framegrab

Framegrab

This was shot on the RED Epic at 2k at 200fps. It was directed by Nic Cornwall and produced by LittleBigFish Films for the agency WRG. All being well the plan is to shoot a series of 4 commercials in September, the food will be shot in the UK and then we will travel to Abu Dhabi to shoot the 4 vignettes to support them.

That’s all and good, but lets face it, in the world of indulgence, lettuce does not pose much of a threat to chocolate! When asked to shoot for the luxury chocolatier ‘Artisan du Chocolat’ it was not a very difficult decision, I believe my exact words were, ‘doh, yer of course’. The director, Harry Reavey, wanted the spot to feel rich in tone with a hint of mystery. There was a narrative but the main thrust of the pictures was to create an ambience of seductive elegance. I felt that one of the best ways to achieve this was to obscure the actors with gentle flares and use reflections to break things up a little.

Framegrab

Framegrab

Framegrab

Behind the scenes

Framegrab

Behind the scenes

Framegrab

Soft but directional beauty light built for Chocolate shoot

We shot using my Epic on a steadicam, courtesy of steadicam op James Elias. The Nikon Primes came out again as they flare so beautifully and have a certain soft indulgence which was perfect for this film. We were shooting in the Marylebone Hotel in London which was a lovely location but unfortunately we had to work around the residents of the hotel as production, Diser films, could not buy the location out  in full. This meant that we had to use a small crew and small fixtures. So as always in these situations lots of battery panel lights came out and I made a special beauty light for our leading lady. I wanted something small, warm, soft and directional and this worked out perfectly. There’s a picture of it above, granted not 100% sophistication but did the job well and we could walk with it and follow our leading lady. The only time that we really lost out to the residents was with some shots of our actress sitting in an alcove area. This had mirrors behind and a strong top light. Normally I would have silked the top light but it was deemed too intrusive to the residents so we blocked what we could and added more from the side. It was disappointing but I guess that’s life. Anyway, here is the finished one minute version;

You don’t get one for a while and then three come at once. Last year one of the trails I shot for the BBC, ‘Life and Death’, won a silver Promax which was nice as the Director, Andrea Pavarotti, really went out on a limb and made a more conceptual trail than is usual. You can see it on my commercials page if you fancy a gander. It was shot on an Alexa with Cooke S4 primes. We hung monitors in the space and fed them with video feeds from a vision mixer. The colour tubes were hung in huge mirror boxes which give them this endless feel. It was designed by Al Saunders and gaffered by Tim O Connell. The idea was to create a world that bears no real relationship to a formal space that our actor could walk through. We then shot this using multiple reflections in monitors, ipads and specially made broken mirrors.

Framegrab Life and Death Season Trail for the BBC. Silver Promax winner

Framegrab Life and Death Season Trail for the BBC. Silver Promax winner

Behind the scenes. Life or Death trail for the BBC

Behind the scenes. Life or Death trail for the BBC

So this year we have managed to improve by getting another silver Promax, but also winning a silver World Award for Camerawork (promotion/open & ids) in the New York Festivals. These are for two separate trails but by the same director, Gemma Baukham. Both were designed by Al Saunders. The first, Come Dine with me South Africa won the Promax in London 2014. It was a light-hearted piece showing the aftermath of the mother of all parties.

Framegrab BBC Trail – Come Dine with me SA

Framegrab BBC Trail – Come Dine with me SA

Again shot on Alexa and Cooke S4’s and again gaffered by Tim O Connell. We shot on location in South London and were looking for a hot feel as it was meant to be based in South Africa – sadly the BBC choose to not fly us all to SA! I really wanted to get hot spots with the light flaring in whenever possible and looking back now, should have gone further. Anyway, judge for yourself, here it is;

The New York Festivals award was nice as it was specific to the photography. This trail was again designed by Al saunders but gaffered by Robin Brigham this time. Same camera and lenses as before, it sounds like I always use S4’s but actually I tend to only use them for comedy or for when I’m looking for attractive gentle flares and by coincidence that was the look for all 3 of these.

Framegrab BBC Trail – Awkward Comedy I

Framegrab BBC Trail – Awkward Comedy I

We designed this trail to happen all in one shot, a long steadicam trawl through a party where awkward moments happen. Simon Wood was the very talented steadicam op who captured this for us. So the whole space was lit for the one long shot, we hid small lighting units wherever we could  and Al helped fill any areas that were going too dark with streams of fairy lights. The BBC wanted the feel to be bright, both to stay away from the seady side and also to fit into the comedy style. Sadly, although we managed to film it in one go and managed to get it to time the powers that be decided to put a couple of inserts in. I was surprised that we managed to get people to agree in the first place as it’s always more of a risk but both myself and Gemma championed it passionately. Here it is;

In an earlier post I talked about a trail I shot for the BBC which promoted a strand they were running about all the conflicting health advice out there. It’s now out and so I can put it up here for you to see.

BBC Trail, Framegrab. Shot on RED Epic at 200fps

Framegrab. Shot on RED Epic at 200fps

We shot in on the RED camera with a set of K35’s on the front. In addition for some of the montage stuff we used a Go Pro Black. The RED was running at 25fps 5K for all the montage shots and 200fps at 2K for the 3 main slow motion sections. The K35’s have a lovely slightly softer look which blends well with the 2K slow motion stuff. Here it is,