The Wraith

February saw the release of my first short film, The Wraith. Starring Angharad Jones and narrated by Bernard Hill it tells the story of a young woman trapped in limbo between the world of the living and the world of the dead. Official selection for the Crystal Palace International Film Festival 2011.

We Show Up On Radar – I’ll Be A Ghost

We had the honour of making the music video for WSUOR’s I’ll Be A Ghost. The song still sends shivers down my spine. I hope our video does it justice, see for yourself. You can see the ‘Making Of’ here.

Odin’s Wolves

In Spring, I was impaled on a sword while shooting the book trailer for Giles Kristian’s ‘Odin’s Wolves’. I didn’t mind because the film is awesome!

Humans

The summer was long and balmy and we spent a week of it larking around in the Lincolnshire countryside with our good friends at Red Dog Film and Urban Apache Films. The project was a spec trailer for a feature film called ‘Humans’. The trailer is still in post-production so for now take a look at some photos from the shoot.

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We Show Up On Radar – The Anchors In Your Heart

In September we were asked to do a second music video for We Show Up On Radar. Their beautiful song ‘Anchors In Your Heart’ was irresistible. The official release for the promo is in the New Year so here’s the Making Of.

Ulysses Storm – Franska The Bear

The end of the summer saw a massive downpour which forced us to cancel our exterior shoot for the Ulysses Storm music video and we instead took it indoors. So instead of harassing people in the park, our bear went to a dance audition instead.

Pr0xy

October was filled by our second short film shoot for ‘Pr0xy’. A film about a young woman who stalks people by hacking into their social networks and lives her life by proxy. The film is in post-production now and will be completed for the Spring. Many thanks to Zacuto for the equipment loan!

By The Winter Sea

Last but certainly not least, I teamed up with Phil Stevens from Urban Apache Films to create a film for Red Dog Film and Lincolnshire County Council. The film is set during WWII and tells the story of Ada, a young woman who leaves London to become a land girl on a Lincolnshire farm.

The shoot took 6 days and gave us the opportunity to get all the toys out of the box, a RED One MX, a steam train, a 1937 Austin 7 Ruby and a load of pyrotechnics! The film is in post right now and will be completed early in the New Year.

Austin Ruby through the viewfinder

Look out for lots more in 2012 including more shorts, music promos and robotic puppets!

Have a great Christmas and New Year,

Tom x

I’ve just finished primary shooting on my new short film, Pr0xy.  With this film I wanted to be able to shoot quickly and easily yet still get great shots so I wanted a rig that was versatile and easy to use. Imagine my shock when I opened the box from Zacuto to find about a thousand different parts! “Yikes!” I thought.  However, the system is beautifully simple.

Zacuto Double Barrel & Canon 7D

Like all shoulder rigs it has the basic elements – plate, rods, shoulder pad, handles but it also comes with a few extra bits.

The one thing I noticed straight away was the quick release nature of the Zacuto rig.  The two main handles have a ball joint quick lock system, which is great for adjusting the grips to any angle.  The camera plate has a great little twist gizmo that allows you to remove the camera so you can switch cards/batteries or if you need to remove the plate altogether.

The second thing I noticed was the build quality.  Undeniably good.  I’ve used a few rigs before and the locks and connections are often a bit sketchy.  The Zacuto rig has the feel of a piece of kit that you know will last for a very long time.  The locks lock and stay locked until you open them.  That seems obvious but not having to tighten the rig up every time you go to pick it up is great.

Shooting Angharad Jones in 'Pr0xy'

The Double Barrel also includes a weight and a top handle which I didn’t end up using. My camera set up is fairly light – no matte box, monitor or top light, just the camera and lens – so it was unnecessary.  The top handle is a nice idea but I found it hindered access to the record button and the x5/x10 magnification/exposure buttons on my 7D so I left that off until I needed the handle for low angle shots.

The follow focus is great – very smooth.  Although the demo version I received did not come with the gear section that attaches to the lens so I used one of my own.  There was a tiny bit of slippage now and again but that was due to the slight mismatch in gears.  When it locked in place however the action was really smooth.  Exactly what you need from a follow focus rig.

Zacuto Follow Focus

One unexpected advantage of the Double Barrel’s long handles was that I could lift the rig off my shoulder completely and still maintain balance.  This allowed me to extend my arms fully into hard to reach places and still get great shots!  This came in particularly handy when filming a drummer during a music video shoot I was able to get done the week before the film shoot.  I was able to lean over the kit and get really close in while he was still playing.

The viewfinder is fantastic.  The one thing you need from a viewfinder above everything else is clarity.  Firstly, the Zacuto viewfinder blocks out the light superbly and secondly provides great picture quality.  In bright light situations this is absolutely necessary and cannot be underestimated.

Zacuto Double Barrel

Overall the Double Barrel is a fantastic bit of kit.  The fact that it is modular allowed me to be inventive and that’s the best thing about it for me.  It let me be creative and get the shots I wanted to get while still being simple and durable.  A quality piece of kit.

Hello!

Here’s the official video for ‘Franska The Bear’ by Ulysses Storm. The video was shot a few weeks ago for their first single and launch of their debut EP, Snake Cult, which you can download HERE.

Enjoy! x

On location

Both shoots went really well despite a poorly leading lady and the general incompetence of Royal Mail. I’m now going to spend the next 2 months locked away editing and doing post production/visual effects and audio for ‘Pr0xy’. The film is due for release in early 2012. The Ulysses Storm music video will be released as part of the album launch at the end of October!

I’ll post a link to the finished version as soon as I can!

We shot the whole thing in two days with a few days design & prep beforehand. The puppet/creature design by Amy Nicholson was the main challenge. An 8 foot tall monster creates its own problems when shooting, not only for the film crew but also the performer. The creature took two days to make an has four interchangeable faces to convey different emotions. The hands are bamboo and inspired by Papua New Guinea witch doctor traditional dress.

Here’s some photos. I’ll do a quick making of soon. 

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The project is for a spec trailer for a film called ‘Humans’. Shot on RED and on location in the Lincolnshire countryside.

Here’s a few production photos.

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The shoot was fairly standard – a day out and about on location (no studio) with a small crew and basic HDSLR camera kit. A few basic lights but nothing major. I’m a fan of natural light so we tried to make the most of what we had available which was a lot since the sun was blazing! We started first thing in the morning at the first location, a living room in a house. The light through the window and a couple of lamps were enough to light the scene. The hardest thing was for the art team to operate the wasp puppet which proved to be quite tricky, especially with the wind. The wasp puppet was made in the weeks prior to the shoot and carved using insulation foam and covered in modrock then painted and strung up.

Wasp Puppet

The next location was a shop front. Nothing tricky about that except getting the sync right with the music. I decided early on that it wasn’t going to be a performance based video but rather a narrative with a few key vocal lines thrown in. So cueing up the lines was slightly time consuming. The next location, under a tree in a graveyard, would contain the first element of visual effects. In this scene Andy had to pick up a photo which contained a moving animated memory. I didn’t want to lock off the camera and just composite the animation over the top so I created a polaroid with a series of cleverly positioned tracking markers that allowed me to track the scale, rotation and movement of the photo in post. The finished animations would then be inserted afterwards. After that we had to do a few takes where Andy dropped the photo and walked out of shot to allow for a jump cut where he gets sucked into the photo. (Difficult to explain, easier just to watch the video). Animal masks we made for the band members to wear.

The Man Badger!

From here it was a simple set up in a field down the road in a town called Southwell and then over to a small wood in another town called Worksop. Here we shot another photo sequence and made use of the amazing sunset that was coming through the trees and giving off the most amazing light show.

As it got dark the art team dressed a small clearing in the wood which would act as the set for the final scene where Andy finally catches up to the wasp. A brilliant set of wicker lanterns/pods constructed for the film lit the set along with other cosmetic lights. Hand held key lights were used to light the wasp and Andy’s face. We also did some great hand held camera shots in there as it was really tight – I even gave the camera to Andy at one point and just said, “You do it, it’ll be way easier!”. The shot came out great too.

The animated sequences were storyboarded before we started any cutting. The sequence of events has to be clear otherwise you just end up creating randomness and that’s not a good thing when animating since it’s so time consuming. The art team, Amy Nicholson and Sarah Lewis spent a whole day cutting out and articulating the shadow puppets. We ran a few tests on the first day so we knew that we had the right number of puppets and they could move correctly.

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The next three days were long and tiring. Anyone who animates will know that it’s hard work and even though we had storyboarded the whole sequence, some section still stumped us. “How the f*ck do we do that?!” was uttered many times. The shadow puppets were animated using a custom built lightbox with five panes of glass suspended on shelves above a diffuse set of fluorescent lights. The great thing about having different levels of glass is that you can pull focus between them creating real depth in the animation. We used Dragon Stop Motion to control the camera and record the animation and we got the sequence shot in three days. It was then stitched together in After Effects where we added some extra elements like stars and flames.

Animal Masks

The whole film was assembled in Final Cut Pro and graded in Color and with Magic Bullet Looks. The live action segments were shot on a Canon 7D with a Sigma 30mm and a Tokina 11-16mm using the new Technicolor CineStyle colour profile. The 7D with the Sigma was also used to shoot the animation, great as it’s got Live View so you can utilise the awesome “Onion Skin” feature in Dragon Stop Motion.

The video is COMING SOON!

The process is pretty cool – it’s all carried out on a custom built light box. I’ll post a full project breakdown later on this month.

Forest

Cityscape

As promised, here’s the full version of the book trailer for ‘Odin’s Wolves’.

‘Odin’s Wolves: Prologue’ is a short film from Urban Apache Films based on the prologue of the third novel in author Giles Kristian’s bestselling ‘Raven’ saga.

“Raven and the Wolfpack have suffered. Good men have died, treasure has been lost. But to Norsemen such as these there is something more valuable than silver: fame – for fame is the saga-story that a warrior leaves behind when he dies. Now the Fellowship sails in search of Constantinople, which they call Miklagard, for it is there that they hope to find both riches and glory.

It is a voyage that will lead them into unknown and dangerous waters – from the barren, wind-whipped marshes of the Carmargue to the crumbling walls and blood-drenched arenas of a decaying Rome, from brutal hand-to-hand conflict, to vile treachery and betrayal. And as Miklagard echoes to the sound of sword and axe and spear, Raven and his fellow adventurers will pay a high price for the fame they seek…”

Starring David Clayton as Raven

Directed and Produced By
Philip Stevens

Written By
Giles Kristian

Executive Producers
Giles Kristian
James Richards
Sally Upton

Director of Photography
Stewart MacGregor

Sound Design
Jacob Tomlinson

Edited By
Stewart MacGregor

Music Composed By
Dave Formula

…and if you skip forward to 7:08 you can see me getting a sword through the chest. Ouch!

Last year I worked on the Myspace Secret Shows project. Bullet For My Valentine was my favourite – squashed in the pit, filming with a bunch of crazy kids flying over my head every 3o seconds. Great fun.

You can watch the highlights edit above.