The brief was to provide footage for news access and for general promotional purposes. I shot the dress rehearsal with a couple of cameras and was able to deliver an edit for them the next day. This is a formidable challenge, but was achieved thanks to the latest technology and a willingness to work long into the night!

I’ll try and get permission to post the promo soon.

To begin, mark your in and out points on the timeline. Then either hit F11 or select Print to File from the timeline:

Choose the Quicktime exporter plugin:

Hit Export and choose a filename. Then click the setting button which brings up the Quicktime exporter settings:

In the Video options at the top, choose settings and adjust your compression settings. This will vary depending on your use. I tend to use H.264 set around 5000 kbits/sec for HD video and will choose multi-pass for best quality exports or single pass for speed.

Next up choose the Size setting and make the following adjustments – select a custom size. My source file is 1920 x 1080, so to crop for 2.35:1 you need to make a simple calculation. 1920 ÷ 2.35. Which equals 817. That gives us a final dimension of 1920 x 817. If you have a different size video then simply make the same calculation by dividing the larger number by 2.35. You also need to check the dropdown for Preserve Aspect Ratio using Crop:

Quicktime Exporter - Size Settings

Finally, make sure you choose the audio compression you want. I tend to use MP4 at 48khz:

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EC1 have their Pride Awards coming up which is presented by Kate Silverton. I had a short amount of time to shoot this piece with her and this was made more urgent by the fact the sun was rapidly going down.

I shot this with the Canon 7D – one of the new breed of digital SLRs capable of shooting stunning HD video. Clients love the speed and portability I get with this setup, but most importantly, they love the look. It requires a little more work in post-production – especially as the sound has to be recorded separately, but the results are well worth it.

See for yourself:

I had already shot quite a bit on the GH1 and I knew what it was capable of and also knew about its limitations. There has been a lot written about the GH1 and the performance of its codec. In my experience, when shooting in 720/50 the camera performs very well and the codec is pretty robust. There is more of a problem with the 1080/25 setting. One of the situations which can cause issues is fast movement – either of the camera, or of the subject in front of the camera. This movement becomes too much for the camera to deal with and for small moment the codec breaks down and produces what people are referring to as ‘mud’. This mud is a slight blockiness or pixelation of the image. This occurs more readily in 1080/25.

The 1080/25 mode is still great – as long as you are aware of the limitation. My Thames Barrier film got a lot of views online and sparked a lot of interest in the camera and this was shot nearly all 1080/25. (The slo-mo stuff was 720/50).

Weighing everything up I decided the camera would be a good choice for the shoot. Although I knew I would be shooting fast motion, I wanted to shoot 720/50 as this would give me the option later to slow down any of the dancing footage.

Having made my decision, I thought I should explain my decision to the Producer of the event who had hired me. Shooting on DSLR’s is still very much in its infancy and there is a risk that people will wonder what the hell you have turned up with. I told him that I was going to try something a bit new but not to worry! He had seen my reel and hired me because of it, so to his credit he trusted me. I’ve seen a lot of people chatting online about this dilemma – the suggestion being that clients will take you more seriously with a bigger camera or wonder why they are paying you so much if you turn up with a little DSLR. It think there may be some truth in this – but if you manage there expectations up front I think there should be less of a problem – especially as DSLR’s gain more popularity and more importantly once people see the results.

Another factor in my choice of the GH1 was light. I knew I would be shooting in low light and this is where the DSLR’s are king. Combined with a set of old Canon FD primes I knew I would be able to cope with some very lowlight situations. Something that my other camera – a Panasonic HVX200 would have struggled with. I spent a long time in post on one production having to de-noise a ton of footage as it was shot run ‘n gun in very low light and the resulting image was very, very noisy. Not so these DSLR’s and for me that was the deciding factor.

Next up I had to sort out a working rig for the camera. I went to Redrock Micro and put together a rig from various bits of their DSLR support kit. I used a set of rails which had the camera on a raised baseplate with two front handles, then I used their cage pieces to go around the camera with a handle on top for easy carrying and low-mode shooting. I topped this off with the Genus mattebox. The end result was a pretty meaty looking rig that was stable enough to shoot handheld. Unlike the Canon DSLR’s the GH1 has an electronic viewfinder that I was able to use whilst shooting and this made the handheld rig pretty simple to use.

Redrock DSLR setup with Redrock Mattebox

Genus Basic Mattebox

During shooting there were very few issues with the camera at all. It worked perfectly throughout and I was even pleasantly surprised when shooting with the stock lens supplied with the camera. I had some footage I needed to get that was on the street and was completely run ‘n gun. For this, the stock lens’s ability to autofocus whilst shooting made a big difference. Not always perfect and not always quick enough – but good enough to get useable footage.

There were a lot of interviews for this film and for sound I went with the Zoom H4N. This is a little portable recorder that does a fantastic job. It records up to 4 tracks in high quality BWF (Broadcat Wave Format) and will provide phantom power for a boom mic. All of the audio was captured using the Zoom H4N.

A couple of gotchas. First, zooming whilst shooting with the stock lens is for me, generally a no no. It seems that the codec is working with so little overhead that even something as simple as zooming in can cause it to break down. I saw this happen, so my little punch zooms didn’t really work.

Second gotcha may not be a gotcha at all. The ‘mud’ situation. I cut the whole piece together and was very happy with the result. Only when I happened to pause on a particular frame did I notice that during some of the fast dancing, the codec was breaking up. My take on it is this: If the film is compelling enough, if it works and its telling a story, you don’t notice the shortcomings. If you go looking for them – you’ll find them

The client was very happy with the final film. We got some shots they had not been able to get before. We kept really mobile and were able to run around across the town grabbing footage on the fly. For this kind of job, the DSLR is near perfect.

I have been commissioned to make a documentary about a new Public Health School in Hong Kong. The school is part of the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the documentary will follow the students of a new BSc course. The course is the first of it’s kind in Hong Kong.

Since the course is 3 years long, I will be travelling back to Hong Kong several times over the next few years to catch up with the Professor’s and students and see how things are developing.

It’s a great honour to be asked to be involved in such a project and I enjoyed the first round of shooting a lot.

Because I was travelling I needed a portable and compact filming solution and that is where the development of new camera technologies has proved to be extremely useful. I am shooting the documentary on a Digital SLR camera, which is capable of producing stunning results in a very compact form factor.

I use two DLSR cameras like this now – the Panasonic GH1 and the Canon 7D. The Hong Kong film is being shot with the GH1.

In the still above – taken from the film – you can see the kind of possible results. It takes people a moment to get over the fact that your camera is so small! But they soon forget about it, and if anything, being so discreet helps the interviewees to feel more relaxed.

All of the graphics were produced in After Effects using photographs licensed from the Press Association. They have a fantastic catalogue of photos across a massive range of subjects – but their sports photography is particularly good.

I’m not sure who I’d pick – but I think Daley Thompson has got to be up there…!

Below are a couple of frame grabs from our first bit of shooting. This was shot with the Panasonic GH1 camera and graded with Magic Bullet Looks. I look forward to seeing just how much can be achieved with this camera.

I had my first opportunity to test the GH1 out recently and took the camera out to the Thames Barrier Park in London. The park has 22 acres of lawns, trees and a fantastic formal garden that echoes the unique architecture of the Barrier.

The first enjoyment of using this rig for me was the sheer portability of it. I’m used to lugging a Panasonic HVX200 around and with a 35mm lens adapter attached plus heavy duty tripod, it starts to get a bit tough… And since this was the hottest day of the year so far, I felt a sense of relief everytime I looked at my single lightweight backpack.

Another benefit of shooting this way was that it allows you to be more inconspicuous. The whole setup is so compact that people pay you little attention. This allowed me to capture some nice candid moments of people relaxing in the sunshine.

The camera itself was great to use. The viewfinder is bright and detailed and has a dioptric adjustment for glasses wearers such as myself. On my list of future accessories is a shade/hood for the LCD screen. Under normal conditions, the screen is very good – I particularly like the fact that it can articulate into different positions, allowing you to see the screen clearly whilst shooting at all sorts of angles. But in bright sunlight it is hard to see properly. So I will be trying out a Hoodman shade or possibly even the Hoodloupe soon.

Another consideration in the bright light was getting a decent exposure. I wanted to test out the shallow depth of field possibilities of the camera and in order to do that you need to open up the aperture. However, as the camera does not have any ND (Neutral Density) filters built into it – as a video camera might – there is no way of restricting the light coming into the camera.

I used the Cokin P filter system to get around this limitation. Suddenly transported back to my days of stills photography, I bought the Cokin P series mount which holds up to 4 filters.

I had a mount for the stock lens and as the stock lens is quite slow, in combination with a Cokin ND filter, I was able to get some shallow depth of field shots. I have already invested in some more ND – an ND8 – as the camera is extremely sensitive to light. In addition I was using some Canon FD lenses on the camera which were much faster than the stock lens and will need plenty of ND on if I want to shoot with shallow DOF.

Working with the Canon FD lenses was great. I’ve picked up a few primes on Ebay – 28mm 2.8, 50mm 1.4, 100mm 2.8. I originally got these for use with my SGPro 35mm adapter, but one of the beauties of the GH1 camera is how adaptable it is. There are a large number of adapters available online to allow you to mount lenses from different camera systems to the body of the GH1. I used the Jinfinance. This is a well made adapter that screws neatly and simply onto the lens and then onto the GH1 body. The GH1 informs you that there is no lens attached but it helpfully has a menu function that allows you to shoot ‘without a lens attached’. In this mode you can use any manual lens you can find an adapter for.

One thing to bear in mind is that the Panasonic uses the micro Four Thirds system, which means that when you mount a 35mm still lens on the camera it will have an equivalent focal length of 2x. This means that a 50mm lens will have the look of a 100mm lens in 35mm terms.

I shot most of the Thames Barrier Park film in FHD mode – this is the camera’s full HD 1080/25 AVCHD mode. There has been a lot written about the quality of the codec in this mode. I would say best on my breif experimentation so far that the codec in this mode is not that robust. The picture can break up if you move the camera too quickly – but this can be planned for and avoided. However, I did notice some artifacting even in static shots.

That said, the camera does have a fantastic 720/50 mode. All of the slow motion shots in the film were done in this mode. The codec appears to be much more robust in 720 and anything fast moving or that required quick camera movement should be shot in this mode for best results. As a bonus, since it is 720/50 – dropping the footage onto a 25p timeline allows for very simple and effective slow motion. This is achieved differently in various NLE’s, but in Edius – my editing setup – I simply dropped the footage onto a 25p timeline and changed the speed to 50%.

I’m already looking forward to my next outing with the camera and can see this being an extremely useful part of my kit. For lowlight work, or where I need to be compact and portable, the camera is perfect. Using a DSLR to shoot video also has the added benefit of being able to deliver high quality to stills to clients as well – all from the same unit.

For more information on the GH1 visit http://www.panasonic.co.uk/html/en_GB/2129937/index.html

Watch my film, shot with the GH1 here http://www.joe-shaw.co.uk/?p=341

The storyboard frames were created in Frameforge Studio 3D, which is a great bit of software. It has a bit of a learning curve, but once you get the hang of it, it can be a really useful tool for planning your shots out in advance. The main advantage of it is that it is photographically accurate. You can set a lens, a precise camera height etc and what you see is exactly what you would get.

I had to knock up a very basic version of the train station in order to plan the shots in Frameforge, but it didn’t take too long and since it was for me only, I didn’t worry about it being too pretty.

The purpose of the storyboard was not as a document to follow religiously, but as a guide to help out when things got tough on the day. The Echo is a simple film and shot even more simply – but even so, when you’re trying to get 15 mins in one day it really helps to have planned ahead. If you don’t storyboard, I would at the very least have a good shot list to keep you on the straight and narrow.

Some shots were added on the day. The front on shot under the sign for Folkestone Harbour was the biggest addition. It was just too good to miss and has become the ‘poster’ image for the film. We actually left some kit in the shot, it was very wide and we just didn’t notice it. That was painted out in post.

Some shots were dropped, the biggest being the jib shots. I had planned a couple of jib shots – but as time was running out they dropped off the list. This seemed like a sensible thing to do at the time, but I regret it. It would have added some extra production value to the film. More importantly, I neglected to put something simpler in place of one of the main jib shots that would have acted as a nice master for part of the scene. It meant that I had greatly reduced options when it came to editing. You live and learn.

One of the greatest revelations on the day was how possible it was to pull off dolly shots with the ‘Wally Dolly‘. If I had known that this simple dolly would be quite so effective and so fast to set up I would have used it more. I was amazed at how quick it was from unpacking to tracking.

Another consideration of course was that moving the camera meant having to follow focus. The film was shot using the Letus Extreme 35mm DOF adapter, which meant that focusing was much more critical – and since we were going for a shallow depth of field look, the margin for error was far greater. When I set the film up and got Phil Bloom on board to DP, we had talked about whether or not he wanted a focus puller. He decided against it. I think this is because his background was ENG/News and he is capable of pulling his own focus. I know that since then he would never contemplate it again!

He actually made a great job of pulling focus of the barrel of the lens – including the shot where we track into Carlisle. It took a few attempts and I would not have tried this on other moments where it might have got in the way of performance. I would hate to have to go over and over again and lose a great performance for the sake of trying to get focus.

I’m certain that whatever I shoot next with Phil, he will at the very least use a follow focus, and would probably consider a focus puller/AC.

[Show as slideshow]

The Echo started out as a story idea by a friend of mine – Alex Scrivenor (co-writer). It was an idea that always grabbed me and at the start of the year we sat down to talk about how we could make it into a short film. It’s difficult to talk about the plot here, because it relies on a couple of revelations and unexpected changes of direction that would be ruined by an in depth analysis. I will however, break down the script a bit in another post with spoiler warnings.

However, I can say for now that when writing the screenplay, the script was quite deliberately structured around these revelations/reversals in order to give the film a decent ‘skeleton’ or framework.

Alex and I both trained as actors at the London Academy of Music & Dramatic Art and this background helped tremendously in shaping the script, in particular the characters and the dialogue.

Originally the film was set entirely in a confession box, which was a really exciting idea – but practically was going to make the film much harder to shoot. The small space meant that shot selection would be greatly reduced, we would need permission to film in a church – which would be tricky given the heavy nature of the script and lighting would take a long time. I liked the idea and the challenge of trying to contain the whole film in such a tight location, but ultimately we decided that the cons outweighed the pros. This was after all, going to be a zero budget production.

The script went through a good number of revisions until we had a draft we were happy with. I then went about trying to find a good location for the film.

Location Scouting

I liked the idea of a decaying or other-worldly location and initially thought about Dungeness Beach. For those of you unfamiliar with it, Phil Bloom shot a great piece there. His film is here. Sadly the owners of the beach wanted too much money to film there. I considered just rocking up with a crew – but so much effort goes into getting everything in the right place, that I didn’t want to turn up and be kicked off the beach.
I looked at a good number of beaches, but none of them have that same decayed – almost alien quality. Other locations I found had too restrictive conditions or were too difficult to reach. I needed to keep within reasonable striking distance of London as I had to get the actors there and also cover peoples travel expenses.

I then thought about a railway station. I set about looking for stations I might be able to film on which led me to disused stations. Of which, I was surprised to find, there were a good many. Then I came across Folkestone Harbour Station. Disused for sometime and by the sea, it had a wonderful rusty, decayed feeling. The local film office put me in touch with the harbour master and I was told we could film there for free and with very few restrictions.

I went for a location recce and took a load of stills. I walked through the script, working out where I might set the various bits of action.

I had one concern, Sound. There were seagulls buzzing around the roof, squawking noisily and the wind coming of the sea at times was pretty strong.

On the whole I decided the location was too good to ignore, so I set a date, booked the location and started to panic…

Casting

When it came to casting, I was in the lucky position of having a willing agent with a decent client list. I sent them the script, they liked it and said they would think of some actors for it.

The Echo is a two-hander. A young guy and a middle-aged priest. Now, not everyone is going to be willing to do a no-money short in Folkestone, so this was always going to be a factor. Personally, I think short films can be a great experience for an actor – but for older actors, who have ‘earned their stripes’, if you like, there is no real reason for them to get involved – except for an interest in the piece. Therefore, if you want to know how to get good actors in your films – the answer is simple. Good scripts. The appeal of a great story or an interesting character is often all it takes to snare a quality actor.

My agent came back with a short list of actors for the older part – the priest. I knew a couple of the guys from their work – and I’d worked with one of them before. All of them decent actors.

Now, I think there is an etiquette with regards to casting an established actor in something like this. It’s not entirely appropriate to see a load of actors like any old cattle call. My tip would be, find an actor you really think can do it – then offer it to them. If they pass, then you can move on.

I looked at the list. One of the actors I liked was a bit older than the others, and I wondered how he would take to the no frills world of zero budget shorts. Another, I knew would not be right. But on the list was the actor Robert Duncan. I knew his work and I felt he had a quality that would be perfect.

Even knowing Rob’s work – I still thought it would be beneficial to hear what he did with the role. So I asked my agent if she thought he might read – or if he would be offended. She spoke to him and he had no problem reading, which I immediately took as a good sign.

I met Rob and we talked about the script a great deal. He struck me as a genuine and warm kind of guy who had some great insights about the character. We read a little bit and he was very much on the same page as me. I knew he would be great as Father Jerome and as important – he would be a good sport on the day.

I made the offer to my agent and he happily said yes.

Now I needed the younger character – Carlisle. For a young actor, doing a short film can be a great showcase, so all of the suggested actors were willing to meet and read.

I then encountered an unexpected problem. Finding a reasonable place to meet actors where they can wait somewhere comfortable, chat and read. As I said earlier, the script is a little – heavy.. So we definitely needed a private space. However, I soon discovered that even the dingiest, smallest room in central London was more expensive than I wanted.

Fortunately I managed to get into a theatre in town for a couple of hours and use one of their bars. It worked out great as the guys could hang around the stage door and the actual audition space was private.

They were all good actors – one, I knew from my time at LAMDA and he was exceptionally helpful in telling me where the script was hard to read. If you trust an actor – asking for their feedback in this way can be extremely useful. They are the ones trying to connect up the dots along this journey you have written – so finding out where they get stuck was very useful and ultimately lead to rewrites.

Amongst the guys I saw was Stephen Fletcher – an actor who I didn’t know. When we met, he told me he had come down from Liverpool especially for the meeting. (Which for those of you on the other side of the pond, is a good bit of travelling). No pressure I thought…

Fortunately, Stephen had something that none of the other actors quite had – weight. It’s hard to define what ‘weight’ is – you might call it presence or grounding. But it was vital for this character to have that earthy weight. And he really had it.

A call to my agent and soon after, he accepted.

Now I needed my crew…

Crew

My first port of call for crew was Phil Bloom. As an admirer of his work I had watched him rise from 35mm adapter pioneer to internet celebrity! I had previously contacted Phil about a project I was trying to get funded with council money. Ultimately that didn’t happen – but Phil had been willing to get on-board. Some time later, I sent him the details for this project and he again agreed to get involved.

I can’t say enough about his contribution to the filming. Not only does he turn up with a shed load of kit and a great eye – but he has a great attitude and a good sense of humour. As he setup in the freezing cold, standing in the middle of a disused railway track he asked what format I wanted to shoot in. When he offered full size VHS, I knew we would get on just fine.

I had a couple of old friends come and help me out – one, Laure, a script supervisor, which is usually a luxury on a short film. And the other, Adam who is just the best all round guy to have on a film set. My fixer. The rest of the skeleton crew were found through adverts on Mandy.com and shootingpeople.

I got particularly lucky with Steve the sound recordist. BBC trained and a working professional in the industry, he offered his help on the basis that he lived nearby the location. It never ceases to amaze me that people who have no need to offer their services out for free, still do so. And without them, people like me would never get a help up the ladder.