Autumn - Heather Mac

I had the pleasure recently to shoot the Music Video for the first Single from Heather Mac's new Album. We filmed the video up thin the Mountains above Simon's Town close to Cape Town in South Africa.

Part of the inspiration of the music video for “Autumn” stems from Native American Indian tribal culture. An intrinsic part of many of these tribes is “The Contrary”, usually young men who spend most of their lives doing everything backwards, some of the contraries were considered to be clowns or fools.

The philosophy behind this is not merely to be different but rather a playful reminder to the rest of the tribe that the way things are done is not always necessarily the right way. The Contraries are an absolute mirror of the societies they live in, and their actions are a form of therapy for the people who are being contrary as well as for the people witnessing their action.

We found an amazing location high in the cape mountains for our film and thought that the stark but beautiful surroundings would prove an excellent stage to for our simple story.

The story in a nutshell is about someone trying to get back in touch with her spirit through meditation. This journey inwards reveals a playful persona , “The Contra’. One of the lines of the song: “… here in my heart, a drumbeat calling…” invoked this link to her inner calling and innate connection to tribalism.

Because we wanted to create an intimate atmosphere in a vast and not easily accessible location, we decided to keep the shooting process as simple as possible. With the help of some of the latest camera technology we were able to produce a high quality image with extremely lightweight gear and with some careful scheduling we were also able to shoot with virtually no lighting.

All in all the process of making this video was fun, quick and had zero environmental impact -We did not shoot on film, so no processing chemicals were used and there were only 4 people working on the location. The opportunity to shoot in unspoiled nature inspired us to leave only our footprints and take only the images we we created.

I hope you enjoy the film.

Beyond the Still

Much can be said about the rise of the DSLR (Digital Single Lens Reflex) Camera as a viable film making tool. This project helmed by Vincent Laforet & Canon shows how powerful this tool really is. Vincent Laforet became somewhat of a underground star of the DSLR film making world with his video commissioned by Canon to show what their DSLR's could do.

The idea behind "Beyond the Still" was to start a story with a short film and then get to pass the story on to film makers to tell the next chapter. Once the winner of the chapter was announced the competition was opened again and film makers were invited to continue the story using the last chapter's film as a point of reference.

The result is a short film in 8 chapter which makes surprisingly compelling viewing. Not only is the story a fun ride, but the films really show the versatility and ability of the DSLR as a quality film making tool.

Here are all the eight chapters of "Beyond the Still"




For more information follow this link:
http://vimeo.com/groups/beyondthestill

Greek commercial for Wind Cellular 1st Job of 2010

The year started early with the first job shooting on the 2nd of Jan. In the picture you may recognise Alexi the lead love interest from the Feature Film "My life in Ruins" he is now the celebrity face for Wind Cellular a Greek Cellphone operator.

Commercial Season

Commercial season is in full swing in Cape Town again... here we are on Signal Hill shooting a Polish commercial for a supermarket chain called Lidl.
The weather was almost perfect... Almost 30 Degrees C and not a breath of wind.

Again we shot with the RED Camera which has become the expected norm in the currently depressed economy.

Kellogs Crunchy Nut

Remember a while ago I posted about working on the Kellogs Crunchy Nut commercial for the UK. Well now you can see how it turned out - You wouldn't think by looking at it that we had so many problems with that white chocolate fountain. I guess that's how things go, you know you have done a good job when nobody knows there was a problem...

Kellogs Crunchy Nut

The Kellogg's Crunchy Nut commercial wasn't ever going to be anything groundbreaking
We had some fun comedy story lines to shoot, which were fun, and for the whole the commercials were all about performance. We had enough time to get a few variations on each performance for the director, so there are lots of options in the editing room from dead-pan to "One flew over the Cuckoo's Nest"
We had some art department problems with our chocolate fountain - I can't tell you about what the fountain was used for until the commercial is aired. I can say however that I'm quite an expert on Chocolate Fountains now, so if you ever have a problem then feel free to drop me a line and I'll do my best to help.
We did get to use one interesting piece of equipment however; The Optex Probe Module. This is a specialized lensing system for closeup work. You attach the Optex Probe to the camera via the usual PL Mount system and then you attach the different lenses to the end of the probe. The lenses are not your usual 35mm or 50mm but rather degree lenses, so the amount you see through the lens is measured in degrees, we used a 60 degree lens.
What was interesting about using this lens was that because the actual glass was so far away from the actual camera whenever you moves the camera (pan or tilt) the effect looks almost like a mini crane or dolly move - this was the first time I've worked with the Probe Module and I can definitely recommend it for macro work
  

In the second photo you can see the type of image we were getting on the video assist, unfortunately we were shooting outside so the image on the video monitor isn't too clear, but it gives an impression