CIOS LEP Filming at Eden Project

We were proud to be the selected filmmakers to produce a launch film for the CIOS LEP’s strategic economic plan for 2030. The project, entitled ‘Vision 2030′, led directly on from the young peoples’ consultation we filmed last year at Eden Project. The brief was to follow on from the story in the last film and catch up with some of the students from Callington Community College involved to talk about the newly developed plan.

We decided to rig up an overhead camera looking down on a table at a specially made 3d chart representing pieces of the Vision 2030 plan.  The students were then instructed to talk freely about what they through each piece meant.  We ended up with about 45 mins of discussion recorded on 4 cameras which we then managed to condense into a 5 minutes film with intro and outro sequences.

The film was screened at Newquay Cinema for an event organised by Cornwall and Isles of Scilly LEP as part of Cornwall Business Week.

 

Warrior League

 

https://vimeo.com/204335285After producing the official event film for the One and All Games last year I was asked by the creators to make a series of teasers for their upcoming Warrior League.  Of course I said Yes!  It was a great chance to put the Sony A7SII through it’s paces filming athletes at 100FPS.  The shoot went well with a whistle stop tour of gyms in Exeter, Plymouth & Newquay to film pairs undertaking exercises for us to use as promotional clips in the lead up to the event.

Here are the teasers and main promo film…

Eau De Titan Filming

When Eden Project contacted me to see if I was interested in directing a video for them I could hardly contain my excitement. The pitch they gave me was a spoof fragrance commercial advertising a fake perfume created from the stench of the Titan Arum or ‘Corpse Flower’ which smells of rotting flesh.

Eau De Titan

Immediately I had ideas and visions of how it might look whirring around my brain and I managed to convince them that I was the man for the job.

Tropical Biome

Roll forward about 3 weeks and today the campaign (and film) was launched to the public and press. It’s been a bit of a whirlwind getting this project completed with some tight timescales and deadlines.

Filming the Titan Arum

Corpse Flower

Firstly the 2 actors were flown down from London for 1 day only to do the filming and PR photos which gave us a bit of a headache – obviously we couldn’t film whilst the biomes were open to the public as we wanted a closed set to create a jungle-like environment. This meant that we had to film after closing time which would have been fine on a sunny, clear day in June but unfortunately it was dull and cloudy, meaning that we only had a limited time of about 3 hours to complete the filming before it was too dark to shoot. We also had to fit in the recording of the voice-over with Ella, which we ended up doing in my car in a corner of one of Eden’s furtherest carparks which must have been a sight for any passers by!

Ella & Joe

We also had to contend with the humidity inside the biomes which meant arriving well early to get my lenses used to the conditions so they wouldn’t steam up during the filming.

Preparing lenses

The shoot itself was fairly low-budget with just myself, the 2 actors and Tom Trinkle, the Digital Content Manager at Eden on hand to co-direct, but luckily we had developed a rough storyboard beforehand to work from. It was a real pleasure to work on this and although I was knackered and sweaty from running around a tropical rain forest with a Glidecam strapped to me I think we’ve created a nice little video.

Moriaty – ‘Esperanza’ shoot

My colleague Tom at Paramore Productions made this video last year for a great Rock n’ Roll band from Plymouth called ‘Moriaty‘.  The band have been signed to EasyAction Records and are about to release a new EP, from which they wanted an accompanying video to the track ‘Esperanza’ ; an awesome thumping tune with a spanish tinge to it.  The band asked Tom & I to shoot the video for them on a low budget, however they had some big ideas with a story revolving around strippers, drugs, booze and revenge!

The shoot came together very quickly with the band pulling in favours from friends and fans on Facebook.  We filmed the first part of the narrative on the 8th June down in a converted chapel in Hayle which happened to be their record label boss’s home.  What a great location! It certainly looked the part for a drug-fulled stripper party!

Lighting was difficult seeing as we were limited with what we had to light with.  Luckily enough the gantry above provided a great overhead platform from where we could place our lights to illuminate a dance floor.

We were blessed to have a gorgeous model in Mia Northam to play our lady performer and she did a great job under some difficult circumstances with no prior acting experience.  Our actors all did a fine job with the lead bad guy, Steve, putting in an especially evil performance.

I must say when we turned up we only had a very loose idea of what the story was going to be.  There was no script! We just kind of made it up as we went along.  In hindsight we probably should have at least storyboarded something together beforehand, as there was a lot of waiting around and talking to try to piece together a useable scene.

We shot on 2 Canon 5Dmk3’s at 50p simultaneously to save time as we were aiming to have the narrative portions of the video play in slow motion.  I mainly got tight detail shots from my 70-200mm and some handheld 50mm stuff whilst Tom got some great dolly and steadicam action.  After setting up for a couple hours we only started filming at around 10pm but didn’t finish until 4am!  At first it was slow going, but as the beer & wine before to flow (and there was a LOT of beer & wine consumed that night) everyone started to relaxed and we ploughed through the shotlist.

It was a bit of a rush to get the final shots of the night completed, which were also probably the more technical shots involving a 14ft jib arm sweeping over the gantry to reveal a room full of carnage.  I didn’t actually make it to bed until 7am as we were so anxious to see how the shots were going to look & grade.  We’re now prepping for the performance part of the video and the 2nd half of the narrative part which is being scheduled to be filmed in Torquay in the next few weeks.

What a great bunch of people to work with! We had so much fun and I can’t wait to complete this video for the guys to start pushing it out there.

Jack Clemo Film Recce

We’re currently planning for a new project in conjunction with Exeter University.  It’s a 30 minute film to examine the works of famous Cornish Poet, Jack Clemo, who lived in the clay area of St Austell.  Jack lived an interesting life and is certainly a controversial character from the research we’ve done thus far.  The documentary will feature as part of a larger project that is being put together for a conference on May 31st-1st June, which will pull together some of the country’s top scholars & academics.

   

The film itself will feature readings of Clemo’s poems themselves by some Cornish celebrities as well as interviews with living people who knew him.  We’ll also visit his home village of Goonamarris and look at the Trethosa Chapel, that he frequently visited, which is still in beautiful pristine condition.

Clemo’s work is considered to be visionary and inspired by the rugged Cornish landscape even though he become deaf at the age of 19 and went blind 20 years later.  He died in 1994 aged 78. There is a small museum located in a dedicated Memorial Room at Trethosa Chapel, where he was both christened and married, featuring his life and works and which is run by volunteers. His literary papers, including manuscripts of prose and poetry works, are held by the University of Exeter.