Blog | News
New Range Rover Evoque Convertible | Coming 2016 As London sleeps, the latest Range Rover Evoque is taken to the ultimate urban test track. Crossrail is Europe's largest construction project. 256 miles of tunnels and zero room for error. The prototype Evoque Convertible, in full camouflage, is the only car to drive these tunnels.
An interesting night shoot I worked on a couple of months ago. Filming 40metres below the streets of London in parts of London's Crossrail tunnels. This promo was shot to announce Range Rovers new Evoque convertible.
Shot on: Arri Alexa XT with XR module to ARRIRAW
Thought it would be useful to do a side by side comparison of the new RED 7" Touch LCD (right) and 5" Touch LCD (left).
As a primary display for DP's and operators, the larger screen size is a very useful tool for looking around the scene and for framing shots.
Interestingly, I found it was a little better to judge and tweak focus on the 5". The focus assist tool really pings into place. Less so than on the 7".
The new 7" also feels a bit more responsive to the touch.
What better way to start the new year than with some David Attenborough back on our TV's. And in 3D (for any of you that have a 3D TV).
I had the opportunity to DIT on various legs of the filming for this 3 part series which sees David travel through time to unravel the astonishing 300-million-year story of the flying animals.
Traveling to the Bornean jungle and filming lots of macro 3D, was both fascinating and challenging. It was also a privilege to meet the man himself.
The series was shot on RED Epics, with the workflow out in the field happening across multiple Mac Pros equipped with the RED Rockets. Some basic stereoscopic reviewing was carried out in REDCINE-X on a 24" JVC DT-3D24G1, to quickly check shots and check sync. The main reviewing of dalies happened in Avid Media Composer 7. Avid's built in stereoscopic workflow worked really well. With the ability to lay down synced footage on a timeline and use the stereoscopic effects to perform geometry corrections and depth adjustment.
Shot on: RED Epic
Its been a long while coming, but as of version 8.3, Avid Media Composer finally has support for various flavours of 4K resolutions (including UHD and DCI-4K).
This is kind of a big deal. It now means that for certain projects intending to be finished at 4K, it can all be done in one place using your traditional offline/online workflow.
I will be putting version 8.3 through it's paces over the coming weeks and also testing out AVID's new high resolution DNxHR codecs.
Luckily I have lots of 4K content. The perks of being a DIT .
Occasionally I get the opportunity to try something new (it's always useful to add a new skill under your belt), and today it was the opportunity to get involved in some lighting.
Today's TIGI S-Factor shoot was centred around a paparazzi theme. There were 3 looks and 3 scenarios. The aim. To capture a moment of beauty and glamour amongst the chaotic environment created by the surrounding paparazzi.
To capture these "moments", DOP Brendan McGinty would be shooting on the Phantom 4K provided by Love High Speed. The additional footage would be shot on the RED Dragon.
High speed photography requires a lot of light and this can usually be a challenge in itself, but not the challenge we were facing this time around. Director Michael Lindsay was more concerned with timing as this would be key to capturing that frozen moment in time.
Professional film lighting has an interface called DMX that allows the lighting head to be controlled and manipulated remotely traditionally via a lighting desk. Having researched in to various solutions, I was confident I could put together a solution that would allow for the control, precision and repeatability of the lighting that Michael was looking for.
The solution I settled on involved a combination of the Vista v2 software and Vista M1 Control Surface from Jands Lighting.
Having a short time frame to get myself up to speed on quite a complex area of filming (respect to all you gaffers out there), I appreciated the familiar approach that the Vista software adopted:
"Like modern video and audio software, the Vista displays your designs as a series of ’events‘ laid out across the screen over time. This ’timeline‘ approach means that you can see everything that‘s happening in relation to time: when lights come on, when they go off, when they change colour, when they move. " (http://jands.com/vista/about/)
I was able to very quickly put together and adjust as required, quite complicated lighting scenarios, triggering multiple lights within milliseconds of each other.
The M1 control surface itself is completely customisable and has no real function until it is assigned one. I used it as a method of manually manipulating key fixtures in the lighting rig (i.e. to create paparazzi style lighting flashes), as well as triggering pre-programmed lighting events.
Have a look at the video below to see the results of one of the looks.
Shot on: Phantom Flex4K and RED Dragon
The lights used in the DMX setup were:
4x Cineo TruColor HS, 2x Cineo Maverick, K5600 Joker 1600, 2x Arri L7-C, Licht Technik DarkVader Dimmer/Shutter.
