Pillow Talk

Our latest short film on youtube for the Reed.co.uk 2011 film competition.

Prepare for battle

Image taken from our short film in production called ‘Mondays’.  It’s about the thoughts of a man bored with modern life who’s mind explores interesting fantasies in order to simply cope. Shot on the Canon 5D MK2 with incredible results.  The 5D with it’s interchangeable lenses gives us a beautiful image with fast turnaround times for each shot.  We can plough through a shooting schedule in no time because the camera is so versatile and portable.

Fly me to the moon

Scifi shenanigans with my good friend and super DOP MIke Hodder for our latest Getty images series. We’ve also created a miniature moon and Lunar Lander for compositing the greenscreen footage.  The Wailing Banshee film studio is currently under several inches of moon dust (actually it’s a mixture of cement and black paint powder).  Working conditions are a little nasty this month but hope to have finished clips here soon.

Started work on a new moon and astronaut series for Getty images.

This shot: Testing the tracking points across the visor to properly reflect our new moon surface and not the green-screen studio.

I’ve built the ‘miniature’  moon surface using two different grades of cement and added concrete rocks. It’s currently approx. 2metres x 2metres on a table top so I can drift the jib (crane) across the surface.  The black background has tracking markers so we can composite our 3D world in the distance.  All in all a very exciting week.  Hiring the proper space outfit next week and shooting the green-screen action to add to our moon.  Watch this ‘SPACE’.

I’ve been to Berlin filming short sequences for my stock portfolio.  A great experience to be working with some really creative people from all of the world and some fine actors.  Thought you might like to see some pictures (photographs by Jasmin Awad – thanks Jasmin).

My stock portfolio is managed by www.wailingbanshee.co.uk and I am an exclusive contributor for iStockphoto and Getty Images.

Wow, what a weekend!  So on Friday we decide to enter the prestigious 48 hours DV Mission  sponsored by The Film Council & Film Hampshire.  A gruelling 2 days to make a 2 minute movie which had to include the ‘Steam Punk’ Genre, the line ‘There’s been a failure to communicate’ and title of ‘Low Head’.  I’ll post the actual film here in the next few days…. promise.

A win for the Banshee film team

I’ve never had to give an award speech before…. it felt natural!!

Here’s Prash on the left with our second award on the night for best CGI, me with the best pro-tech film award and Simon, one of our actors.

Well done Banshee Team!

The early days of the studio build.  It seems so far off now and I was worried that it wasn’t big enough!  When we paint the set white and you step into the infinity area,  it’s like being in heaven – not that I’ve ever visited heaven or have any intention of going there soon.

Well it’s October ’10 and my 2000 square ft film studio is finished!  The green screen infinity cove which spans 8m across with 180 degree film capability is a sight to behold and the 25 giga-watts of space lights in the 5m high ceiling  is er…….. hot.  Wow – I can hardly believe what my trusty side-kick (Jean-Paul English) and I have created. To celebrate, we bought an Argos treadmill today, ripped it apart and sprayed it our favourite chromakey green.   I named the studio ‘LIMEY‘ and she’s a beauty!

The Banksy Treadmill if you get my graffiti drift.

Tea tasting today at Unilever HQ, UK with a resident expert.  Being a coffee addict I stayed in the wings.  Shooting on this big brute – XDCam with support from a Canon 5D MKII.  The Canon footage looking much better in every way.  It won’t be long before we can ditch these large ENG cameras in favour of DSLR’s (if you haven’t already).

We wasted so much paper on the last shoot I thought I’d try and salvage some of it.

Today I got to try out the new office set in our film studio.  We made a bit of a mess with several packs of paper and a leaf blower – brilliant shots though and really proud of what we can now create with little fuss.