Our Video Production Blog
Stills taken at the local and regional business expo today by APVideo, hosted at The Duchess Stand, Epsom Downs. Organizers were Exposure Events, sponsored by The Best of Epsom and Ewell.
Watch this space for the Expo highlights film!
As a local business, I visited the expo for the day, shot a load of lovely video and networked away. The list of exhibitors featured in the film will be posted here for you guys too.
Stills from today's lunch at Epsom's new chilled hotspot, the Caballo Lounge!
I took the A7S with me, using the Metabones EF-E mkIV and Tamron 24-70 F/2.8.
I love the atmosphere, very relaxed and was playing Fleetwood Mac when I walked in so this place got my vote straight away! The exterior and interior of the new lounge has a classic feel to it, there was a bookswap (I'll be using regularly) too!
The 'Hero' burger certainly lived up to its name, with Chorizo, mature Cheddar and chillies. It needed some sauce, and with the Spanish theme some Aioli would be lovely, or spicy chipotle maybe? Definitely more skin-on fries please, although they were stunning!
Topping it all of was the brilliant staff who were friendly and keen to make you feel welcome. There is no doubt I'll be visiting again soon, hopefully when the weather is better so I can get out to the rooftop terrace :)
Blimey, wiping the dust from my blog I can see it has been neglected over the last couple of weeks. I can explain this, I've buried my head deep into working on a recycling video for my local council. For this I have designed and animated original graphics in Illustrator and After Effects, to be edited together in Premiere Pro. I can't give too much of what I'm working on away until the video is publicly released on the council website and other displays around the town of Epsom! But as you are a dedicated lot, and showing you the techniques I used won't do any harm!
Here's a screenshot from my AE window. Here you can see the little graphics floating around in the background, and overlaid on top is animated text.
I've used pre-comps here to create different sections of each 'clip'. This allowed me to keep my timeline and frame tidy as I would only be working on specific parts of the clip at a time. For example, in the above frame the little graphics are pre-composed with their animation keyframes, so I can layer up the blur and text on top to be revealed later. For each 'clip' I also pre-composed all of the text as these are animated individually using various effects.
Some of the more complex motion graphics, here I used falling particles (Particle World II) to fill up the alpha channel of a recyclable object, where a mask then revealed a solid; making the object look like it is filling up with the falling particles. To create this effect I changed the physics parameters to allow the particles to fall slowly, and spread as they go. Remember to use random seed when duplicating effects like this too ;)
To add to the emotive feeling of the video, it was important to include human thoughts and processes on why recycling is important and beneficial to the environment and us! This is me interviewing Alan about how easy it is for him to recycle.
Equipment used includes: Canon 5D mkIII, Tamron 24-70mm F/2.8 VC, Zoom H6, Sennheiser ENG-G3, Rotolight RL-48, Manfrotto 755 carbon fibre pro tripod and MVH500.
This was a quick and easy shoot, using DSLR for videography means I have great light sensitivity in post places and it is easy to set up. I used the Rotolight to kick a little more into Alan's face, and recorded using a wireless lav mic and the XY stereo mic on the Zoom for a backup. Setup-interview-de-rig took one hour.
Pleased with the outcome, I got onto editing the sequences together now that the animation was looking good!
In Premiere Pro, I used the Luma Corrector and RGB Curves to adjust the exposure and colour balance of the clips, here you can see the split view with the original on the right and the edited on the left. The Luma Corrector does a great job of removing Gamma, which takes out a gamma curve (grey) from the footage and can be used with contrast to create a really punchy, cinematic look.
With still more to go, and an aerial shot from a DJI to go and film, I am eager to see peoples reactions when the video is complete!
Good afternoon! Its a blazing hot day here, I'm preparing my trip to IBC (checking flights and passes etc), and getting to know the other IBC Rising Stars at this years IBC in Amsterdam. I'm so excited! I've been busy with a variety of jobs since my last post, including photography and shooting. I helped out a make up artist friend of mine by doing a photoshoot with a model in Hampton Court and Bushy Park. Here are some of the best photos:
Leanne Cook is the Make Up Artist and has loads of experience in TV and special occasion make up. Here's a link to her site - http://www.leannecook-mua.com/
I've also been working on a couple of weddings with JHWF, here is one that I shot in The Orangery, Holland Park, Kensington.
[vimeo http://vimeo.com/72345141]
Other recent updates include the testing and shoot with the Camax LCD High Definition Field Monitor for videography, cinematography, broadcasting and photography. A full review of the field monitor will be uploaded soon, for now here are a couple of stills and my first thoughts about the monitor.
What else has been going on? Oh yes! I am now a Manfrotto Local Hero, and have my profile on their page! Many thanks to Dave Beck for your help, and I am extremely excited for our LED lighting field test shoot this Friday! I will be testing out the 5 new on-camera LED lights, as well as the new 1x1 flood panels (bi-colour and daylight/tungsten), got a music video and model shoot lined up so keep following for the updates!
Here is the link to my Manfrotto Local Heroes profile - http://www.manfrotto.us/Local+Heroes/Adam+Plowden/52400709
Apart from all that, IBC is coming up next week which I am so ecstatically excited for! If you are attending and want to meet up then get in touch!
DIT, Digital Imaging Technician, Camera Operator, Camera Assistant, TV Crew, TV Production, Film Production, Film Crew, UKTV, BBC Studios, Channel 4, Channel 5
