Smartphone Video: "The Signs of Midlife Crisis'

I've been playing around with my smartphone a lot recently shooting video and taking photos etc. My phone is a Samsung S7; so not the latest greatest thing, but not too shabby either. I decided to make a little short film aiming to just use the phone entirely to shoot, edit and then upload to YouTube.

I used the Samsung built in camera app to shoot and then bought KineMaster app to edit this together. I spent quite a while trying out several different editing apps, but KineMaster turned out to be the one I was happiest with. I might write more on the subject of smartphone film-making as time goes by as I think I'll be trying out more of this.

The Secret Nuclear Bunker: New Short (Cine) Film

Finally! I've put together my short film about The Secret Nuclear Bunker.

Followers of this blog will remember that I've made a couple of visits to this site to film with one of my 'old school' cine cameras. In this case the film was shot entirely on a Nizo 156XL Super 8; a fine German movie camera from the mid-1970s. Like most of my other recent Super 8 films, I shot with the Panasonic LA7200 Anamorphic lense adaptor to get a 16x9 format image.

As with my last couple of short films, this was shot on Black & White Argenti APX100 negative film, then developed at home in my home-made spiral processing tank. I shot three Super 8 cartridges to make this film, the first two were processed in traditional Ilford ID11 developer, the third roll in home-made Caffenol C-M developer.

The film was digitized frame by frame using my home-made film scanner. This device advances the film and captures each frame using a Canon 600D DSLR camera. The device is controlled by an Arduino card and some home-made circuitry. This capturing process is very slow, but works!

One great advantage of home-digitizing the film this way, is that I can capture a much larger image area than the single film frame, so I like to make use of this feature to present the film frames within the composited image that you see in the film. I sometimes like to leave in the sprocket holes and frame edges to get a 'fim within a film' feel.

I love shooting and processing real film like this. In my 'day job' I'm usually making films digitally, but I'm hoping that there might be a place for some of this analogue magic in some of my more commercial projects too.

THE FUTURA GOLD: episode 02 preview

 Here's a little preview/trailer for episode 02 of THE FUTURA GOLD series...

THE FUTURA GOLD : 1000+ Hits!

Nice to see that my new animation short THE FUTURA GOLD : episode 01 has now clocked up over 1000 views since its YouTube debut on October 26th. Viewers are subscribing to the channel too, which bodes well. I'm also pleased to see that the FaceBook page I set up for the project is shaping-up nicely.

It's always great to get some online coverage for the launch of my project too. Thanks especially the fine typography website FontFeed.com

Coming Soon ... Microfilm

+++ UPDATE NEW SHORT FILM COMING HERE SOON +++

Over the Christmas/New Year I got some time off from my work at TANDEM. I wanted to make another short film but this time something more 'experimental' and shorter than some of my previous efforts. I'd like to use the macro photography techniques I've been playing around with for a while. The film will feature extreme close-up views of common household objects.

I've been using my Canon 600D DSLR camera coupled with an old Pentax M42 mount 50mm lens and some extension tubes to get very tight close-up shots; most of the action takes place within a field of view around 1 centimetre wide. Getting really close to the subject seems to lend itself well to abstraction and a really wobbly and lively film.

The results are certainly wobbly and lively, so for the soundtrack I'm cutting my picture to sync up with some splendidly retro 1970s era library music I picked up recently.

It looks like this will be a little one minute piece, the working title is Microfilm. Watch this space...