My Past Year in Videos

About this time last year, the directors of TANDEM Films decided to call it a day and announced the closure of the company. So having worked at the studio for twelve years, I was out in the world looking for work ...

As a family man and mortgagee I had to find an income somehow from my skills and experiences, so I started offering my services on a freelance basis to anyone who might value them. Job offers didn't exactly flood in, so I decided to start making calls, sending out emails and see if I could start generating some work.

So over the last year I have been somehow been finding video projects to make. Some of the fruits of this labour can be seen here...

July 2014

Simon's Cat 'Off To The Vet: a behind the scenes glimpse. 01:56
A promotional 'Behind The Scenes' film featuring Simon Tofield storyboarding his new film project 'Off to The Vet'

August 2014

Simon's Cat 'Off To The Vet: Story Inspiration. 02:16
A promotional film featuring Simon Tofield and his new film project 'Off to The Vet'

September 2014

FusePump, BuyNow Explained 02:00
An 'explainer' film for FusePump to show how their BuyNow web marketing product works.

October 2014

Arte Ottomana 1450-1600 08:45
An 8 minute documentary for Hali Publishing to accompany an exhibition of Ottoman era artworks showing at the Palazzo Lomellino gallery in Genoa. (Italian with Enflish over-titles).

November 2014

Simon's Cat 'Off To The Vet: Vet Visit'
A promotional documentary for Simon's Cat Ltd. documenting a visit to the Cats Protection Charity Headquarters by Simon's Cat creator Simon Tofield.

December 2014

Thomas & Friends YouTube content (intro only). 0:20
I made the 20 seconds motion graphics introduction now being used by Hit! Entertainment to brand all of their Thomas & Friends YouTube video content. Produced by Spider Eye.

January 2015
Sofreh: The The Art of Persian Celebration. 8:00
I made a motion graphics 'slide show' to play at the London book launch of a very special art book by author Maryam Khosrowshahi and Hali Publishing. (The video shows much of the book content and can't be viewed here.)

February 2015

Vanderpump & Sykes Solicitors 6:00
A longer 8 minute version of this motion graphics film plays on a continual loop at the headquarters of this legal firm.

March 2015

Phonebook.club 1:23

April 2015

Nevion Product videos 4 x 1:40
I made 4 product videos for this tech company producing studio equipment for the broadcast industry. .

May 2015
Currently unrelaeased app. demo video 1:20
More Photoshop background artwork made for Thomas & Friends.

June 2015
Some After Effects compositing work for an old TANDEM colleague...

So if anybody out there is remotely interested, that's most of what I've been doing for the year since TANDEM closed down.

'Needlecraft' FGM Awareness Short Film Released (Updated)

During most of my twelve year stint at TANDEM Films (2002-2014) I worked on many television commercials and promo films in the service of all manner of products and services. I often worked on ads for breakfast cereals, fruit-based drinks, travel websites and even once a TV-based dating service, but towards the end of my time there, an altogether different project came in...

Female Genital Mutiliation (FGM) could perhaps be on of the most difficult and complex issues of any that one could ever imagine making a short film about. Ruth Beni of Animage Films had previously made several pioneering short films using animation to bring attention to important social issues and campaigns. Ruth's idea was to make a film that principally could be shown to school-age children to raise the issue of FGM, promote awareness and further discussion as well as provide links to supportive agencies working in the area. One of the main areas of concern was the extent to which the practice of FGM can happen within 'diaspora' communities, even after migrating from the countries where the practice is known to be most prevalent.

Ruth had worked with TANDEM Films before and approached Director Daniel Greaves to help put-together the short film. Dan pulled-together a small team at TANDEM to work on the project, and I was fortunate enough to be called-on to animate,composite and edit the piece.

Ruth and Daniel especially wanted to achieve a 'hand-stitched' aesthetic for the film. So in as much as would be possible they wanted to create the work using 'practical' (hand-made) techniques. A small team of embroiderers and artworkers were called-on to craft most of the artwork. Stop-motion animator Tobias Fouracre came in to animate as much as possible in-camera using traditional techniques. There was also a live-action shoot required too, bringing-in DOP Simon Paul to light and shoot.

Due to the many complexities of making such a film, the production period was fairly extended and there has been quite a few months passed before the film could be released, but I'm pleased to say that 'Needlecraft' has finally been officially published online.

Although it's been almost a year since the TANDEM Studio has closed its doors, I hope at least this work we did there will go on to to have at least some ongoing positive influence in the world at large ...

And now Ruth Beni has posted a short making-of video about the 'Needlecraft' project on her Animage Vimeo page. I think this shows quite nicely the craft and effort that went into this production.

2014 Directing Showreel

I just thought it might be time to put my showreel together again. So I've cut-in a few newer jobs and fixed the broken link to this on my 'REEL' page. These are mostly jobs I've directed whilst at TANDEM, with a couple of extracts from my own short film projects too.

'The Score' film for Mr. Plastimime

This Behind the Scenes film shows the recording session of the musical score for the new film by Daniel Greaves. This is the seventh short video I've shot/edited in the Making Mr. Plastimime series. I shot this footage in the Slovak Radio auditorium a couple of weeks ago during the 5 hour recording session with the Bratislava Symphony Orchestra.

This was certainly one of the most enjoyable days work I've had in a long while. It was really inspirational to be down amongst these incredible musicians and also up in the control room to witness the scoring/recording process first-hand.

The edit for this four and a half minute video took a few days, because I used a separate audio recorded to capture the orchestra sound (for better quality) and had a lot of footage to sync. up in post.

'Hat Trick' film for Mr. Plastimime

Here's the sixth webisode of the Behind The Scenes series I've been shooting/editing at TANDEM in support of Daniel Greaves' Mr. Plastimime project. In this episode, after a discussion with the director, we see how animator Steve Edge creates a scene in stop-motion animation.

Transport for London Film Released

I mostly use this blog to document my personal film-making endeavours, so there is normally much to read here about cameras, tests, super 8 and generally experimental film-making stuff.

I don't usually write quite so much here about my 'day job', working on commercials and promo films etc. For reasons of commercial and client confidentiality it isn't always possible to write about the things I've been working on. However, a short promotional film I co-directed with Tobias Fouracre a couple of months ago at TANDEM films has just been put online by the client, so I feel happy to embed a YouTube link to it here.

'Start Your Own Journey' is a short minute and a half film commissioned by Transport for London to introduce and promote the latest version of the tfl.gov.uk website. The TfL site is well-known to Londoners who use the site to plan their journeys around the capital. The team at TfL have been working hard to release an updated and improved version of the site so asked us to come up with an entertaining short film to highlight some of the main features on offer.

This film was shot in TANDEM's basement studio using A Canon DSLR camera and DragonFrame stop-motion software running on an iMac. Almost all of the 'travelling' shots you see in this film were realised by moving models towards a stationary camera to create the illusion of a continual journey. Tobias came up with the main concept of shooting the film from the first-person perspective of a traveller undertaking a journey through London. I helped out a bit on some model preparation and shooting, but my job was mainly integrating the client's website functionality throughout the film and compositing the piece to make a seamless film.

We fortunately had the services of Gordon Allen for the model-making and the very versatile help of Nicola Viargiu who greatly assisted us at all stages of the production. The music and effects for the film were created by Russell Pay of Shrooty. The producer for TANDEM was Emma Burch.

FUTURA GOLD is TANDEM 'Short of the Month'

TANDEM films (the studio that represents me for commercials Directing work) has just selected THE FUTURA GOLD: episode 01 to be the 'selected short' for the month of November.

This means my film will feature on the front page of the TANDEM website for the next 30 days.

TANDEM Vimeo Channel Launch

TANDEM Films (the studio I mostly work for) has just joined Vimeo. The first couple of films up are some behind the scenes 'making of' time-lapses I shot/edited back in the day...