Congratulations To The Simon's Cat Team

Regular readers will know I've made many videos for the Simon's Cat YouTube channel. I've made most of the 'extra' video content such as drawing lessons and behind the scenes films etc. I was also asked recently to make a pitch video for their Off To The Vet crowd-funding campaign.

Here's the 3 minute pitch video I made for the campaign...

+++ UPDATE! +++

Well I'm very pleased to note that the campaign has been an incredible success. The team surpassed their funding target of £275k with 3 days left of the campaign. The campaign has just closed, raising a total of £311,084 from Simon's Cat fans worldwide. Apparently this is one of the most successful film crowd-funding ventures in the UK to date. This is a huge achievement for all the team and will enable the crew to work to make a great film over the coming year.

New Behind The Scenes film made for Simon's Cat 'Off To The Vet'

As part of the ongoing Indiegogo crowd-funding campaign by the Simon's Cat team I was asked to make another short film. I really enjoyed shooting this one. This two minute film offers a glimpse into Simon Tofield's working methods showing how he uses sketchbooks, storyboards and animatics to plan his animated films. This was pretty much shot in one day and a one day edit too, so it's been quite refreshing to work on such a very quick turnaround.

I shot this in the Simon's Cat studio space using all my own equipment: Canon 600D DSLR and one lens; the Sigma 30mm f1.4. I really love using my Manfrotto 561BHDV-1 monopod for this kind of filming, it's a really quick way to capture shots with enough stability yet a looser and maybe more 'documentary' feel too. For audio I had my Rode VideoMicPro on the camera, but ended up using all the double system sound I had also recorded on my TASCAM DR07 MkII recorder with my newly-acquired Rode Lavalier microphone.

I edited in Premiere CS6.

New promo film made for Simon's Cat

Here it is! Above is the 3 minute promo film I've just delivered for Simon's Cat Ltd. I'm really proud to have been asked to work on this; multi-tasking as writer/director/camera-person & editor! I wish Good Luck and Best Wishes to Simon Tofield and his team and wish them every sucess with their campaign.

My Footage at Glastonbury 2014

I was watching the BBC coverage of Glastonbury Festival yesterday and caught Lana Del Rey singing her monster breakthrough hit Video Games. Playing on the screen behind her as she sang was the promo video for the song. So I watched closely and yes, a few fleeting fragments of my footage were indeed shown to the festival-goers and broadcast to the nation too.

Here she is...

And here's 'the source' of a few of those clips; my 2008 short film California 08 all shot on Super 8 cine film.

Simon's Cat hits 3 Million YouTube Subscribers.

Congratulations to Simon Tofield and The Simon's Cat team for gathering an online following of over 3 million YouTube subscribers as of today. Embedded here is a short message video I put together for Simn's Cat Ltd. in which Simon draws a special thank you message to his many fans.

New Directing Showreel: Summer 2014

Please enjoy this new show reel cut. These are all projects I have directed, and in many cases I'll have shot, animated or composited on these jobs too. You will see clips from some of my short films, plus extracts of many of the commercials and promotional films I have made. Some of this work is from my time as a Director at TANDEM and some from freelance projects too.

Mr. Plastimime, London Screening at RADA.

Last night I was very happy to attend a special London screening of Daniel Greave's new short film Mr. Plastimime. Followers of this blog will know that over the last year or two I've been recording the production work of this film, 'Behind The Scenes' and releasing a series of Making Mr. Plastimime mini-documentaries.

Well Dan's film is finally finished and will be showing-up soon at numerous several international film and animation festivals.

As a big thank you to some of the backers of the film and many of the art-workers and crew involved, Dan and Producer Emma Burch organized a splendid screening event at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts auditorium in Bloomsbury. It was a great evening, with the film screening, a few words from Dan and even some impromptu mime performance too!

I took a few stills, hopefully just enough to capture some fleeting impressions of the momentous event.

An expectant crowd of crew and backers await the screening...

Mr. Plastimime director Daniel Greaves takes to the stage.

Heartfelt 'thank yous' from Dan to all those who helped out.

Animator Steve Edge, Compositor Danielle Baiardini and Daniel Greaves... in the bar.

Lead Animator Steve Edge celebrates.

The star of the show Mr. Plastimime himself on screen at the RADA auditorium.

TfL Promo Behind The Scenes Video

Here's a sweet little 'Making Of' documentary that Gemma Hogg put together for the Transport for London team whilst we were working on their 'Start Your Own Journey' promo film. The above video features interviews with TANDEM producer Emma Burch, and the two Directors, Tobias Fouracre and some other guy...

Simon Draws: Mice

Released today, another episode in the Simon Draws series of online videos I Direct/Edit for Simon's Cat Ltd. In this lesson, the inimitable Mr.Simon Tofield shows us how to draw Mice.

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.