Singer Songwriter George Michael launched his world tour this week with a capacity crowd event at the Royal Albert Hall in central London. I covered the event for Reuters with Producer Kathi Urban and we managed to get the above footage from the evening’s program.
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FT.com Special Reports – Readers Digest
Financial Times Special Reports Commissioning editor Rob Orr has just published a short film on the FT’s website that I shot last week about the fall and rise of one of the nations highest circulating magazines.
Readers Digest had a circulation per week that was larger than most of the UK’s national Newspapers. Considering that this magazine is subscription only and can’t be bought in the shops it’s a major achievement, yet as a business it was failing until it was bought and turned around by Better Capital Limited, an investment company with a proven track record in turning ailing businesses into profit making institutions.
Click on the image above or the link below to be directed to FT.com to see the four minute long film.
http://video.ft.com/v/1222137440001/Reader-s-Digest-reviving-a-family-favourite
Abduction – UK Premier
American movie star Taylor Lautner was mobbed by screaming fans out side the BFI Imax in London when he arrived for the premier of his first major film since appearing in the Twighlight series. Again shooting for Reuters Showbiz with Kathi Urban we filmed and produced rushes from the event and this is the resulting online peice.
Thank the heavens It’s too late in my life for me to become a teenage hearthrob…. I don’t think I could handle all that screaming!
London Fashion Week 2011
London Fashion Week 2011, was a hectic one… Not only was it my first ever fashion week on Video I had never had the pleasure of doing one on stills either, so the learning curve was steep. I had Basmah with me though as producer and we had an really good time rushing from show to show editing along the way.
The following are a selection of edits from the Reuters website that were created using my rushes from each show, the footage was usually put out to clients only a few hours after they each one took place.
The Julien Macdonald show above was the first of the week and by far the most cramped in the press enclosure. Lotty marked me out a great spot however and although I could only pan about 4 inches it was just enough to get a variety of shots that worked well in the edit.
Celebrities were a bit thin on the ground this year, well at least I started the week with the impression that there would be a lot more at the shows than there actually were. But working for the Showbiz desk for the week means that you are forever on the look out for the odd A-lister that may turn up. At Christopher Kane there was a good show on the celeb front with Kanye West and the Prime Ministers wife samantha Cameron in the front row of the invited crowd.
The Christopher Kane show above was great for space in the press area but the catwalk was so long that even on the doubler I couldn’t see a model full frame at the far end. Christopher was good to interview but his PR on this particular occasion were really poor. Refusing us an interview altogether at the start even though we had pre-arranged it weeks before hand and were working for one of the biggest press agencies in the world. It took all of my charm and a little forcefulness to squeeze in between the interviews of Vogue and another Fashion Mag before we achieved a shared soundbite between us an PA (who had also been refused a word with the Scottish designer).
I think in total we filmed about 12 shows in the space of four days which was a fairly packed schedule but the time went really fast and we got to film some good packages. As to wether I am any more schooled in the arts of fashion than I was before remains to be seen, however I dont think I’m ready to hang up the jeans and walking boot’s look just yet.
Real Steel’s UK Premier
Hollywood superstar Hugh Jackman was in London the other week for the UK Premier of his latest film Real Steel… I filmed the event for Reuters accompanied by Freelance Producer Kathi Urban.
Above is the edit from the Reuters.com website.
Supermodel Kate Moss – Rimmel Party
It’s been a busy week working for Reuters so far with lots of posts to come. With fashion week in full swing and all of the pre-amble that goes with it there’s a lot to cover and the days before the models saunter down the catwalks were no exception.
Supermodel Kate Moss got the PR machine going for my week with a Celebrity filled party at London’s iconic Battersea Powerstation to celebrate her 10 year partnership with cosmetics firm Rimmel.
The edit you see here has been expertly put together by Reuters Showbiz producer Cindy Martin . The shoot itself was frustratingly difficult and was such a poorly put together event. The companies PR people had not considered the needs of either the stills or the Video press at all apart from going to all the effort of sticking up a branded background in front of a gated press pen… Night time blackness without any forwards illumination led to the talent becoming backlit silhouettes purely lit by the photographers blue flashes and to top it off the whole area (of course being a building site) filled the air with traffic dust from the off.
To me there was nothing ‘Press RELATIONS’ about their PR at all… The PR girls were very helpful in the end but the serious lack of prior planning of the event overshadowed their enthusiasm.
Rant over, thanks to cindy for a very well polished edit that made my footage look much better than I thought it would at the time of shooting.
Final Cut X – A Review
Final Cut X has been out for a short while now and before I dive in and buy the last version of Apples premier editing software I have been searching the web for the reviews and rants to guide me before I invest my well earned cash.
Colleagues at Trusted Media productions company Techsec Media (based in the south west) have been using the software and Jason King has written this article about it’s Layout and his first impressions.
Click on the image to go to their website and blog.
Techsec Media's Blog Page reviewing Final Cut X is written by Jason King.
Adventures in iPhone Photography – July
Following my last post on the theme of iPhone pictures, I have decided to post some from the month of July.
This is an image I took whilst on a wedding recce to the town of Poole in Dorset. The town hall actually had a wedding on at the time and as I arrived the horse and carriage turned up and the bride and groom departed. (I have adjusted this image in Photoshop Express for the iPhone, which has included a blur filter).
This shot was from the same recce, I was looking for an area nearby to the town hall that would be suitable for some intimate portraits of the bride and groom before they headed back to their house for their reception.
I took this one on Saturday afternoon on the South Bank of the river thames, an adult watches on as children play through a water fountain during a hot summers day.
Somerset House during the showing of their outdoor cinema film season. The iPhone has coped well with the difficult mixture of light (this image is straight from the camera).
The Oxford countryside is spectacular this time of year. The fields are full of crops and wildlife, and sitting on a quiet doorstep is not all bad when the weather is good and there are views like these to be had.
