From Singapore to Shepton Mallet….

Paul had a terrific time in Singapore last week with a very successful Conceptualising Multiplatform workshop, our first of many we hope out in the Far East. As for me, well I ended up in snow bound Shepton Mallet; the digital arts festival and our camera workshops were hugely popular, not least with students coming in from all over the West Country – yet again on our feedback forms all were saying what a difference it makes listening to practising professionals who are out there shooting on location! Good for them!!

Putting on a show at Shepton….

Please have a look at www.sheptondigitalarts.co.uk. Skills2Film is providing 3 workshops on the 26th November and the festival runs through until 28th with film and animation competitions, seminars and great opportunities to network for all. I will be there on Sunday as well in an open forum discussing not least training and the way forward for our creative industry in the West Country and beyond!

Use those ND’s!

I know a couple of weeks ago I was talking about backlight. What I did not mention is to always use the neutral density filters (ND) whenever you can. Virtually all cameras have them and they serve one simple, yet highly effective purpose. They are in effect like sunglasses – darkened lenses - and when used it means you have to open your lens aperture. That in turn gives you a shallower depth of field. I use all my lenses at 5.6 or below, you have control over depth of field and as I mentioned, when backlighting a subject with shallow depth of field the effect can give a beautiful soft background. On most cameras the least effective ND is an eighth, going upto a sixty fourth which is the darkest. Try it – you want to have control over your image not the camera!

This is one of the subjects covered in the Skills2Film Camera Training workshops.

First S2F Workshop for Singapore……

We are delighted that our first workshop in Singapore runs next week in conjunction with the Singapore Media Academy. Paul Appleby will be running a two day Working Multiplatform workshop which we hope to be the start of a long and developing relationship, involving all our craft training, acoss the Far East.

A feast of workshops….

Skills2Film’s workshop with the Image Consultancy and Canon UK went very well indeed this week – great to put the 5D through its ‘movie’ paces and also to get hands on Canon’s new XF 305: 1080 with 422 compression camcorder. And workshops don’t stop there! I am in Bristol on 12th November running an intermediate camera workshop, then S2F is at the Shepton Mallet Digital Arts Festival on the 26th November where I am running 3 camera workshops! Then 30th November and 1st December back with the Image Consultancy and Canon; then 4th and 10th December intermediate and advanced camera workshops in Bristol. And if that was not enough for you my team are hounding me for 2011 dates, so we will have those published in the next week or so. Promise!

Shooting with a Canon…..

We are delighted to be combining forces with the Image Consultancy for a two day workshop this week and supported by Canon UK. Aimed at still photographers wishing to make the transaction across to movie shooting, we are very excited about working in this new area now and in the future; with not least the latest 5D and XF 305 cameras being to hand.