What is a better communication tool than email?

Imagine if you could communicate to all your staff with a tool more productive than email? Where your staff in Singapore could watch, learn and communicate with colleagues in the next office, next building or your regional HQ half way across the globe. Imagine if you could train with this device, a training device so effective that it would be limited by your imagination only and where you could literally throw out the whiteboard! Want to know what it is? Well you might already own one – and if I say your kids may well be using one then perhaps it’s time to catch up! I am a cameraman and consultant. Shooting back in the UK, frequently for the BBC, I know what a powerful message a camera can provide. The visual image: more powerful than a 100 or 1000 emails? The power of the visual image Video production communicates to a massive audience, it supplies knowledge and information, it documents, entertains even, informs – and used professionally – the power of the visual message is limited only by your and your staff’s imagination. And with the public, (let’s face it they can make movies now with their own smart phones), and your kids using cameras, it’s now time, aided by a few broadcast skills, that the business sector harnesses and benefits from an opportunity that is as bright as the sun gleaming off the corporate offices in Shenton Way! A company I know in the UK has offices within just a few square miles of each other. But a couple of their staff, who were always keen to have a go at making movies, (I dare you not to have a few of those in your own team), now shoot a weekly news story streamed out via the company intranet. The directive from above was for their colleagues to know what every department was doing. The two guys have been so successful that they put their short productions now onto the company’s own You Tube Channel – it is not just your employees who will benefit: you can take your message to the customer base too. I know of another company that doesn’t bother getting staff into a classroom for flipchart training – instead they use video production – their own employees making films about themselves. They shoot in documentary fashion, about the job they do, the issues and how they deal with them, they speak from the heart to the camera – how much more effective is that? The films are watched by employees all over the world wherever they are – because they can watch on their smartphone or laptop! And don’t forget you and your staff get something intrinsic out of producing this material in the first place – the very fact that all this creativity is buzzing around has a huge empowering and cohesive effect on the general well-being and productivity of staff – your staff. Singapore can harness this potential Singapore isn’t just at the gateway to Asia, but it is also a pioneer – of new systems and organisation, of making business more effective and cost efficient when budgets are tight. Now, with multiplatform potential, where short films viewed anytime and anyplace are the norm, we need to use the same methods the public and our kids are using to communicate and promote our company and business to the workforce and customer. I can vouch for the camera being an incredibly, powerful communication tool – harness its potential, use your team’s imagination and see what it can do for you. Jeremy Humphries is Managing Director of Skills2Film.

One Step Ahead…..

I am lucky at the moment – I am working on two projects involving two great national institutions! I am shooting a new garden series with Alan Titchmarsh and I am taking a behind the scenes look at life in Salisbury Cathedral. The thing is as Dop/ cameraman whatever you want to call me – time keeping and in particular planning is not only essential but it is the key asset I can bring to a shoot. At Salisbury the other day we were shooting GV’s, we had planned to be there early morning, I placed the camera to the West so that the sun was not quite behind the cathedral but more three quarters as we say, providing me with a halo (no pun intended!) of light around the great building, highlighting it from everything else – a little bit of planning can add a lot to your shots. In the gardens the first thing I do is walk around with the director and as long as we have sun we work with it, in other words as Alan appears in different areas of the garden I know that the sun will be there – we chase the shadows if you like. I always for example look out for trees in the garden to the West – I know in the late afternoon the sun will start dropping behind them so I shoot in that part of the garden earlier – and don’t forget you can always use (and I do!) the sun as a backlight – as I have mentioned once or twice before in this Blog! You will be a hit with production for being on the case and nothing worse than starting to shoot a long scene and see the shadows starting to race up the Presenter’s legs!

Beautiful Salisbury Cathedral

You forget, at least I do, how lucky we are to have widescreen and how lucky we are to have HD! You count your blessings (my pun!) when you are lucky to be filming over a couple of months in surely one of the most beautiful of all Cathedrals; I mean how did the masons, glaziers and carpenters of Salisbury build their Cathedral? Awesome that’s the word. Anyway back to the filming bit: two examples the other day made me realise how technically lucky I am with the current kit we have. The widescreen aspect ratio – for framing a CU on a chorister on one side of the frame, my depth of field is non existent so behind you have an immediate smudge of out of focus warm candlelight, behind that a stained glass window. Don’t forget and as I have said many time before, use your colour temperature – my camera set to 4300K, the chorister backlit by the pale blue daylight coming through the stained glass window. Terrific stuff. And my other point, we have more latitude on HD – in other words the range that you can see acceptable detail in both under and overexposed areas – than on SD. The face of a clergy member looking down in prayer, with my camera low, I can still see detail in his face and yet high above him the vaulted fanned ceiling of the nave, 4 or 5 stops brighter is still rendering me detail. Always set your bars correctly in the viewfinder, monitor the shadows – then in this example at least, if you see detail in the face you should see it on the screen. And if it is just too dark? Well to be honest I do click in 3db gain once in a while,  just to help me out. No one will really notice, you get the shot and in any case viewers will be looking at your wonderful pictures and listening to the beautiful singing, with the 800 year old accoustics! Happy Easter…….

Using that Available Light….

I have been shooting a load of interviews over the last couple of weeks for the BBC – a history of the Royal Wedding to be precise! By its very nature the subject has meant interviewing ladies and gentlemen of a certain age! And I have been shooting virtually all of them using available light. Windows are the main source of light – it is a lovely soft source and fills in beautifully all the ‘nooks and crannies’ on a 90 year old face! You can still model – angle your subject a little toward or away from the source of light and watch as the light on their face drops away. Nothing to stop you using a reflector as a fill, or frequently with me I use a ‘kicker’, which is any artificial light angled back at the side of the head from behind, the light glancing or ‘kicking’ on the cheek bone. Very effective with natural light. I use anything from a 150 watt fresnel, or if I am competing with a lot of light coming in, then I will use my 800 watt redhead, on a dimmer, so I can get the intenisty of light just how I want it.

Two things to add, when using available light don’t get caught out with loosing your key source of light when the sun goes down – watch your schedule! (You will probably also need to stop-pull as the day goes on or the sun goes behind a cloud etc). Secondly use a graduated filter on the front of your lens to take down the brighteness of the window. I use a soft edge 0.9 Grad and it does the trick perfectly, not least because you can adjust the filter to take the light off the bright areas, while not affecting your subject. Clever stuff…….

Tanzania # 2

Call it observational, call it fly on-the-wall: it all means the same thing – you capturing a scene on the hoof, no second chances. And when I say ‘capturing’, for those who have been on my intermediate workshop they will know that I don’t mean F8 on a wide angle lens! No.

This week in Africa we were on foot, in the bush with a tribe, hunting with bows and arrows, literally. I want my shots to add to the Director’s script, to complement the story he or she wants to tell – that’s real observational shooting. So eventhough the temperature was in the high 30’s centigrade I had loads of ND’s on.

Point 1: you can still shoot at F2.8 sitting on the Equator. Why? Because I want a shallow depth of field – as I focus on the hunter’s arrow head, I want to be able to pull focus back to his backlit face for example. Shift emphasis, like a comma in a book of fiction, a focus pull can visually punctuate what you are trying to ‘say’ with your filming.

Point 2: all these shots have to edit; you are going to need to get a wide shot as the hunter’s pass camera – good time to catch your breath incidentally with the camera on the floor. But then we need to trot – don’t run- ahead, so for instance we need to see the hunter’s approach us, maybe shot through some branches or long grass. And so you build up your shots for the sequence – and again those who have heard me speak at the workshops – think ahead- what are we trying to say here, is this shot relevant to the story.

Point 3: If I have just shot a wide angle for example, then as I get into position for the next shot – maybe that trotting ahead again – I can be zooming in.  Ok so it’s a bit hit and miss because you are guessing, but when the camera comes back on your shoulder the lens is pretty much on the right focal length for the next shot – saves time you see!

I think the tan may have faded before our next Intermediate Workshop on 3rd March – but the memories won’t and that experience is what I will be using when we are discussing everything happening at once and knowing where to point your camera! That reminds me, shooting the Killer Bee’s swarming will have to be another Blog……..

Tanzania #1

Have you ever had to film a very dark skinned person under a tree next to a white skinned presenter in a white top! Add to that a powerful African sun, so the exposure range between sun and shade is probably 5+ stops. But there are things you can do. HD has a wider ‘latitude’ in other words it can cope with the underexposed and overexposed more consistently than SD.

If you have 3 stops under and 3 stops over you should still be getting detail in both areas, this is the joy of HD. Alice, our presenter in Africa, was sitting next to women and their children with jet back skin tones. I put a reflector in to put light back into their eyes and here’s a tip. Use a reflector as well (you can always take two) to put in some backlight.

You can have the reflector out in the sun away from the tree, with the silver side it will be bright enough- believe me- to ‘kick’ back and give a lovely soft modelling backlight. Why? On a dark skinned person the backlight or ‘kicker’ as we call it gleams off their skin and helps give modelling to a dark face, and in conjunction with the light we have bounced into their eyes, you are going to begin to balance up nicely with the lighter skin tones next to them.

This and the fact that we have the wider latitude helps you cope with the extremes of exposure. One thing to be careful of though – in high temperatures everyone sweats and HD at 1080 lines will show that too! Take a powder puff with you – can be cheap and cheerful – to mop the brow and dull any shiny spots on the face. I have to say though that I have used this technique on a presenter, but as yet not on individuals of an ancient African tribe, thinking about it they are probably used to the heat by now!

Into Africa……

I am off tomorrow for an eight day shoot in Kenya and Tanzania; a new anthropological series for BBC2. I am shooting on HD; also featured are jibs, low light around bonfires, on the blink filming with Tribes, and car mount scenes. The Works in other words – as long as we can fit it all in of course! I am going to keep a diary – the Blog next week on my return: How it all went. Look forward to telling you……

Ok so I am lucky!

Yes I know a week in the equatorial sun does sound enticing at this time of year and I don’t expect any sympathy when I get to Kenya for a BBC shoot this time next week! But that apart I am thinking high sun, schedules that don’t permit you to stop filming at midday and shadows on the face that don’t let you see the eyes either! For those of you that have been on one of my workshops you will know that I am a keen advocate of shooting using the sun as a backlight and also using a reflector to fill in and give a pin prick of light in the eye. Use the reflector, but don’t dazzle, use the white side of a reflector only, you will be amazed how reflective the back of the eye is. And remember anywhere in the world a piece of white paper held just out of shot catching the light or the backlit sun should suffice. Talking of which we are shooting on HD, before I go I will send out a Blog on exposure and latitude – not the ones running parallel to the equator but extremes of over and under exposure that HD can cope with!

An Apps for all Seasons….

It is great news that the Apps film we shot, and consulted on in 2010 – Boiling Frog -has been such a success in the apps news and rankings in the Sunday papers www.boilingfrog.me/news
For those travelling abroad the first aid app is accessible globally not least on a mobile phone. For me it was interesting to shoot because I knew it will invariably be seen on a small screen. A good tip for all of you shooting for the web or mobile is if you do shoot handheld – as I did – don’t move the camera frantically around but just smooth moves – easily done even when hand holding the camera. Also a tripod is so useful for the static close ups – books and writing for example. And don’t forget the BCU we use on the TV screen can lose its impact when seen so close up and on a small screen, I almost always shoot MS or wider.

Finally don’t forget you can mimic handheld shots whilst using a tripod – just slight movement on the pan handle, via your hand, will give the picture the effect of a camera on the shoulder but without the pain! Experiment and see….

In the next Blog I am going to update you on a BBC HD shoot I have in a couple of weeks in Africa. I will mention contrast and the fact that HD sees all!!

Happy New Year to all our ever expanding Blog readership.

What can we say but a big Thank You…

What a year! I for one would not have forecast this time last year that we would be running the range of workshops which we have produced, for so diverse a client base. So to the delegates that have attended my camera craft workshops in Bristol, through to Canon UK and the 70 students+ that braved the snow to listen to me at the Shepton Mallet Digital Arts Festival, and through to the team we worked with at Adobe, to you all a big thank you. And in 2011? S2F’s plans and client base are going to get even bigger! The first newsletter of the New Year will be out by the end of January.

Oh and for those that want one of my usual tips: to prevent condensation on lens and viewfinder in these Arctic conditions, gradually warm the camera up as you take inside. A coat or some such, to keep the camera ‘warm’ while outside will help the transition when you go back in and in turn will reduce misting up!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year………