Jump. Shoot. Edit.

Eyre Llew @ Dot To Dot Festival

Here is a little live promo I recently shot of Nottingham band EYRE LLEW performing their second ever live show at Dot To Dot Festival in Nottingham. As I mentioned in a previous post I have been filming a few projects with these guys recently and this is one of the finished results.

Eyre Llew’s next live performance is at Splendour Festival in Nottingham on Saturday 18th July 2015, if you're going be sure to check them out at the Courtyard Stage!

Shot on Sony A7S w/ 17-55mm f/2.8 lens @ 100fps.

Shift: Will J Carman

My friend Dizzi mentioned he was putting together a small team of free runners, martial artists, stuntmen and camera operators and asked if I wanted to be involved. As part of the starting process he wanted everyone to put together a short thirty-second video showcasing themselves and their skills.

I decided to make a short video showcasing a mix of my own personal parkour training as well as filming. However I didn’t want to just have clips of me holding a camera, so I decided to mount my GoPro to the hotshoe of my camera whilst I filmed a glidecam shot with Dizzi and I think the result is pretty interesting.

Shift Facebook

 Updates | APRIL - JUNE 2015

The last three months have been really fun, the variety of projects I have been able to get involved with has been amazing!

Direct Search Advert I was the camera operator on a promo shoot for a recruitment company which involved two shoot days in Nottingham and one in Formby (after a four hour drive which should have been two and a half!!). This was my first professional job with the A7S and it held up very well and the director was very happy with the finished shots.

Josh Wheatley “Close” Music Video My friend Abbey was producing a music video for Nottingham musician Josh Wheatley and asked if I would be interested in coming on board as the data wrangler and a behind the scenes shooter. It was a very fun shoot and a huge success overall. I’m currently in the process of editing the behind the scenes video together which will be released soon.

Chika & Marley’s Promo Nina Smith’s manager Dominic got in touch looking to make a short promotional film for a new Caribbean and Japanese takeaway food service he was setting up. He sent a couple of examples of the type of video he wanted which were short and snappy with personality. It was a lot of fun to shoot and edit, pretty different to what I have produced so far.

EYRE LLEW @ The Maze and Dot to Dot Festival I’ve been filming a few videos with Nottingham band Eyre Llew over the last couple of months. A mutual friend Dizzi got in touch and asked if I would be interested in shooting their next music video for their track ‘Caulis’, which was a lot of fun. I then ended up filming their debut gig at The Maze and their most recent gig at Dot to Dot Festival.

It has been great fun working with a sound bunch of guys who make incredible music. I’m looking forward to more work with them.

Fat Free Media Fat Free Media are a video production agency based in Nottingham whom I’ve had my eye on for a while as I really like their style of work and even emailed a while ago about vacancies. Recently I got a call from their producer asking if I was free to come and help them shoot a promo / prank video near the Market Square, obviously I said yes. My job for the day was to shoot a bit of behind the scenes footage during the setting up and then became Camera B for the actual video.

New Work: Confetti Industry Week 2015

I was asked to film and edit a highlights film of Confetti’s 2015 Industry Week. Having helped produce the highlights film last year I already knew what it was they were looking for, but it was a bit daunting being a one-man crew this time round.

My main aim was to make the video exciting and interesting to watch, which can be a bit of a challenge when your subject for the majority of the video is people talking. So I utilised things like my slider, transitions and split screen effects in post which allowed me to use more of the shots available and produce a more creative edit.

It was five full days of filming as well as editing so that the video was complete and ready to be shown at the after party, which sadly I couldn't attend, but it was such a fun week and great to be a part of!

Gear used:

Canon 60D

Canon 17-55mm

Tamron 70-300mm

Canon 50mm f/1.4

GoPro 3

Manfrotto tripod

Konova K2 slider

Updates | JANUARY - MARCH 2015

Well, it’s been a while since an update, so here are a few things that I have got up to since the beginning of the year.

Karl Bratby Photography Workshop I shot behind the scenes on two of Karl’s photography workshops, one featured a lot of lovely fujifilm glass. It was a lot of fun working with Karl and Steph and I hope to work with them again soon on some other projects.

Nina Smith ‘Stronger’ - Behind the Scenes I got a text from Nina asking if I would be interested in filming behind the scenes on her next music video shoot, working with Nina is always fun so I said yes! I spent the day following her and the crew just trying to capture what happened on the day.

Motofix Mural My friend Luke mentioned he was going to be filming some local graffiti artists paint an old garage and asked if I wanted to tag along and film as well. It was quite a nice way to spend a Sunday afternoon even though it was freezing!

Confetti Industry Week I was asked to film the highlights film for Confetti’s Industry Week where professionals from the TV/Film, Music and Games industry come in and give talks and workshops for the students. Having shot it last year I was really excited to do it again!

New Work: Karl Bratby Photography Workshop

I recently filmed a photography workshop that Nottingham based photographer Karl Bratby held at his studio and produced this little behind the scenes promo.

I didn't go in with much of a plan on the day but I knew wanted to make something that showed the fun atmosphere of the workshop as well as showing the gist of the kind of things people can learn and get up to. Karl gave me total freedom to do what I wanted on the day and it was a very fun shoot! 

Overall I'm pretty happy with how this piece turned out and I'm looking forward to doing more projects with Karl soon.

Gear used:

Canon 60D

Canon 17-55mm lens

Canon 50mm f1.4

Manfrotto Tripod

Konova K2 slider

This is a bit late, but I hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Year! 2014 was a good year and I’m excited to see what 2015 has to bring.

2014 Achievements: - Started to get paid work and registered as self employed. - Passed my driving test, first time. - Completed my foundation degree with top marks. - Made an award winning short film.

Updates | OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2014

October began with me deciding to leave my third year of university. I had completed a foundation degree earlier in the year and was going to do an optional third year to top it up to a full degree, but after consideration I decided that having a full degree was not really going to help me in terms of a career. So, I thought it would be best if I left.

Loughborough Parkour Park Opening My friends Dan and Tim from JUMP Parkour asked me to come down to Loughborough for the opening of a parkour park that Dan had designed himself.

It was a massive turnout, biggest crowd of traceurs/free runners I've seen for a while! I spent the day filming the event trying to capture it as best as I could.

Loxxi Hair Extension Photo Shoot I got up at 5am and went down to Birmingham with photographer Chris Perfect for a photo shoot with a new hair extension brand called Loxxi. My job for the day was to film behind the scenes, setup timelapses and assist Chris with little bits and bobs he needed help with.

Updates | SEPTEMBER 2014

Daudi Matsiko and Three Girl Rhumba Nusic Session I helped shoot Daudi Matsiko's Nusic session at the beginning of the month, great acoustic musician! I also had my last Nusic session shooting the band Three Girl Rhumba, great music and energy, nice way to end my time at Nusic.

Boxing Shoot Photographer Chris Perfect had a photo shoot coming up at a boxing gym in Derby with a fitness model and a group of boxers, I went along and filmed some behind the scenes footage of the shoot for him. It also gave me a great opportunity to put my new slider to some use.

Rebecca-Anne Latham Photo Shoot I had a little photo shoot with Rebecca-Anne Latham. I don't do many photo shoots these days but it was nice to shoot some new portraits.

Just Another Vision T-Shirt #3 I got another T-shirt design printed, for this one I wanted to use text only and create something super simple. I quite like how it turned out.

New Kit | TRIPOD AND SLIDER

Manfrotto 755CX3 + MVH500AH Head For a while I've been wanting to upgrade my tripod to something lighter. I've always liked the 755XB tripod legs, mainly because they have a levelling ball head and spirit level, but I wanted it to be light. So, I decided to go with the carbon fibre version of those legs and got the 755CX3.

Konova K2 60cm Slider After shooting a wedding with my friend Nico and seeing all of the toys he had, one of the pieces that caught my eye was his slider. I already had a glidetrack but I was never happy with the length and quality of its build, also it didn't fit on the tripod I had at the time (Velbon DV7000) so it didn't get used much. It's great to finally have a slider that I can use properly!

Growl & Grandeur Summer '14 Lookbook

Updates | JUNE 2014

FilmAM Wedding This month I had a wedding shoot with FilmAM. The day began with an early start and a late finish (4am to be precise) on Albert Bridge where we got some shots of the bride & groom walking along the bridge together; a bit different to the usual wedding shoot!

Nusic Session I had my first Nusic session filming the band Field Studies who were finalists at the Future Sound of Nottingham final, which I helped film as well. We shot them perform two songs in the studio and an interview afterwards.

Cooking Show Pilot I had the pleasure of helping shoot a cooking show pilot for Notts TV and it was a lot of fun to make! We filmed the chef/presenter produce four meals: a main course, desert, condiment (sauce) and a special ‘student edition’ meal. I really hope the show gets picked up because I would love to do more.

EPOCH (SHORT FILM)

2014 Showreel

This is something that is really overdue but I finally got round to making a showreel. It mainly focuses on my camerawork showing a variety of projects from music, to narrative, to documentary, to corporate.

WJC LOGO IDENT

I've been tinkering around in After Effects lately and have produced a short ident animation of my logo. What do you think?

I wanted to make something short and simple, so I decided to keep it 2D and have the length be five seconds maximum.

I mainly used keyframes (position and scale) to animate the movement of the letters and border, along with some fast blur effects for when they were moving. After that I added some film burns to add a bit of colour and then finally the projector sound effect. I also used two black solids to cover up the W and C so that it looked like they were emerging from the J.

I'm really enjoying after effects at the moment and definitely want to incorporate motion graphics into future projects.

Updates | MARCH 2014

Been working on a heap of projects this last month.

Industry Week On the 3rd-7th March, myself and my friend Luke were asked to film a promo of Confetti’s Industry Week where guests from the TV/film, music and games industries come and give talks to the students.

It was a surprisingly fun project to do and very different to what I’m used to, both in terms of content and deadline time but it allowed us to get very creative with how we shot and edited it. *Upload soon*

Short Films Right now, myself and my friends are all in the middle of making our own short narrative films varying from police drama, to romantic comedy, to science fiction. They have all been a lot of fun to be involved in and been great learning experiences. I'm really looking forward to seeing them all on the big screen!