Summer 2013

It doesn't seem like 5 minutes since I was sat writing blog posts for PPP2, I cant believe how fast summer has gone. After what I thought was a strong 2nd year for me for PPP, I was looking forward to getting stuck into some summer work, and it really was a summer of work. I made the decision to stay in leeds for the summer so I didn't fall into the trap of sitting around playing Xbox and Playstation at home having all my chores done for me. I really wanted to keep myself on my toes by putting myself in a situation where I had to earn money to live, with no loans. It was a risk because at any point, I could lose all of my jobs that I had lined up. I didn't get off to the best of starts when 3 MTV jobs got cancelled and put back to september. This mean't that I had to email around for some more work so I could last until I went on the MTV Hits tour which started at the beginning of July and finished mid July. I was head videographer/photographer for this tour so my job was to grab footage from the 5 events and put it all together into one, 2 minute edit which MTV haven't released yet, but when they do I will put it into another blog post.

I also took part in a dance project ran by Choreographer Zoobin Surty. I felt it was a great opportunity to get involved in as I have always have a love for dance and I felt it was perfect to get something new and different in my portfolio. I attended two of there rehearsal sessions where I was asked to take some photos and then I was required to film the performance when they were at the West Yorkshire Playhouse along side Annabeth. We shot with 3 cameras in total, 1 each in our hands and 1 wide shot from a few rows back in the seats. The wide was used more of a safety camera which could be used as a cut away if either of us were moving around to get other shots. It was quite a simple shoot but allowed you to be creative which you shots you get. The only issue I found was having to hold a shoulder rig for 15 minutes straight without no counter balance on the rig. It was very front heavy which meant the arms became quite tired towards the end. Need more time at the gym or to sort the counter weights out for next time.

After meeting the new Creative Advertising tutor David bell when I was around college during the summer, a new job opportunity popped up which was to film a shop re-fit for the clothing company Jeager. He was booking me as a cinematographer which was really a confidence booster because it is the first time I have been booked in for a job under the name cinematographer instead of just overall film maker. I had a story board to work from which was a series of titles that would eventually end u
in the final edit for when it is shown in a presentation to the management of the company. It is just ther
to walk them through the video and to show the thought process that design had. Most of the video was shot of a 5d mark iii with a 24-70 f2.8 and a 24mm f1.4. I was shooting my Glidetrack which was mounted onto two tripods either side to give me the steadiest slide. At first Dave (creative director) wanted to keep the shots static but I felt I had the right to tell him that a slide camera movement on a slider would be more effective and make the video a bit more dynamic.