charlesdyer.com: 2009

Thursday 3 December 2009

Merry Christmas 2009

I've been trying to teach myself Apple Motion today with varied levels of success. It takes ages to render and crashes quite often. The following clip is just a bit of fun that took me the afternoon to piece together.

Oh, and of course - Merry Christmas!

Tuesday 1 December 2009

Mark Coote

Behold! The fruits of my labour, now available on Youtube and Markcoote.co.uk!

A short film made to support the local Conservative electoral candidate, Mark Coote. Edited by myself, working for Blue Sky Event and Media, Cheltenham.

Monday 30 November 2009

Three Minute Lundy

Just finished uploading a three minute version of my Lundy documentary to the 4 Docs website in the hope of winning a slot on Channel 4 as a Three Minute Wonder.

The new version is considerably shorter than the other two versions that have been made (Lundy and Escape from Lundy Island) and it was a struggle to cram everything into such a short timescale.

The End of the World on Film
Originally uploaded by charlesdyer

To see more photos of our disastrous trip to Lundy, look no further than my dedicated Flickr set.

Sunday 22 November 2009

The things you can do with Garageband

Just something I mixed up with some of the loops included with Apple's Garageband.

For anyone that doesn't know, Garageband can be found on any Mac with the preinstalled iLife suite (so that's pretty much all of them, then). With a little knowledge of music, you can use it to extend, elaborate upon or create entirely new soundtracks, making it an invaluable (if a little limited) tool for editors. The hundreds of included loops are all royalty free and it's quicker and easier to get to grips with than Final Cut Studio's Soundtrack Pro.

Digital Revolution

Been experimenting with the BBC's Digital Revolution competition.

The above was (once again) made with Maxon's awesome Cinema 4D. For anyone else interested, they actually have a very decent demo version available for free download on their website.

Cinema 4D

I've recently been trying to teach myself to use Maxon's Cinema 4D, a 3D animation, graphic and design package. My early experiments have been based on the tutorials from the Cinema 4D R10 Handbook by Anson Call.

That said, there's a lot of useful stuff online, including a tutorial by Grischa Theissen, which demonstrates some of the basic uses of the impressive Mograph plugin to create realtime physics.

Tuesday 8 September 2009

Amazing News!

As of September 2009, I am employed as a video editor and cameraman at Blue Sky Event & Media, located at the Cheltenham Film Studios.

Dance
Originally uploaded by charlesdyer

In other news, our first day of filming The Tea Dance is now complete. Due to a friend's unforeseen absence due to illness, I shifted position to take over camerawork, once again using a Sony HDV-Z1E. The documentary, directed by Lara Parker, should be hitting film festivals in the near future. More to follow.

Tuesday 1 September 2009

Updated Showreel

Some slight adjustments made to my showreel. And so I present version 1.3;

Wednesday 26 August 2009

Flickr

My Morning
Originally uploaded by charlesdyer

A snapshot of my life at the moment. Please visit my Flickr account for more examples of my photographic skills.

I'm a Soundman

I've been lucky enough to be presented with the opportunity to be the sound-recordist for an independent documentary to be filmed at Cheltenham Town Hall. Yes, I've been known to record and edit some pretty good soundtracks in the past. That's all I'm going to say at the moment. Cheers for reading!

Wednesday 12 August 2009

Sony XDCAM Range

After attending a 'Sony Experience', I'm now very pleased to reassure any prospective employers that I know how to use pretty much any Sony camera. As I suspected, the controls for all Sony cameras are laid out in pretty much the same way across the range. The controls of the Sony HDV-Z1E that I've used, pretty much match those on the PMW-EX1 and PMW-EX3.

However, for anyone that might have found my website looking for details of XDCAM range of cameras, I'll divulge you with the notes that I took from the event.

The entry level Sony PMW-EX1

Fitted with a traditional manual iris ring, which can then be slid from the full manual position to the power-assisted and camera controlled position.
3x1.5 inch CMOS sensors.
Very light (just as, if not lighter than the HDV-Z1E I've used). So light, in fact, that it's apparently possible to mount it on the end of a microphone boom pole.
Records in MP4 format onto solid-state SxS flash memory cards, that closely resemble consumer compact flash cards (generally used in stills photography). The data compression rate allows you to get roughly 112mins of full HD footage onto a 32GB card.
The obvious advantages of recording onto memory cards are that they are considerably more robust than traditional digital tape and, because there are no moving parts, parts do not wear out (saving considerable amounts on camera servicing). But perhaps the most influential advantage is that there is no need to capture footage in the post-production stage, as with traditional film and tape. Footage can literally be dragged and dropped into editing packages.
SxS cards have particularly fast read/write speeds and have the VERY neat feature of being able to close active files, should there be some kind of system failure. They also fit standard ExpressCard slots, like those found on the Apple MacBook Pro. Capturing through an ExpressCard slot, you can import footage at roughly 8x real time.
The camera also features a standard USB interface, which allows transfers at roughly 5x real time.
Footage can be recalled and played back on the camera via a DVD menu style interface.
Image peaking can be set to highlight in different colours than just the regular black and white.

In addition to all of the features of the EX1, The Sony PMW-EX3

Features a monocular attachment to fit to the LCD display and an adjustable shoulder pad.
Removable lenses with VERY short back-focus, allowing virtually any lens to be fitted with adapters.
Similar in size to the Canon XL1.
Gen lock.
More connections (although I didn't pick up on all of them).

Both use the same Lithium Ion batteries as found in the HDV range, the standard battery offering recording times of roughly two hours and the optional PB60 offering four hours.

Both are fitted with high resolution LCD displays.

Both the Discovery Channel and National Geographic have already approved the PMW-EX1 and EX3 for broadcasting on their channels. Unfortunately, the BBC has more stringent requirements;

Whilst the BBC requires cameras to record HD footage at 50mbps, the EX1 only records at 35mpbs. However, by connecting a Nanoflash unit to the uncompressed video out socket, you can record at up to 100mbps, meaning that you can get a full HD broadcast-quality camera for as little as £6000.

The possibility of recording onto SD cards instead of SxS was also raised at the conference. Indeed, with unofficial adapters you can record onto SD cards, but they are apparently not nearly as reliable as the SxS cards. SD cards are likely to corrupt, whereas the SxS cards have the aforementioned built-in file recovery system. That said, some people might still opt for using SD cards just for the savings; an 8GB SxS card will set you back around £150 (although prices are apparently falling). An fairly decent SD card of the same capacity might only set you back as little as £10 (according to prices on Amazon at the time of writing).

Tuesday 28 July 2009

Update

I've made some changes to my 'About Me' page. I thought it was a bit lacking in material. I've also updated the appearance of my CV a little.

In other news, I'm going to the Sony Experience in Teddington tomorrow, for some free training on Sony's HDV, XDCAM EX and HD422 cameras. Should be pretty fun, and it's more skills to list on my CV.

Thursday 11 June 2009

Comet Second Cut

This is the second cut of Comet that Becky and I prepared for our end of year show. It's about four minutes shorter than the original cut, using some jump cuts and cheating a little with fade-to-blacks, but hey - the pace is a lot better now. I'll replace the older version with this one in due course.

Happy viewing!