As of late...

Hello world!

It's been a while since my last update, so it's probably time to dust off the blogging cobwebs and explain what I've been up to;

A large portion the beginning of my 2011 was taken up with preparations for this year's ITCA 2011 in Nice, where professionals from the on-board service industry demonstrated their latest and greatest product innovations for use in air, rail and sea travel. These ranged from Asiana Airlines' smile-inducing child hospitality programme, to DHL's technologically advanced asset tracking system. One of the key attractions of ITCA is The Mercurys; an awards ceremony that celebrates the work of the best and most pro-active companies in the industry. Fledgling and well-established companies compete against each-other for one of what is regarded as the most prestigious awards in travel catering.


This year marked the election of a new Mercury Chairman, and with that, a re-branding of the awards ceremony. After much reserach, several different concepts and some failed experiments, I settled upon the design that you see above - an animation that uses a combination of Maxon's Cinema 4D and composite effects in Apple's Final Cut Pro.
In addition to this brand identity, each category required its own introduction and video of contestants. None of the entrants were allowed to know who they were competing with until the show itself, although the video slideshow of entrants that rolled continuously over the three days prior to the big event demonstrated the wide range of entrants.


Another project of mine was a glamorous PowerPoint presentation, produced for Renegade Media's seeding proposal to BMW Mini, for their distribution of online content, comprising of a series of graphical explanations of their methods and key offerings. Renegade were so impressed by format of the presentation, that I was then asked to create a series of templates and slide masters so that they could easily replicate the presentation, adjusting the content to suit the circumstances of different clients, whilst still maintaining the animation-rich content.

Whilst I've never sold myself as a PowerPoint programmer, I'm extremely familiar with the software, and have now prepared (and operated) many presentations with Blue Sky Event and Media for such clients as Astra Tech, DEFRA and ITCA.

Blue Sky Event & Media Post-Production Showreel

Something that I've been cooking up for a while, finally unleashed onto the Internet.

Surface

A little excerpt from the Team Insight video that I recently completed at Blue Sky Event & Media.

Development Films

For the past few weeks, most of my time has been dedicated to twelve training programmes for Development Films. It's been a long while since I filmed or edited something based on a narrative script (the vast majority of projects that I undertake at Blue Sky are shot and assembled using the same documentary methods that a news and current affairs programme might use), and it's made a welcome change.

What makes this project particularly special to me is that I not only performed the role of second camera and editor (shooting on a Sony PMW-EX3 and editing on a Mac Pro with Final Cut Studio 2, but I also took on quite a bit of producing work, finding suitable locations and cast according to the guidelines set by the client.

The video presented below is currently being shown at exhibitions across the country (Adrian, Kay and Richard will be at the NEC in London tomorrow).



The first series of Development Films is due to go on sale this Autumn, available as a DVD or digital download from The Development Company.

Somewhere Beyond the Sea...

Uncannily, it's a double bill of yet MORE watery-themed projects to talk about today.

I'll kick things off by first introducing this clip from Team Insight's video, charting their run up to their epic rowing voyage across the Atlantic Ocean. That's right - rowing 2935 miles, from La Gomera in the Canary Islands, to Antigua! And all in aid of charity!



I have to say, this has been one of my favourite projects to edit together, partly because it provided me with an opportunity to experiment with a few fancy effects, such as compositing and a bit of Apple Motion, but also because the guys had a really good sense of humour - something that I capitalised upon.

Their eventful trip was also blessed with some pretty decent footage. Three cameras were on-board the boat throughout the journey, two of which were fully waterproof and able to capture the action below the waves, as well as above.

You can find out more about Team Insight and their incredible feat at their website.

From one favourite, to the next. Students at Churchdown School recently participated in a project that melded together dance and illustrative art into a theatrical performance. Pupils were encouraged to explore new forms of expression in response to natural and man-made architectural forms in and around Gloucester. Gloucester being a city that grew up around docks, this mostly involves a lot of water.

When I was actually filming the performance, I had this underlying fear that I would never be able to recreate the dance in a flattering light. Stage performances do not always transfer themselves seamlessly onto film - the camera almost bottlenecks the performance and (for lack of better words) seems to suck the soul out of it, so this was my attempt to compensate for that loss. Rather than merely documenting the performance, it's an extension of it. Cue a load more compositing, filters, masks and colour-correction.

Enough talk and philosophising! Watch and enjoy!

Canon Eos 5D MkII Video Test

Recently, my boss at Blue Sky Event & Media bought a brand-spanking new Canon 5D. You might know the 5D as one of the most exciting DSLRs to hit the market for quite some time, sending videographers and directors weak at the knees over its mighty fine HD video recording and jaw-droppingly shallow depth of field shots (which appears to be a very 'in' style of shooting at the moment judging by the new series of Doctor Who and Top Gear). Producing 'cinema quality' images for a fraction of the price of your typical, broadcast quality video-camcorder, it has contributed heavily to a flurry of HD art-house films hitting the likes of Vimeo. The Canon 5D produces remarkably beautiful images. All that has been added to the raw footage has been a basic vignette and colour grading. The whole film probably took only about half a day to shoot, edit and export.

Even so, a few problems reared their ugly head whilst I was making this film. The first being that the 5D is not ergonomically suitable in any way to shoot video. Adaptive autofocus is absent when the camera is in Live-View mode and focusing a HD image, with a low depth-of-field, on a screen of about 1.5" is a hit and miss process. If you want to expand that cinematic depth-of-field, the camera will adapt by raising the ISO, so you'll likely end up with a grainier image. Oh, and forget about any decent sound from the tiny internal microphone - it's not intended for any serious use and an external microphone or separate sound kit is a must have if you are considering making films on it.

The second dose of problems becomes apparent when you start to edit. The H.264 encoded files that the camera records to are not a suitable format to edit with on most systems (believe me, I tried), so everything must be converted to Apple ProRes 422 before Final Cut can touch it. This sensibly requires Compressor, which knocks my dual-core MacBook Pro with Final Cut Express out of the picture fairly early. Converting to ProRes takes up a lot of time and storage, certainly in comparison to capturing DV from tape, so if you've recorded a lot you'll either want to be selective about what you convert or leave your machine chugging through it overnight.

Editing with such large files requires some expansive system resources, so the quad-core Intel Mac Pro that I was editing with suddenly presented itself as a bit old-hat, Final Cut proclaiming that certain filters and transitions weren't possible to render on such a weedy graphics card. Those renders that can be performed have processing times that are roughly doubled (or even tripled) when compared so working on a standard-definition timeline.

If you're experiencing similar problems of Final Cut complaining about your graphics card, you might like to know that graphics card upgrades for the Mac Pro are not cheap or easy to come by if Apple no longer stocks the part. Few graphics cards have been produced that support the chipsets in Apple machines. Of course, if you're getting these problems on any other Apple machine, such as an iMac, MacBook or MacBook Pro then you might be even more irritated to be learn that only Mac Pros have upgradable graphics circuitry (assuming that you didn't know that already).

Once you've completed wrestling together your masterpiece, you then have to export it as a whopping Quicktime Movie. These 43 seconds alone spanned across around 850MB of hard-disk space. The irony of it all is that you're probably going to do what I did and export the thing to a video sharing website such as Vimeo, which means that you'll be wanting to convert it back to its original H.264 format.

Work-flows will undoubtedly improve as system specs catch up with HD requirements, but for the moment this is a very time consuming process to produce what might be very little.

Mark Coote 6

My personal favourite of the series shows Mark investigating the threat to St Stephens Sports & Social Club.

The interior lighting of St Steven's was less than ideal for shooting in, despite using a camera-mounted lamp, but I managed to brighten up shots using the 'Top Gear' effect, as illustrated in Jude Cotter's tutorial. I've actually used this effect a lot over the last year-or-so, as it gives a similar effect to a vignette, whilst providing more control and variables.

Coming back to the embedded film, it was edited by myself. The majority of the sound was also recorded by myself with a boom-mic.

Mark Coote 5

The fifth instalment of a series of programmes produced by Blue Sky Event & Media in order to promote Mark Coote's election campaign.

This film was edited by myself. Much of the sound was also recorded by myself with a boom-mic.

Mark Coote 4

Mark's back again to discuss care homes and NHS dentistry.

The film was edited by myself. The majority of the sound was also recorded by myself with a boom-mic.

New YouTube Channel

Just set up the YouTube channel for Blue Sky Event & Media. Expect to see more of my work up here very soon!