Result… Mental

Shot these three Playstation virals with Marshmallow Laser Feast (Dir:Memo Akten, Barney Steel and Robin McNicholas) for Ian Hambleton at Studio Output. This was months of testing, head scratching and ranting ideas to make the final three films. All finally shot in single takes each.

Watch them. Remember there is no post VFX. Everything happens in-camera from the images projected onto white walls. Occasionally there are glitches, errors and mistakes but its all real.

The AR rig was awesome for this allowing single take shots to fly anywhere in the room from 1 ft off the ground to 9ft in the air. Every detail of the shoot was pushed to the extreme to have as much go wrong as it possibly could; as we used pyrotechnics, puppetry, interactive lights on projectors to deliver the mental. Basically massively ambitious act of lunacy I am proud to have been a part off.

Projection mapping an environment from the correct perspective of a camera with a playstation move strapped to it. I would love to try and explain it all more… I’ll have a go. Imagine a virtual playstation move could see this mad environment inside a 3D package. It knows where it is precisely and in another 3D package another virtual Playstation whose movements are precisely link to the first virtual Playstation move projects what it sees onto the three white walls in that 3D environment.. Inside this second virtual environment there are 5 cameras which are all calibrated to be exactly the same as 5 projectors in the real world, calibrated in lenses, positions everything, these 5 camera/projectors film the images from their view points (warped funny looking keystoned images) and then reproject exactly those images in the real world onto the real walls.. The thing is now the real walls will look, from the exact position of where the first virtual move was like presisely the same perspective environment as was in the first virtual world… well thats exactly where the camera is! Because the camera has got a real playstation move strapped to it and that is feeding the data to define where in the world the first virtual playstation move was! Yes… and the camera can now move and all the perspectives remain perfect.. it all looks 3D and real and insane and phew… was that a good explanation?

Maybe this film below will help a little more.

Here is some camera tests we were doing early on as Memo worked out various ways to suck data out of the console and interpret it:

My mate Ceri Stokes did the music for this scratch reel.

Really the amazing stuff was not done by us but by teams of scientists and manufacturing genius’s at Playstation to bring technology that the Military would have marveled 10 years ago into our hands at a minute fraction of the cost, weight and power consumption to the point they become amazing toys. Brilliant.

And here are a few photos:

Where do we go next with this technology? Using face recognition systems to identify where people are in a room and render the environment out for them? I dunno.. I’m still trying to get over the headache caused when trying to pull this job off!

Full length of credits are coming.

Artem had provided a giant ticker tape machine that send glittering tickertape all over set on every take. Apart from it all going down my back it was covering my monitor and stopping me from framing correctly! After many rubbish attempts with some canned air. Barry went and had a word with Make-up and returned triumphantly with a small fan and some gaffer tape. We gaffered this fan to my post pointing at my monitor and I was tickertape free for the rest of the day.

We shot this on Super16 with the Aaton XTR prod. and the classic super16 Canon zoom lens. Just like the olden days.

NEWS AND BLOG

Thomas English, UK based Freelance Steadicam Owner/Operator 07970 025 389 .

It was directed by the very patient Jon Drever and DoP’d by the very calm Matt Fox. All working for GrainMedia; a relatively new and very busy production company.

Here is a making-off video

NEWS AND BLOG

Thomas English, UK based Freelance Steadicam Owner/Operator 07970 025 389 .

Thomas English, UK based Freelance Steadicam Owner/Operator 07970 025 389 .

Directed by the now famous Dom Bridges and DoP’d by the renowned Chris Sabogal; This advert for 6 music was a lot of fun to work on. All the faces and very little time. I have to say that the Arri Alexa colour graded here looks really really good!

Thomas English, UK based Freelance Steadicam Owner/Operator 07970 025 389 .

Shooting in Brixton we made this Adidas Commercial. Pretty much all Steadicam with a PL mounted 7D and Cooke lenses from Arri. Ben Moulden DoP d this with his characteristic flare for Passion Pictures. Normally Passion specialize in animations and it was fun shooting for the flying plugs. We had lots of people running around with silver Christmas tree baubles; photographing them for their lighting maps. Its pretty much all Steadicam so worked out being quite a bit of work for me.

Thomas English, UK based Freelance Steadicam Owner/Operator 07970 025 389 .

This is quite a funny little viral we shot for Xbox with the delightful Kylie Minogue. I’ll tell you, it was pretty funny whilst we were shooting it too! Jamie Cairney was the DoP and directed by Becky Martin.

Thomas English, UK based Freelance Steadicam Owner/Operator 07970 025 389 .

I am asked pretty much twice a week if I can spin the camera as I did on the Anti-Smoking commercials a few years ago. I do have techniques but I wouldn’t call it spinning; more rotating. It is also a lot less controlled than on the AR rig and there is a height change over the rotation. You can control this height roation by flipping the image in post to what height you want the frame to by normal. It all needs a little thought before the shot and can/should get confusing.

This is a video I Steadicam’ed for Dave Miller DoP. Directed by Charles Henri Belleville at HSI for All The Youngs “First Time”. Shot on a RED camera and Dave Millers Zeiss Superspeeds.

Its all Steadicam or Handheld. Some of the Steadicam shots I am really happy with.

Thomas English, UK based Freelance Steadicam Owner/Operator 07970 025 389 .

There are a lot of Fashion Films going about at the moment. Here is one DoP’d by Matt Smith:

And this one by Frank Dow

Thomas English, UK based Freelance Steadicam Owner/Operator 07970 025 389 .

I’m not sure where it says in the Health and Safety manual that we should go straight onto Steadicam at 6am call time and keep Tommy in the rig until midnight. It happens… very regularly.

Here are a few little recent occurances of Thomas English abuse. The thing is he doesn’t mind that much. Its ok. Just make sure you pay him.

Wiley ft Jodie Connor _ J2K _Electric Boogaloo (Find A Way) from Thomas English on Vimeo.

Katy B Lights On feat. Ms. Dynamite Official Music Video from Thomas English on Vimeo.

Jodie Connor – Now or Never (feat. Wiley) from Thomas English on Vimeo.

This final one wasn’t a long day but was a lot of long takes over quiet a large ground. I do really enjoy doing “one shot” promos. I’ll be honest; I would have wanted about 5 more takes on this to get blocking/synching/camera all perfect but we were stitched up with the weather and kids having their own Health and Safety rules. I think this was the second take with little blocking. It turned out well I think.

GET CAPE. WEAR CAPE. FLY. | COLLAPSING CITIES FEAT. SHY FX from Thomas English on Vimeo.

I ended up using blue tak to fix a bartech radio follow focus motor! I am going to get Brian Busbee at Bees engineering to put focus gears onto the ringlight controller but for now this seemed to work ok!

Ringlight Control from Thomas English on Vimeo.