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Kitchen Table Projects Promo

Ben Hecking and I just finished a nice little promo for Kitchen Table Projects, an artisan food brands incubator. We adapted an initial idea from them into a mouthwatering slow-motion taster. Watch it here:

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Across the River is getting very close to completion

Nick Adams (Mama Mia & World War Z) has done a great job mixing the sound and we're doing some final ADR on Monday. Tancredi Monaco is almost finished with the grade and Andy Hopkins is almost done with the soundtrack. Thanks for everyone's continued patience. It will be worth it.

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re:Vault

I’ll be at re:Vault at the Underbelly, Hoxton Sq on June 17th from 5pm showing Forgiving your P.E. Teacher and the trailer for Across the River. Then talking about it and the crowd-funding campaign. Come down!
re:Vault

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Shooting has started!



And here's the proof: our 1st Slate of the film. Obviously it wasn't the slate from the first shot. That was an attempt to use MovieSlate on my iPad. Top-tip - doesn't really work in strong sunlight!

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DirtyBeach.TV are our sand sculpture consultants

The amazing Sandy Andy is going to be sculpting sand for us! Go to http://www.dirtybeach.tv to see some of the gorgeous work he does and lots more cool stuff. He was the first guy sculpting down the beach by Gabriel's Wharf and he's still one of the best. He knows stuff - like that if you can see the anchor on a particular boat then the tide is coming in, or going out - oops I can't remember!

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Encounters film festival

FORGIVING YOUR P.E. TEACHER‘ has been officially selected to screen in competition in Brief Encounters Best of British programme as part of Encounters International Film Festival 2010.

- I know what I'm doing.

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Radio mics

Gone off buying radio mics as most of them are gonna stop working in
2012! Including all Sennheisers! Back to trying to get sound guys/gals
with kit to collaborate for nowt...
Also now know that my Rode ntg2 is nowhere near as good as an Ntg3.
Could hear so much more ambient sound with my Ntg2. Damn, was hoping
it was good enough.

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converge 2

I am an idiot.  I somehow thought 4th and 5th was weds & thurs so missed day 1 (which I'd even paid for in advance!) Gutted, but still got lots of info:
1. Rigs - A shoulder rig is not the only way to go.  The gunstock by Zacuto & the Hoodman wristshot support might work better for run n gun.  Also consider the Glidecam 2000.  Maybe stick to a lighter, simpler set-up when not on legs. 
2. Keep expecting to see Adobe demonstrating their H.264 support but still haven't seen it working.
3. Zacuto zfinder pro3 is def the way to go: no misting, new baseplate, but still works with old stick-on plastic clips. Can't wait till mine arrives next week from Creative Video, hopefully.
4. Different people are using different settings for contrast, saturation etc. but Philip Bloom's were: all the way down for detail and contrast and saturation -2.  I think that's right, so long as you're going to do some color correction to bring it all back in post.
5. Clapper boards are a good idea for drama, even with Pluraleyes to auto-sync sound.  The iPhone app can work but only on close shots.
6. 2 camera shooting.  Roger Charters did it a lot on 24 to save time and to enable editors to cut anywhere.  I think it can work for comedy too.  Obviously lighting is compromised so needs to suit the occasion.  If mixing 5DmkII & 7D remember 5.6 on former has about the same look as 2.8 on latter.
7. Aliasing is something that needs to be watched out for - repetitive patterns and thin lines need to be completely out of focus or big enough or avoided.
8. Bloom confirmed his opinion that 160/320/640ISO were what we should shoot at for minimum noise.
9. Talking of noise, the Nikon D3S is amazing in low light with it's noise reduction on it was still getting usable pictures at over 25,000ISO.
10. Also about noise, when the chip gets hot it can get noisier so if you're planning to shoot continuously consider using 2 bodies.
11. Get Shotputpro to archive cards to 3 locations - look out for "gorilla - something?" to replace that & the E1 ingest.
12. Get a FireWire 800 stackable cf cardreader by Lexar.  They're faster and you can daisy chain them or drives.
13. Budget in a hardrive as part of your quote for clients so they have an archive of what you've done and the footage so you only have to keep it for a set amount of time.
14. hurl blog is a good source for HDSLR info.
15. Mark Moreve has already shot "love loss" a full length feature on a 5dmk2.  It looked good.

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Distribution surgery David Wilkinson @ guerilla films

Smart guy with good taste but very clear about how little chance a
very low budget film has of getting a theatrical release, or any cash
from tv or DVD. Did confirm that 2 ideas I had were good.
1. Weekend working will get better Cast n Crew than a 5 (and prob 3 or
4) week block.
2. If there is at least one person (actor or celebrity) that people
have heard of, at least distributors will watch it.
So, I'm shooting almost every weekend from... July? And does anyone
reading this know anyone (world?) famous well enough to ask them to
spend a day (or 2) having fun appearing in (ir)resistible?

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