For the past 2 months, I've been producing and directing an incredibly exciting fund-raising campaign film for the Courtauld Institute of Art. 

The Institute is pre-eminent in art history and many of it's alumni go on to hold some of the most distinguished posts as Art Historians, Curators, and Museum Directors at institutions across the world.

The Institute relies on a third of it's annual income from the generous donations of art lovers and philanthropists worldwide.  As you can imagine, a post graduate degree from the Courtauld Institute of Art doesn't come cheap, especially when you consider that to become a fully trained conservator for example takes around 7 years to complete! But without courses like these, our cultural heritage is going to suffer enormously, because many of these students that come directly from the Courtauld Institute of Art go on to work on and restore the wonderful paintings collections within the National Trust and English Heritage.

Without any kind of financial backing, it's be difficult for a young student to fund a course in art history at the Courtauld, particularly those taking MA's or post doctorate research.  While the money raised by this campaign film will of course be used to pay for the ongoing annual costs that keep the doors of the Institute open, it will also fund scholarships that will directly benefit a young student, who would otherwise may have not had the financial means to develop him/ herself in this way.

To find out more about the campaign and donate, please click here.

Since I am currently in the throws of putting the finishing touches to edit, I’m afraid I can't provide a link to the film as yet. But … my very next blog will provide a link and will look at how the final version of the film has been received by our very prestigious client.  What I can confidently say right now is that the film will really have the wow factor – it's not everyday that you get to film a Van Gogh in very close up detail!

This happened to me recently on a shoot where the client asked me to conduct a “quiet” sit down interview, in what appeared to be the noisiest room on the planet!  My immediate instinct was to request another room, but the client explained there was nothing else available and there were no other options.  Other than the fact that we were sitting right under the flight path of nearby Newcastle airport, the big problem in the room was the air conditioning.  We could deal with the noise of the aircraft passing over easily - by restricting the length of our takes and cutting when they were right overhead.  But the air con was another matter entirely as we were unable to find the controls to turn it off, and with the clock ticking and the clients foot tapping nervously I could see that we were all out of options. 

Needless to say the resulting interview material looked great,  but….to be honest sounded, well… pretty ropey!  It’s not the ideal scenario but my view is it’s better to have recorded something and give the client the option in the edit that to come away empty handed.  And actually, I have to say that I really surprised myself in the edit as I found that the problem was quite simple to fix!  I’d recently attended a Larry Jordan seminar on Soundtrack Pro audio editing. 

If you don’t know Larry Jordan and you want to learn Final Cut Studio 2 (which incorporates Soundtrack Pro) you won’t find a better trainer than Larry -  he really is the Final Cut guru!  Larry told me about a noise reduction technique within Soundtrack Pro that’s simple and incredibly effective.  All you do is sample the pure noise (just a bit of air conditioning wild track taken from your shoot) and tell Soundtrack Pro to remove the noise at those frequencies only, whilst leaving the rest of the frequencies, which register the human voice intact.  In the words of Larry Jordan himself it’s “very cool”.   Obviously if you’ve got the time to sort out a quieter room on your shoot that would be better, but this is certainly a good option for sound when all else fails.   If you’d like to learn more about Larry Jordan’s audio editing and mixing tutorials check him out on his website here: http://www.larryjordan.biz/ 

s.milton@spectrecom.co.uk

 

Both cameras make use of solid state memory cards – a 16GB one will generally allow for 45 minutes of full HD recording time – which is a fantastic benefit for no other reason than having instant, high quality playback at the push of a button.  Not only is it great for the client who will tag along for the long shooting days, but also for maximising the productivity of the time spent shooting.

As there's no tape, the camera is instantly ready for further recording without having to worry about recording over something you've already shot.  At the end of each day, I'd transfer the rushes onto two separate mirrored RAID1 drives, ensuring there were master and back-up copies.  And without hours of tape transferring into a computer, I was  assembling rough-cut edits at the end of the day to get an idea of how things would shape up in the final piece - in the middle of the shoot!

I've detected a general reluctance amongst my peers in the business to want to take the plunge into a tapeless workflow.  I recently attended an event at Envy Post on the benefits of going tapeless and was agog when I was one of only three people in a room full of dozens of industry professionals to say I had worked in the format.

What it really comes down to is the perceived security of having a tape sitting on a shelf somewhere, “just in case.”  The tide is turning, however, as the higher quality, lower physical storage space, and ease of accessibility and attaching metadata are making more and more realise the future of tapeless is now.

If, like me, you are relatively new to tapeless workflows, CVP Mitcorp have an excellent series of videos that give a great introduction.

Oh, and there's also a clip from the film itself here!

s.milton@spectrecom.co.uk

s.milton@spectrecom.co.uk