Behind the scenes

My personal favourite type of promo is the "behind-the-scenes" film.  I've always enjoyed the peek-behind-the-curtain element of these films, getting to see the work that goes into producing things...I've always loved to see how special effects are created and how my favourite scenes in films were shot and edited.  So these films, in a small way, are our own additions to that genre 😊

First off, we shot a nice little EPK for John Rutter's latest album "Visions".  I've said this before many times, but I really enjoy these type of films because you get to listen to some great music as a by product of creating the edit.

There are some genuinely beautiful moments in the tracks on this album and I hope our film goes some way to capturing them.

In a complete change of pace, we also shot and edited a behind-the-scenes promo for Stephen and Chris from Gogglebox.

The guys were shooting the front cover for their new book and we were invited along to capture some of that process.  It was a bit of a riot as anyone who watches the show can imagine.  Everybody there, including us,  was having a lot of fun... probably far more than was appropriate.

Surgery, serenades, science and slo-mo.

Been a bit of a whirlwind of late, so I have compiled a quick review of some of our recent activities out there in the world…

First off, we’ve just got back from a trip to Ghana. We were there as a follow up project to our work in Ethiopia a few years back.  The main aspect of the film shoot was creating a step by step guide to conducting Hydrocele surgery.

Follow the link to discover the somewhat excruciating details if you fancy (or not).

Ghana is a beautiful country, with some amazing scenery, it really was quite a trip.

Prior to that excursion, we shot and edited a nice little film for our friends at Decca Classics and the Aurora Orchestra.  I really love editing these types of mini music documentaries, you always have such a lovely soundtrack to work with.

We also had a fun day out at the Science Museum in December, where we covered an event for URENCO.  Every year they have a Christmas lecture involving a prominent scientist talking to school kids about science related topics.

This year was the turn of Dr. Gabrielle Walker, who discussed the challenges we face from climate change and the need to find cleaner sources of energy.  The kids really enjoyed it all and hopefully learned a thing or 2 in the process (I know I did).

The last project was for a Buckinghamshire based business organisation.  The challenge with this one involved not only creating a film but also writing a rhyme that would accompany the footage.  So, we all dusted off our A-Level English Literature and got stuck into some word play.

We visited a hugely diverse range of businesses for this film, giving ourselves the challenge of attempting to crystallise each business into a single shot.  To mix things up and to give ourselves a few more options for creative latitude, we also decided to incorporate slow motion and GoPro camera footage, which turned out pretty well.

Currys and Tarts

Great day filming Luis Troyano from last year's Bake Off.  He made an exquisite rose and fruit tart to help promote Currys / PC World's baking range.
We had a good play around with some slow-mo shots too.  You can see the finished recipe film here: Rose and Fruit tart (it's half way down the page on the left):

Some of our recent films

I love it when you just stumble across great little films..

OFFF Barcelona 2014 Main Titles by Ash Thorp & Anthony Scott Burns from OFFF, let's feed the future on Vimeo.

SRA Awards 2015

We spent a fantastic day at the Sustainable Restaurant Association awards ceremony celebrating sustainability in the UK restaurant sector.  Highlight of the event was Raymond Blanc presenting Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall with a special 'Sustainability Hero' award!

Here's our film highlighting the day's events:

Aurora's Road Trip

Aurora's Road Trip album is out now!

“It says much for the orchestra’s imagination and that of its conductor Nicholas Collon, that the disc has the true feel and immediacy of a live concert with an arresting variety of styles cohesively drawn into a glowingly organic whole… With such astute planning and with playing of the first order, this CD amounts to much more than the sum of its parts.” Geoffrey Norris, The Telegraph    ***** BBC Music Magazine        **** The Telegraph        **** The Guardian         **** Financial Times        **** The Independent        **** Sinfini Check out our promo:

Barcelona 2015

We're really looking forward to eyeforpharma's Barcelona event next month, it's always good fun and there's always some really inspiring speakers to interview.  

Here's the promo hot off the Stanton press.  (We like the Flamenco stamp).

A yawn is a silent scream for coffee

Had a great photoshoot with our friends at Cafédirect the other day and some of the shots are live on their brand new website.  Check it and them out here: www.cafedirect.co.uk.

Oh and you might want to have a butchers at their new TV ad featuring the brilliantly funny Adam Buxton: Cafédirect TV Ad

The Power of Sport!

@wheelpower

Been working with our brilliant local charity WheelPower his week.  We are creating various short films for them, to help get the word out about the amazing and transformative work they do.

This week it was The National Junior Games where school kids with various disabilities were able to try out a variety of sports - all with the aim of helping them to find a sport they love, to encourage them to lead healthy and active lifestyles, no matter what disability they may have.

The motto of the day was "have a go" - which Paul took literally:

Wherever you pointed the camera you got great shots of either steely determination in the eyes of the kids or just massive smiles!

Stoke Mandeville Hospital has a long and very proud history of helping disabled people - and WheelPower do a fantastic job of keeping this tradition alive with the sporting activities and events they run.  Check out their site if you have a chance.

Tasty Tony Singh

Not sure how best to describe Tony Singh, one half of BBC2's 'Incredible Spice Men'.  Maybe eccentric, definitely unique; with his thick Scottish accent, his brightly coloured turbans and his passion for concocting finger licking delicious grub, he certainly knows how to put an interesting cookery book together.  We recently had the pleasure of filming him for his book launch, luckily there were still some delicious morsels left-over in the studio from the earlier photo-shoot and like Tony says; they were Tasty!

How pure the shot?

@auroraorchestra.
@iestyn_davies.

Fun shoot last week - working on a promo for Aurora Orchestra and their latest concert "How Pure The Sky" with countertenor Iestyn Davies.

The theme of the concert is all things celestial - so we needed a visual way to convey this idea of getting into the heavens, and contemplating our place under them...  Our solution was to employ a great bit of kit - the Sky Moth.

The film below is a little behind the scenes clip showing how we got the signature shot we were after - which wasn't easy as the weather was definitely against us - which made for a dramatic sky backdrop, but also made operating the Skymoth a bit tricky...

Thanks go to Dan and Michael from Skyvue for their efforts in such unfavorable weather and BIG thanks to Iestyn for agreeing to lie down in a wet, muddy field in the rain...

...and here is the full trailer for anyone wanting details about the concert:

Berlin Bound

Paul and I have just returned from a super-quick shoot in Berlin.  We were covering a conference and creating some film content with a quick turnaround edit.  All good stuff.  Most impressive though - speaking as tech geeks - was the AV set up at the conference itself.

we've covered a lot of conferences in the past - but this one was just brimming with technology - to be fair, there was quite a large room to cover...

each attendee had their own iPad to interact with the presenters, ask questions, vote on topics etc - very, very smart.

Is there such a condition as "tech-envy"?

A Proper Cuppa

Just finished shooting @Cafedirect 's new delicious One Acre Teas
We love the new packaging, (well done Mayday London for the design work).  If you want to try them you can purchase from the Cafédirect website with the new Slingshot tool thingy.  Isn't life splendid!

Rainmaker Causing a Storm

@AgnitioCLM @eyeforpharma #e4pbarca .

Super pleased that the Rainmaker launch trailer is grabbing attention!

We're back in town today after an epic 2 day trip filming at #e4pbarca.  One of our tasks was to shoot & edit the presentation of Agnitio's revolutionary new software platform Rainmaker, which was launched at the event, and then launched online on Tuesday evening.

In the weeks running up to the conference we produced a promo advertising the launch, which apparently attracted quite a bit of attention within the industry!  Here's an announcement of the launch in the medical media, including a mini review...

http://medcitynews.com/2014/03/life-science-sales-software-launch-will-blow-mind/

Watch the trailer

5 Faces of Darkness

Spent Saturday filming with Sean Hogan again for a promo for Justin Greaves' new musical adventure, Se Delan.  We sat down with the legend that is actor Billy Clarke, who previously collaborated with Sean on The Devil's Business as well as a few other projects.  Sean is directing and editing the promo, which is going to be a strange journey through the mind, with the image of Billy's visage in various twisted states set to the dark soundtrack of the song.  I'm not afraid to admit that at times it got very emotional on set.

As always working with Sean and Billy is an absolute pleasure, and we were blown away by the make-up skills of Chloe Edwards.. frightening!

Here's a teaser image comped from screengrabs from the promo, which I expect will be coming soon to all reputable vendors of great music..

Northern Rock

@CBP_Official.

Spent last Saturday shooting the promo for 'Northern Comfort', a track from the new Crippled Black Phoenix album White Light Generator (out next month!).  Our old war buddy Sean Hogan directing, Nick & I filming.

We've been fans of CPB for years so it's pretty exciting to be collaborating on this film.  It was a nice, relaxed day - promo shoots can get notoriously long, but everyone enjoyed themselves. Big thanks to Chris' partner for the most welcome lunch!  The band were great, stayed focused and rocking for the whole day which made it so easy for us.  Most importantly, the track itself sounds wicked, and hopefully we can do it justice with some cool visuals.

Another great thing was that we got to roll out the Canon C100 and really let rip - it was just one of those days when everything you wave the camera at looks effortlessly cool!

So the footage of the band is in the can, Sean is now shooting some bizarre sounding stuff to finish the rest of the story involving a doll house.

Expecting something very, very dark...

John Whaite Bakes again...

@JohnWhaiteBakes.

Jim and I spent a mouth watering day last week working on a couple of recipe films for the gastronomic talent that is Mr John Whaite.

John is great to work with (we did some recipes with him last year) - he is a lot of fun on set and really knows how to "bake for the camera".

We were filming a couple of recipes from his upcoming book - and they were absolutely delicious.  (one of the perks of these shoots is eating the end result once the filming is done!)

I don't want to give anything away about the secrets behind the recipes themselves 'cos we're still working on the edit...you'll just have to Whaite and see the films when they're released... (see what I did there?) but suffice to say - they were baked to perfection.

Too busy for the likes of you!

OK so none of us have blogged since November, very slack there's no denying it.  Here's a taste of what we've been busy with:

The Aurora 2014 brochure and promo complete.

Black Friday happened and we were on the scene to help Asda to document the momentous occasion with both stills and film.  (Nick even made it into the Evening Standard!)

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/black-friday-sees-shopping-frenzy-and-scuffles-break-out-in-uk-stores-8972440.html

We also helped Asda champion their British cattle farmers although some of the places we visited were less easy to get to than others:

We shot an instruction maintenance guide for RGK Wheelchairs and Wheelpower which is still in the edit phase.  These guys supplied some of the British athletes with their chairs during the olympics:

There was a report from INREV...

Investors bullish about real estate in 2014 from INREV on Vimeo.

Our Promo for Leiths School of Food and Wine went live!




and of course Pearl became the latest member of 'Family Stanton'.

3D Aurora Spectacular

I'm holding a still warm from the printing press miniature masterpiece, in the form of the new Aurora Orchestra 2014 season brochure.  What a mouthful!  And what an epic journey we've had, from dawn shoots at Tower Bridge to jitterbug dance halls, not to mention the Nevada desert (well a posh car showroom in Chiswick).

The 3D printing specialists at Levavo did an incredible job creating perhaps the most detailed miniature printed 3D figures that have ever been born.  There's even a scaled Steinway Grand piano, for crying out loud!

A massive round of applause should go to @johnreidpiano, Aurora's principle pianist for not only squeezing into a undersized wetsuit but also for his superhuman strength, grit and determination (see photo) and I should also mention @ThomasGouldVLN, for his unique shape-shifting dance moves, (those lessons certainly paid off)!

Also - well done Paul Goodwin for making my photos look good. x