Kube Kitchens videos

Back in December I was commissioned by Matt Whitby to shoot the essence of all Kube Showrooms across the country for their website, along with taking stills for their 2014 brochure.

Here's a the result of a lot of love and sweat !
Though very very tempting, I haven't bought a new kitchen yet but you should check their collection out, lots of styles for everyone's taste !

Supervalu Quality Campaign

Here's a behind the scenes and an edit I made on the food

Oh ! for the love of Craft !!! an interesting video project with potter Colm De Ris

This video is the perfect example of something born out of a proper team work and exchange of ideas between myself and Colm De Ris, who was very much involved in the making of it, not only by lending his voice and his image for the footage.
We shot it over 3 3-hour sessions along with a quick interview that ended up putting the whole story telling aspect of the video together. There's something really lovely in Colm's pace that matches the pace of the video, because that's the same rhythm as clay turning and all over movements going on in his workshop.
I had previously shot lifestyle short videos for Nicholas Mosse website. I thought it's a lovely idea to put the product in context and its best use. Im delighted I now got to shoot the craftmanship behind these beautiful items.

My initial idea was really based on the craftmaking process, there was going to be a lot of close ups and a lot of angles allowing to show the know-how and the evolution of the clay into a piece of art. While I haven't shown all different stages, because they were just too mechanical or not visually interesting, the whole transformation is there within 3 minutes, which I think is fascinating.

The video was shot with a Canon 5d MkII and several lenses : 16-35mm L 2.8, 70-200mm L 4, 24-70mm L 2.8. I used Final cut Pro 7 for the editing, and Audition for the audio enhancement, which is a phenomenal tool I got to learn for the purpose of this project.

www.sylviephotography.com

Adobe Creative week

I tuned into Adobe Creative week webinar yesterday (quite gutted I didn't realise it was on before that !!) and I'm amazed at the new CS6. By no mean am I going to switch back to Premiere which was the first editing software I used, I think once you've mastered (or started to..) a software, there's no need to switch to another unless it brings an awful lot more to you and your workfload. BUT it was good to see the effort was made not necessarily to make people switch to Premiere but to use other tools that could  enhance, fasten, improve your workflow as a compliment to FCP or Avid etc. Quite impressed indeed by Prelude which is sort of what Bridge is to Photoshop. Going through footage and organising everything, binning what needs to go etc, that's a big part of the editing process, I haven't tried the software yet (I believe you can try it first going here) but it looks so much faster to go through that tenious task than in FPC.

A lot of interesting discussions during this webinar, including the trends in the process of making a video (documentary, fiction...) for TV and other media, and how being able to get instant feedback from the audience thanks to youtube and the likes changed the game, improved what is being offered. Some good comments on twitter as well, check them out if you've missed yesterday's talk #CreativeWeekUK and tune in at 12 for today's talk there.

Oh and my love at first sight, aside from Prelude, was this studio...have a look at their stuff, brilliant, fun, creative...

www.sylviephotography.com

Lovecats part II : the short !!

Last weekend was quite a sunny one for once and watching the kitties enjoy the heat in their own special way urged me to do a little short about them. There's a certain amount of things I managed to get them to do but they are really like kids, they have a short interest span and then they go off do their thing.

I shot this with canon 5D MkII and a 24-70mm L lens, edited with final cut pro only, and a lot of love, a bit of magic bullet look and garageband bits and pieces. The audio was recorded separately with a zoom recorder since the audio from the camera was way too low and not clear enough.

Enjoy !

Behind the scenes videos - Brennans bread and Fleadh Ceoil

I recently put together 2 behind the scenes videos for Trevor Hart : two very different and fun shoots for Brennan's bread and the Fleadh Ceoil. Lately I've used Fujifilm X10, it's a 35mm looking camera, very compact and handy. I need to have something quick and easy to use because there's too much going on during the shoot to have the luxury to use the 5d MkII. The X10 delivers full HD videos of very decent quality that doesn't degrade that much in low light, however its focusing is weak in tricky times, say against the light (even slightly against it), low light and for close ups. Depending on what I wanted to get, it was actually more than just annoying. But overall it's a very fast and well designed camera.


Have a look at Trevor's blog for the final pictures and the full story.
To see the videos in a bigger format, just click on them, it will bring you to my YouTube channel.