Thursday, July 09, 2015

My Past Year in Videos

About this time last year, the directors of TANDEM Films decided to call it a day and announced the closure of the company. So having worked at the studio for twelve years, I was out in the world looking for work ...

As a family man and mortgagee I had to find an income somehow from my skills and experiences, so I started offering my services on a freelance basis to anyone who might value them. Job offers didn't exactly flood in, so I decided to start making calls, sending out emails and see if I could start generating some work.

So over the last year I have been somehow been finding video projects to make. Some of the fruits of this labour can be seen here...

July 2014

Simon's Cat 'Off To The Vet: a behind the scenes glimpse. 01:56
A promotional 'Behind The Scenes' film featuring Simon Tofield storyboarding his new film project 'Off to The Vet'

August 2014

Simon's Cat 'Off To The Vet: Story Inspiration. 02:16
A promotional film featuring Simon Tofield and his new film project 'Off to The Vet'

September 2014

FusePump, BuyNow Explained 02:00
An 'explainer' film for FusePump to show how their BuyNow web marketing product works.

October 2014

Arte Ottomana 1450-1600 08:45
An 8 minute documentary for Hali Publishing to accompany an exhibition of Ottoman era artworks showing at the Palazzo Lomellino gallery in Genoa. (Italian with Enflish over-titles).

November 2014

Simon's Cat 'Off To The Vet: Vet Visit'
A promotional documentary for Simon's Cat Ltd. documenting a visit to the Cats Protection Charity Headquarters by Simon's Cat creator Simon Tofield.

December 2014

Thomas & Friends YouTube content (intro only). 0:20
I made the 20 seconds motion graphics introduction now being used by Hit! Entertainment to brand all of their Thomas & Friends YouTube video content. Produced by Spider Eye.

January 2015
Sofreh: The The Art of Persian Celebration. 8:00
I made a motion graphics 'slide show' to play at the London book launch of a very special art book by author Maryam Khosrowshahi and Hali Publishing. (The video shows much of the book content and can't be viewed here.)

February 2015

Vanderpump & Sykes Solicitors 6:00
A longer 8 minute version of this motion graphics film plays on a continual loop at the headquarters of this legal firm.

March 2015

Phonebook.club 1:23

April 2015

Nevion Product videos 4 x 1:40
I made 4 product videos for this tech company producing studio equipment for the broadcast industry. .

May 2015
Currently unrelaeased app. demo video 1:20
More Photoshop background artwork made for Thomas & Friends.

June 2015
Some After Effects compositing work for an old TANDEM colleague...

So if anybody out there is remotely interested, that's most of what I've been doing for the year since TANDEM closed down.

Sunday, July 05, 2015

Simon Draws 'Squirrels'

Here's a newly-released episode in the Simon Draws series of videos I put-together for the Simon's Cat YouTube channel.

We recorded Simon Tofield talking whilst he's drawing to make these entertaining tutorial-style videos. Simon draws these digitally using a Wacom tablet and Adobe Flash software. We captured his drawing performance directly using the Quicktime 'Screen Capture' option.

The audio was recorded simultaneously using my Tascam DR07 mk II recorder and Rode VideomicPro microphone. The editing on these videos is pretty minimal; we combine the best takes and put these together on one 'page', then round the episodes off to a neat three minutes each. Although we use 'best takes' and cut-out unnecessary pauses, we don't speed-up the drawing footage, so these really do show what a talented artist Simon Tofield is.

The music track was composed specifically for these by Russell Pay a.k.a 'Shrooty'.