Monday, December 21, 2020

New Music Video: The Bob Baker Sound "The Way It Is"



Here's a music video for The Bob Baker Sound's new track "The Way It Is.". The band and management team shot this performance video for their track on mobile phones. I got all the footage to edit together and decided to add some graphics and animation inserts too.

Friday, October 23, 2020

New Music Video: Benjamin Scheuer "Lafayette Square"


Here's a music video for Benjamin Scheuer's new track "Lafayette Square". I had just two weeks to turn this video around, so we decided to create a simpler 'lyric video', mostly using typography to tell the story.

Friday, October 16, 2020

New Music Video: Tot Taylor "I'll go my own way"


Here's a music video I've just made for Tot Taylor's new track "I'll Go My Own Way". Making this video was pretty much my 'lockdown project' from earlier this year. The track has just been released by Campus, available exclusively through Rough Trade. Buy the 7" vinyl here ... https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/tot-taylor/i-ll-go-my-own-way-on-my-mind

Saturday, July 11, 2020

New Video: Caterham High School Tour (6th Form)


Here's another very quick turnaround video I just made for Caterham High School. Due to the lockdown, not many prospective pupils have been able to visit the school to have a look around and meet their new teachers. So I was asked to come in for a day, film what I could, then create this short 'virtual tour' of the school. The aim of the video is to show prospective 6th form students around the school buildings and introduce the key staff members.

Friday, June 26, 2020

New Video: Caterham High School Tour for New Year 7s


Here's a very quick turnaround video I just made for Caterham High School. Due to the lockdown, not many prospective pupils have been able to visit the school to have a look around and meet their new teachers. So I was asked to come in for a day, film what I could, then create this short 'virtual tour' of the school. The aim of the video is to show new pupils around the school buildings and introduce the key staff members they are most likely to meet in their first year.

Sunday, February 09, 2020

Further Experiments in DIY Cine Film Scanning.

On and off over the last decade I have been messing about with various ideas and methods for digitizing cine film using homebrew technolgies. My efforts have been focussed on Super8 and laterly on 16mm formats. The aim of all this,is mainly to make shooting on these film formats more affordable and time-efficient too.

Around 2008 I was playing around with the adapted cine projector, frame by frame PC grabbing technique. It was difficult to set-up and the video cameras of that era tended to be just SD resolution. I also ended-up 'adapting' my poor old Chinon projector beyond repair.
http://www.chrisgavin.com/2008/09/diy-tk-set-up.html

I leapt back into this a couple of years ago with a new device. I began experimenting with getting some components 3D printed and learning a little bit about electronics and Arduino too. By 2018, this device was looking like this...
http://www.chrisgavin.com/2018/06/the-old-diy-super8-film-scanner-project.html

In recent months, I've been back on the case with renewed vigour and have been documenting my tests/expirements a little as Instagram posts. Here' I'll collect together and share some of this work...

19/09/19 EXPERIMENT
Using a photosensor and Arduino to detect the sprocketholes in some 16mm movie film.



21/09/19 EXPERIMENT
Using the Arduino board to trigger the shutter of a Panasonic Lumix GH4 camera to take still photos.



23/09/19 EXPERIMENT
A 3D printed film gate for 16mm cine film. The photo sensor from the earlier experiment is now built into this.



21/12/19 EXPERIMENT
I've added a continuous rotation servo motor to move the film backwards and forwards through the film gate. I'm using Processing code here to run this from my PC with a simple GUI.



30/12/19 EXPERIMENT
Now we can see these elements from the previous experiments put together. The servo motor moves the film. The photo sensor detects the sprocket holes and the GH4 camera is triggered to take a photo. All of this is controlled by an Arduino, a little bit of circuitry and Processing code running on the host PC.



CONCLUSION:

This is the setup I used to capture the 'CONSTANTINE BAY' black and white 16mm footage seen in this previous post.

I eventually got this working well enough to digitize small amounts of film. The registration of the resulting frames was pretty lousy, so I always had to apply stabilization to the captured images to make them usable. I've been using the After Effects warp stabilzer feature to do this.

I'm amazed to have got this far really. I'm very much learning about electronics, engineering and programming as I go along with this project.

I think the poor registration of this system is the area that needs to be looked-into next. My thinking is to try a machine vision camera instead of the bulky GH4 camera seen here. I'm curious to see if some of the functions of capturing and registration could be developed as software rather than hardware solutions. More about this to follow...








Monday, January 06, 2020

New 16mm film : Constantine Bay Home Movie



Here's some 16mm cine film I shot and DIY processed around five years ago. I then lost the roll of film and have only just found it again!

Meanwhile, I've been playing around with DIY film scanning methods again and have hacked-together a system for digitizing 16mm film frames too.

So this video above may look like a grainy and blotchy home movie ... it is ... but ... I built my own spiral tank to process this, developed it at home in coffee, then digitized the footage using a home made film scanner. DIY film-making doesn't get much more DIY than this,