New Compositing Showreel 2022

So I've just finished a long period (15 months) working for Cartoon Saloon. I was mostly doing Nuke compositing on their upcoming Feature Film for Netflix "My Father's Dragon".

Now I'm looking for new work, so I've refreshed my Compositing Showreel a little.

New Music Video: Tot Taylor "This New Abba Record"

Tot Taylor has a new 7" single out today! This is the 3rd music video I've made for Tot's music.

This time I decided to create the video in square format. Most online videos these days eventually require a square version for use on social media platforms, so I thought why not just plan the film to be square from the get go. I also liked the idea of using a kind of "rule of four" to guide the design, as the song is about a particularly famous Swedish foursome. So going square seemed to work with this idea, plus the idea that record covers are naturally square too.

When choosing a typeface for all this, the four line font I found for 'ABBA' seemed to fit in with the whole concept and have that 'disco era' look going for it too. I found a three line font for the word 'TOT'.

New Video: Animation for Aldi "Hunger" campaign

This video was commissioned by ad. agency BCW on behalf of Aldi for their campaign to provide food for families in need. It features the voice of Marcus Rashford and illustrations by Lisa Stickley.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Chris Gavin (@chrisgavinfilms) on Sep 19, 2019 at 6:04am PDT

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

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Chris Gavin (@chrisgavinfilms) on Sep 21, 2019 at 4:17am PDT

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.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Chris Gavin (@chrisgavinfilms) on Sep 22, 2019 at 4:43am PDT

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.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Chris Gavin (@chrisgavinfilms) on Dec 21, 2019 at 9:04am PST

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.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Chris Gavin (@chrisgavinfilms) on Dec 30, 2019 at 5:09am PST

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...

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,

New Music Video: Virna Lindt 'Avant Garde'

You wait ages for a blog post to come along and wehey, another one ... Here's a low-fi motion graphics video I just made for Virna Lindt's new track "Avant Garde".

For this track I was asked to make a simpler kind of music video with a tighter production schedule. I only had the vinyl record and a couple of still photos of the artist Virna Lindt to work with. The track has a certain pulsing shuffle to it, so I used lots of 'dust' and 'noise' in the graphics to keep the imagery buzzing and alive throughout the track.

New Music Video: Tot Taylor 'Featurette'

Well it's been bloomin' ages since my last blogfession; over a year it seems! I've been pretty busy in the meantime, scrabbling around making a living and not always making things I can write much about.

However...

Here's a music video I just made for musician, gallerist and novelist Tot Taylor. The track 'Featurette' is a somewhat autobiographical number, in which Tot addresses his teenage self circa 1973.

When I first met Tot a few months ago, he told me a story from his teenage years. Like me, (as it happens) he grew-up in Cambridge. As an aspiring pop star, Tot bunked-off school one day with his teenage bandmates and took the train down to London. Armed only with a demo cassette and an AtoZ street map, Tot's band tracked down all of the record companies they could and proceeded to 'knock on doors'. After many rejections Tot's crew ended-up at the offices of Island Records where miraculously they found a sympathetic ear... Amazingly, Tot and his band of schoolmates recorded a session for the legendary Island Records label. But then and there, the dream kind of hit the buffers. Cut to the present day and Tot decided to revive his song 'Featurette' and rework it as a wry 'message to his naive but ambitous teenage self'.

For such a story of retro pop ambition, I decided to make a film in the style of a naive 1970s era teenage film-maker. The animation is rough and wobbly and the live action footage is mostly shot on 8mm and 16mm cine film. Not such a leap as it turned out ;).

New Video: Simon's Cat Logic,'Moving House'

Here's a new video I've just made (directing/shooting/editing) for Simon's Cat Ltd. This episode explores the issues around moving house with your cats.

NEW COMPOSITING SHOWREEL 2018

This 2018 showreel showcases some of my more recent compositing and motion graphics work. I have been working professionally in animation production for over twenty years. I've been employed for A LOT of that time as an animation compositor.

In around 2002 I switched from Animo and Toonz, to working in Adobe After Effects. All of the work seen here has been comped in that software. Some of the work is from larger projects at studios such as Nexus, Lupus, Tandem, Not To Scale etc. and other clips are from smaller projects I've undertaken independently as a freelance commercial film-maker.

If you'd like to hire me to work in your animation studio, or work as a director/producer for your next video, please do drop me an email at chris@chrisgavin.com

New Video: 'Secur'IT' promo video for Kaspersky

Here's a promo video Kaspersky Labs are using online to launch and promote their 'Secur'IT' competition for students. This link shows the movie as it is now published over on the Kaspersky YouTube channel.

I delivered this video a couple of weeks back working for agency 90Seconds. I helped the client to helped edit their script, then created this cut using stock images/footage.

There's also a French version here ...

The old DIY super8 film scanner project rides again !

Well I've been at home this last month and sorting through a lot of old things. High on a shelf in my studio I found a plastic box with my abandoned cine film digitizing project inside; so I dusted it off a bit and decided to see if I could get it running again.

Amazingly it DOES seem to be working!

I documented this project a bit back in the day. I stopped working on all this cine film stuff around 2014 when I had more pressing work/life commitments to attend to.

So not only have I now got it up and runnig again, but I've even made some small improvements! I've got the device working now with my newer Panasonic GH4 camera rather than the Canon 600D DSLR I was using before. I figure that the smaller micro 4/3 sensor is better for this application requiring less extreme macro magnification than the larger APSC sensor needed. Also the GH4 has an 'electronic shutter' mode which should be a lot more durable than the all-mechanical shutter on the Canon DSLR.

The electronic triggering circuit of my device needed a slight modification to trigger the shutter of the GH4. But I got it working after some web searching and a few hours of further tinkering.

So to show the world the current status of this project I've made this short video...

New Video: Simon's Cat Logic,'Missing Cats'

Here's a new video I've just made (directing/shooting/editing) for Simon's Cat Ltd. This episode looks into what do do if your cat goes missing.

New Video: 'Car Show 2018' shot in WIDESCREEN ANAMORPHIC

I took my camera to the local car show (The Enfield Pageant of Motoring) again over the weekend, and this is what I saw there ...



This time, I decided to add my anamorphic adaptor in to the mix. I've had the Panasonic LA7200 for quite a long time and used it on many of my super8 cine film projects. Super 8 is usually a 4x3 ratio format, so this 1.33X anamorphic adaptor enables 16x9 shooting instead.

When you add the adaptor to a camera already shooting 16x9 ratio then you get an even wider wider aspect ratio. So instead of 1920x1080 (16x9 HD) the adaptor enables shooting at 2560x1080. So with this adaptor I'm getting a super-wide ratio of 2.37:1.

I used my Panasonic GH4 camera to shoot this. As I love the 96fps clow-mo mode so much, most of the footage was shot at 1920x1080 FHD size rather than the 4K mode the camera is better known for. In premiere I interpreted the footage with a 1.333 Pixel aspect ratio to effectively 'stretch' the footage wider in post. I then exported at this 2560x1080 size to upload to YouTube.

New Video: 60 second smartphone photography tutorial 'Long exposures'

Smartphone Video: Schiphol to Amsterdam in 90 seconds.

Last year (2017), my cousin Steve sent me some phone footage he shot on a visit to the Netherlands. He shot views from his train ride from Schiphol airport in to Amsterdam Central station on his Iphone. Steve shot this using the 8mm app which I think does gives it a somewhat filmic quality.

Steve asked me if if I could put the clips together in some way, so I did. Here's the edit I put together...

From time to time I sometimes dabble in making my own soundtrack music and this is one of those such occasions. The 'music' here was made using Mixcraft software.