Four New Product Videos for Nevion

I'm proud to now reveal the four product videos I have just made for new client Nevion which the company have just published on their YouTube channel. It was also great to be working again with my old colleague Philip Pepper as my Agent/Producer on these.

Nevion produces tech equipment for the TV & Broadcast industry. Nevion's innovative systems are used by content broadcasters worldwide to transport media streams from one location to another and to ensure the quality and reliability of such links.

I was asked to make four product videos highlighting key features for three hardware products and one software product in the Nevion range.

First up, here's the Nevion Sublime X2 Router for switching audio and video signals in tight situations...

For these videos the client had already written the Voice-Over Script. I sourced suitable VO recordings, and meanwhile set-about storyboarding the visuals for each video.

This is the TNS4200 Monitoring Probe for ensuring the quality of video streams...

I presented the client with a fairly thorough storyboard for each video within the first four days of each production to enable discussion and feedback.

This is the NX4600 Media Gateway for encoding and decoding media streams across IP networks...

This is the VideoIPath software solution for monitoring and controlling video networks including Nevion's hardware and 3rd party products too...

I particularly enjoyed making these videos and always love the challenge of presenting complex or highly technical subject matter with maximum precision and clarity.

The Nevion team are showing their products from their booth at the NAB Show for the TV industry in Las Vegas this week. I wish them an enjoyable and productive time at the show.

Stills from New Video for Vanderpump & Sykes Solicitors

Here's news (with a few stills) of a video project delivered for a new client.

I have just completed a six minute motion graphics video for Enfield-based law firm Vanderpump & Sykes.
Visitors to the firm's Windmill Hill office will be able to see the video running on a large HD screen situated in the firm's reception area.



The video is 'modular' in form,comprising of nine sections presenting a menu of the extensive legal services and specialisms on offer.



The video has been devised to run silently to maintain the serenity of the office environment.



With a six minute running time, the video has been designed to loop seamlessly: the content can be run continuously throughout the working day.



The animated typography is set in the 'Agenda' typeface. The warm and autumnal colour palette has been chosen to complement existing print and web material from the firm.



I offer my video production services under my own name, trading as chrisgavin.com. I am available to work for agencies or clients directly and always very keen to take on new projects. Please email if you'd like to discuss developing video content for your business too.

New Video for 'Sofreh: The Art of Persian Celebration' Book Launch event.

I was very happy to be invited recently to attend the launch event for the new book 'Sofreh, The Art of Persian Celebration' held at the English Speaking Institute in Mayfair. Throughout January, I have been working on video content to be screened at the launch event and possibly other occasions in the future.

I worked with the book's author Maryam Khosrowshahi and publisher (Hali Publishing Ltd.) to create two videos to play continuously for the guests. Sofreh is the art of table presentation for celebratory occasions and practiced in Iran and by Persian communities elsewhere around the world too.

The book is presented in two sumptuously bound volumes; book one 'Nowruz' details Persian New Year celebrations whilst Book two 'Aqd' explores the use of Sofreh displays in Persian weddings. The book explores Sofreh as an artform, including detailed studies of its historical and cultural roles.

Find out more about this fine publication at the book's website here.

New Promo Video for Phonebook.club

Here's a new app demo / promo video I have just delivered for Phonebook.club. The video is now being used online to promote the new smartphone app and raise awareness for a crowd-funding campaign now taking place on Indiegogo here.

The video is quite a mixed media piece, combining footage, photography and a little stop-motion and CG work too. I wrote the script and completed all of the video production work on this one. The video was delivered in around a four week turnaround from initial briefing.

For anyone interested in how I create this kind of work, the client has also uploaded my rough animatic to Vimeo. This is a very crude version of the video I made early on in the development process. So in the interests of 'showing the workings' here is my animatic (rough version) of the same video.

Simon's Cat 'Vet Visit' - Half a Million Hits!

Here's the latest video I made for Simon's Cat Ltd. It was uploaded to the Simon's Cat YouTube channel just before Christmas and has clocked-up over 500,000 views already. In this video we follow Simon Tofield on a reserch visit to the UK headquarters of the Cats Protection charity in Sussex.

Further Adventures in 3D Printing: 16mm Film Scanner Parts.

So a while back I spent a lot of my 'spare' time building a DIY Film-scanner for 're-photographing' the tiny frames of Super8 film. Suffice to say that now I'm starting to dabble with a 16mm film camera, I am ultimately going to want to digitize this larger film too.

This could be a long and possibly fruitless endeavor, but I'm making a start on it. This time I'm thinking about making a film gate with a claw action to pull the film strip through one frame at a time. As before, I'll probably use my DSLR camera with some macro rings to re-photograph the frames as digital stills.

First of all I found the specifactions for 16mm movie film online, here's the dimensions I am working with.

Here's a first look at my prototype film gate mechanism. I'm designing this in Cinema 4D, outputting .stl files and sending these off to Shapeways to have them 3D printed from black 'detail' plastic.

This version of the mechanism is made of 3 parts, a film channel (shown in yellow), a moving bar with two claw teeth (grey) and a top plate (green) to apply some downward pressure to the film. This is probably the simplest kind of mechanism to go for, although more complicated (and precise) mechanisms than this tend to be used in proper film equipment.

I've already got the first couple of parts back from Shapeways (from a slightly earlier design), Here they are.

These parts do seem to fit the film quite well which is encouraging. As I've found before, getting things 3D printed is very much an iterative process, you design, you make you test; then you do it all again... it's not exactly cheap either.

I've now ordered some more parts to make the mechanism shown above, so maybe in a couple of weeks time when the parts come back I'll have a little more to show here.