Pocket production

With smartphones having enough megapixels and HD quality video for webcasts - the logical extension was to add a few lenses for different situations. Hows this wheel of 3 for the iPhone 4 - a wide angle, a fisheye and a telephoto. Shooting that mobilephone movie just got a whole lot better.
Deon
pic - photojojo

Palmiet shoot

The low hum of serious stuff happening, where science and engineering and civils meet in harmony and peak power requirements are met. Busy with a shoot recce down in the bowels of the earth, with the turbines and stators and phases and stuff. Heavy, impressive Hydro machinery kept in motion with a calm, professional team. Till my crowd get there...another safety DVD on the cards - with a twist - watch this space, its gonna be fun!
Deon
pic ESKOM

November 3rd

This isn't a sponsored message, but something bigs coming out of Canon on November 3rd in Hollywood. The hypes been generated for 2 months, everywhere you read rumours about what it could be, local camera shops are guessing it might be a video camera building on the success of their 7D and 5D cameras.

But the gut feeling is a gamechanger is approaching - and I'm going to have to find some cash...And if it's all for nought, then I won't believe the press release they send out ever again - pressures on!

Deon

Head of Steam

At the Transnet walk through with Robin Carlisle, getting his point across. Two minutes later I hurtled a flick flack up the stairs into the refurbished coach, ripping out the headphone jack in front of the assembled media crew. Camera repairs are costing more than I charged for the gig...
Deon

Spot the Mistake

Safety DVDs - how to make them relevant, entertaining and meet the brief... get the viewer involved - pose the question...what is wrong with this scene?
He's not wearing Safety Goggles...
Deon

Shooting the Mayor

Good news stories at the launch of the MyCiTi Bus mascot - Marvin, with Patricia de Lille

Baboons

This post should have shown a pic of baboons on the urban edge...the ones debated in the papers and on radio, the ones that cause the havoc, get shot, culled, relocated...couldn't find one in the last week. Naturally, it was critical to the script, visualised and agreed on...I'm off to Freaky Feast - anyone want to wear the gorilla suit for my long shot?

Traditional Healers

I love my job! We have shot, edited and put programs together on pretty much everything...today we started a shoot with traditional healers. They're sharing the stories, customs and traditions, maintaining the essence of their culture, but up against a modern youth that isn't sure of their relevance in todays society. But with the people I've met so far, you can be sure the future is in safe hands - grounded, young traditional healers, fully in touch with their roots and ancestors, living comfortably in todays crazy world. Who are you and where do you come from - get that in place before missioning towards an uncertain future.
Deon

SA Yacht off to New York

Got an urgent call for a shoot at 12 on Monday at Royal Cape- no worries! Up for it and sounded like fun. African Access Holdings are sponsoring the SA yacht entry to the New York Regatta. It was meant to be a shoot for archive purposes, with the possibility of compiling a DVD in the future - but the story was great so I decided to pull this quick edit together and post to Youtube. Wadi from Redhill near Scarborough is part of the team - great guy! Holding thumbs for a good result - check out the story!

Lamla on the eMzantsi program

Lamla Dinga was from Masi and has now moved to Ocean View. He's really keen to shoot and edit, so I've been assisting him with training and loaning him equipment. This was his first shoot of the kids preparing for eMzantsi Carnival at the end of the year - stoked with his progress! So many stories out there.
Deon


http://youtu.be/6kifHsso5X4

Tough Job

I get these briefs to shoot stuff...and discover a world that I would have missed. How cool was this day in the middle of winter, crisp, clean, fresh water lake and spotless pathways through the biodiversity park - couple of low angles, pull focus of a duck and some ripples round a lily - can't go wrong really...
Deon

Mandela Day

Great to be part of the Mandela Day Celebrations at the City Hall - Looks like its going to be used for a lot more functions in the future. Millions raised for the Mandela Foundation, Beautiful Gate and Red Cross. We put this clip together.

A quick view - going green

Sometimes on a shoot theres an opportunity to tell another story. I had to get 3 shots of a biodigester, for about 8 seconds of another DVD I'm putting together. But there was an interesting story behind it, so I shot a bit extra and put this together. There is so much opportunity for a million similar small videos to load onto company websites and facebook pages. Sure, everybody needs the big Corporate induction, values and marketing DVD's, but the day to day stuff to update and keep site info relevant can be turned around in quicktime - or less depending if its a newsflash type event.

Keep on keepin on

How does a drive reformat itself during a power outage...and the UPS decide that its not going to perform like it said on the box? So we push on through, recover the files and start again - jump to the end game...it's easier than stressing about what just happened. We will deliver!

Food Safety DVD

Ja - funny business this. The better you do the job, the less likely they are to need another DVD! Produced a Food Safety program for Pick n Pay 5 years ago - hasn't needed an update or changes since then - My cars got a planned obsolescence - shouldn't my DVD's... Naah - keep the client happy always - good referrals, and at least I get to run a few new copies every year.

Deon

Where the buck stops

Spend the time getting the brief right and the rest is easy...and broaden the input from the sweeper to the CEO - all have an interesting perspective to add to the mix...but when all the infos in - someone must make the final call - and then we have a way forward. NEVER shoot and edit for a committee - unless you want 5 different productions!
Lessons from the front
Deon

Happy Birthday tata

Been a busy week shooting various events around Cape Town.  City Hall for the canvas auction on Saturday night - great interviews!! Thanks to Mark and Zuks for getting the shot in spite of us being forced back 4m from the red carpet. Edit will be up on Youtube - I'll post it here later.
Then todays shoot at various primary schools around Khayelitsha, singing Happy Birthday to Madiba and handing out of food packages.
Theres so much goodwill and fantastic kids with loads of potential - harness it for a supernation!
Deon

Summer luvin!

Have fun while you're doing it. It's funny, but beach scenes are written into a lot of our scripts, which brings our clients down to confirm we're sticking to the brief- and they end up suggesting sundowners and discussing progress. Work can be fun!
Deon

Girls at Play TV

I'm normally shooting down trenches, out of helicopters, hanging off pylons or doing Corporates - nice to have a change of pace. I'm sure it's something I could get into... Girls at Play promo. They're trying to motivate for a series. Quite a fun day!
Deon

BING DIGITALS BREWING SOMETHING

Watch this space... after 4 years of getting my act together for the uber website - I find the worlds moved on... and now we have iwrappers, fanpages, a melee of interconnectivity across platforms - and this blog is gonna be a small part of the cyberface twat blogosphere...its gonna be a MACHINE!!!
Deon
Bing Digital