We were really pleased to hear that ‘Boss Boot Camp‘ made the shortlisted 12 of the Reed Short Film Competition 2012. On Wednesday 30th May myself, Matt, Ross and James went down to the excellent Hospital Club for the awards night. Unfortunately we came close but weren’t lucky enough to win one of the three prizes on offer. We’re still really proud that the film made it to the final 12 out of 503 entries in total and we’ll come back bigger and better next year in an attempt to make it third time lucky!

Boss Boot Camp is a lighthearted action-comedy written and directed by Matt Downton and myself that explores how truly tyrannical bosses are made. It features the charismatic talent of Will Harrison-Wallace as ‘the boss’/drill sergeant and was shot over a two-day period in early March.

Our excellent cast and crew endured horrible weather, a long, exhausting weekend shoot and of course, the drill sergeant himself who is pretty terrifying at times(!) to produce a film that we’re really proud of and the first comedy I have ever attempted. There’s lots more behind-the-scenes information and photos at the Lightmill Films mini-site.

On day 1 of the shoot FXHome kindly allowed us to film the office scenes at their offices in Norwich. Later in the day we moved to The University of East Anglia (of which most of the crew and half of the cast are graduates) who allowed us to film the classroom scenes in the congregation hall. On day 2 we shot the boot camp scenes (amidst the biggest downpour of the year!) at my dad’s farm in Suffolk.

We’ll be teaming back up with many of the same people to continue making short films and other creative projects. Check back at the Lightmill Films website to see our progress and our other films.

Sheltered from the Rain: A pop-up tent provided me with some cover from the rain and I was able to shoot from a small opening in the side – Completely unplanned but an effective solution!

Umbrella: Two of our cameramen James Gorman & Ant Essberger, filming from underneath our only umbrella, in fact, Ant stayed under it all day, bless him.

Props: Our lead actor Will using a tiny, not-so-macho umbrella to stay dry during the last few scenes.

Despite being a lengthy 25 minutes long, I’ve watched it at least a dozen times. It puts a fantastic spin on the story of balancing career and addiction (perhaps a funnier, more lighthearted Shame?!) as we see Drake (T.J. Miller) and Lindsay (Lizzy Caplan) battle with alcoholism. Jordon Vogt-Roberts’ film brings together brilliantly witty writing and a serious message all in one, transitioning from often hilarious slapstick and satire to a touching sensitivity that sees the characters realise and tackle their problems head-on by themselves.

Successful Alcoholics by Jordan Vogt-Roberts:

So to get a few of the more obvious things out of the way, in comparison to the 5D’s the C300 was the bigger, bulkier and ultimately more exhausting camera to use on the day. The 9kg tripod I was using with it didn’t help of course! and in fact, the C300 felt well balanced in my hand for any hand-held stuff, and equally as useable and sturdy on a monopod. But, all those features that the 5D is missing really came into their own and outweighed the slight weight/bulk disadvantage. Considering I’d only had around 3-4 hours experience with the camera before the ‘big day’ too, the buttons were surprisingly intuitive and easy to learn.

To put my use of the C300 into perspective, it was a 15 hour day from 9am ‘til midnight, shooting almost continuously throughout. As an overall evaluation of the camera it’s useful features such as peaking, zebras and waveforms really, really impressed me, along with all the other things that the camera has been getting so much praise for; the high ISO is as staggeringly clean as people have said. Also, coupled with the built in ND’s, there was rarely a situation where I had to compromise my shot in any way. I could choose my aperture and my ISO to suit any and all situations; If I wanted my shot to be really shallow in bright sunshine, 3 clicks on the ND+ button and I was ready to go (with a DSLR I’d then be fumbling around in my kit bag for my fader ND and the right step-up ring.) In this sense it’s a much faster camera to shoot run-and-gun with.

The peaking feature in particular was just a dream to use when doing focus pulls and needing to reframe and re-focus every few minutes. The zebras remained on almost all of the time, although sometimes I did find that they disagree with what the screen is showing you. It still seems odd to me that there would be zebras over a wall or object that I could clearly see colour and detail in – basically to the eye it doesn’t look blown out at all, but the zebras told me otherwise. On top of that, on the first day, the screen was set to +2 sharpening and slightly darker than the image actually was, meaning that what I thought was sharp and exposed correctly, was often not quite as sharp and slightly overexposed. However, by day two (the wedding day itself) these issues had been addressed and the screen was showing much more accurately what I was shooting.

The only negative points I could find with the camera were with the some of the buttons and the camera’s form factor. The default settings for some of the functions seem a little oddly placed and required some customizing to make them faster to change when shooting run and gun. The form factor of the camera also made it quite difficult to shoot anything particularly high up, because once it’s on a tripod at full extension, the viewfinder, and even more so the screen, are a good 2 feet from your face! It meant that at times I was struggling to see exactly what I was shooting. There is of course a million and one different ways to configure the screen layout – it can be up top or flipped down and round to sit lower and more side-by-side with the camera body – but it still remains a long way from view if you’re shooting on a tall tripod over people’s heads!

In terms of the camera’s weight and size, it was actually a lot more portable and easy to get around quickly than I had first imagined. With a Canon 24-70mm L lens on the front the camera it was around 3kg or so, which is still very light and actually a more solid weight to eradicate shakes. On a DSLR, where the weight of your camera rarely exceeds 2kg, those shakes creep in when you’re handheld because firstly DSLR’s aren’t particularly comfortable to shoot with handheld and also because there’s not a lot of weight in your hands either. The C300 felt like a really solid, sturdy camera to be filming with. I used it on a Manfrotto 504 tripod and a Konova slider, and the C300 felt like a well-matched camera for these supports. It was a heavy set-up to move from place to place but I got some great stuff with it because of how secure and solid it all felt.

And for all it’s quirky little features, design, weight and many, many buttons, it all seems irrelevant when you see the image quality. The resolution and colour depth of the image that I got out of the C300 were just stunning. The information in the image means that grading will be a doddle and the sheer detail at all apertures is excellent. It’s a camera that I managed to learn in a matter of hours, and felt confident and able to use without even thinking by the end of the first day. Buttons and menus are so easy to navigate and the possibilities with the “proper video camera” features made it a firm favourite of mine already.

Particularly at Wild Beasts’ gig, the 24-70 lived up to the hype that it’s one of the best all round lenses. Images are sharp at 2.8 (something a previous lens I was using certainly wasn’t) and the way that it deals with direct light from spotlights high above the stage was fantastic; virtually no flaring whatsoever, instead it produces this awesome starburst effect.

Falsetto vocalist Hayden Thorpe of Wild Beasts

Guitarist Hugo White of The Maccabees

Orlando Weeks, Lead Singer of The Maccabees

Wild Beasts‘ vocalist, bassist and keys: Tom Fleming

Guest Appearance: Sky Larkin’s Katie Harkin on keyboard for Wild Beasts

Check out more photos from The Maccabees and Wild Beasts gigs on my Flickr Photostream

Now the making-of video that I shot behind the scenes is up online. Have a watch:

I stayed at a fantastic B&B called L’Antico Episcopio, formerly a beautiful Bishop’s Palace now converted into a luxurious 6 room bed & breakfast. Both the views inside and out of the building are breathtaking. From my room I had an incredible view into the valley that leads to Atrani, with the brilliant mountain-top town of Ravello to my left and more of Pontone and it’s stunning hills on my right. Sunsets and sunrises each day were incredible.

I filmed in most of the surrounding towns; Amalfi, Atrani, Ravello, Pontone and then headed over and around the hills towards Naples for a day to film at the historical Pompeii ruins, overlooked at all times by the gigantic Mount Vesuvius. I was extremely lucky with the weather seeing temperatures of up to 20 degrees, which for winter in Italy is rather good (and much better than the near-zero conditions back in the UK at the time.)

I got to visit plenty of tourist destinations on the Amalfi Coast, namely Amalfi itself as well as Atrani and Ravello, but I also got to see plenty of places ‘off the beaten track.’ Lots of climbing hills and walking up endless sets of ancient steps allowed me to get some of the very best and probably quite rare views of the coast.

Some more photos from my trip are here on Flickr.

My time was limited in each place apart from the B&B so I found myself shooting quite a few timelapses from my window each morning and evening. I’m still learning timelapse and I think it’s definitely a case of practice makes perfect, but I feel I’m improving with each attempt. This time around I learned that if I do an extra 50-100 shots rather than the bare minimum required it will pay off. This is because with each of the timelapses I shot in Italy I found that they were too short. They look good but they’re over almost as quickly as they begun! They’ll work well as shots to bridge between different parts of the final video but as standalone timelapses they are too short I think. Here’s a couple. You’ll have to wait to see the final video for the rest of the footage

A few behind-camera snaps:

It was the first BTS video I had shot and the resulting video is now up online.

The rest of our very talented crew included DoP Teele Killing who I regularly work with as well as David Royse (sound) and Tanya Skinner (makeup). We shot at various locations around Norwich including the University of East Anglia (mine and the lead actor Mark Jackson’s old university), an office inside ITV Anglia and at Stephan’s beautiful rural cottage. Many thanks to ITV, UEA and everyone else who helped out (there were a few runners and lots of extras who must be thanked.)

Needless to say, this was one of the most challenging projects in terms of lighting, not only because we had to work with an unusually sunny forecast but because we started losing light every day around 5pm. Shot mostly on Teele’s 5D Mark II, we managed to shoot in some very low light and difficult-to-reach places (such as Stephan’s rather grotty loft space) which again proved the benefits of using a DSLR. I helped out with lighting and camera and did some B-roll shooting on the 60D.

The film’s fantastic cast were Mark Jackson, Alex Aires and Jacob James Beswick who all excelled in their roles in the film. At this early stage of post-production we can’t let too many cats (or should I say rats) out of the bag but expect to see Peppermint at film festivals and competitions across the UK and beyond!

Also, if you’re looking to hire sound equipment in East Anglia and, like us, have found rental companies are few and far between around here head over to Rookery Productions Facebook page for enquiries; kit includes Rode NTG2 mic/ boom/ dead cat/Edirol R-44 four-input audio recorder/ lav microphones x2 (wired)/Beyerdynamic DT770 headphones: £35/day, £450 deposit +insurance +delivery.

This year’s Bestival, Rob Da Bank’s festival on the Isle of Wight, narrowly avoided being hit by the tail end of hurricane Katia. Instead festival-goers were treated to a mostly dry weekend of sporadic sunshine and showers, once they got there of course.

In the interests of getting the negatives out of the way first, it must be reiterated that getting to Bestival is probably the worst thing about the festival. Ferry services from Southampton and Portsmouth are seriously over-stretched leaving thousands of revellers subject to several hours of seemingly endless queuing. Our wait was over four hours, with our booking for 4pm shifting slowly but surely towards gone 8pm. Once you’re off the ferry you find yourself in another queue for a shuttle bus or taxi to actually make the 6/7 mile trip to the festival site. We knew this to be the case and hitched a lift off the ferry with Paul, a security guard from ProTouch Security, working the festival. (He had waited three times as long as we had to catch the ferry!) Huge thanks to him!

The chaos at Southampton's Red Funnel Quay

Two of my highlights of the weekend were SBTRKT who pulled in a huge Big Top crowd to play a blinding set of his ambient, dubstep material. Whilst Sampha’s husky vocals struggled to transmit across the entire crowd it was still a treat to see SBTRKT drum live to recreate his unmistakable sound for the Bestival crowd.

The second highlight started immediately after SBTRKT finished. Approaching the stage to the distinctive sound of sirens were Chuck D, Flavor Flav and DJ Lord, better known as Public Enemy. They played to a huge crowd on the main stage and whilst their age is admittedly starting to show classics like Don’t Believe the Hype, Night of the Living Baseheads and Bring The Noise still sounded fantastic and their stage presence was as entertaining as ever.

After a break to enjoy some of the other Bestival sights and indulge in some fantastic festival food it was time for Magnetic Man to show exactly what a main stage Magnetic Man set should consist of; dazzling visuals (from their uber-expensive lighting rig) and flawless sounds. It proved to be the best set of the night on the main stage as Pendulum (Friday’s ill-chosen headliners) bypassed a lot of their superior Hold Your Colour tracks, instead opting for their over-played, over-hyped modern material.

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Some more surreal moments led us into the evening with The Village People performing on the main stage before Jaguar Skills, Paloma Faith and Grandmaster Flash followed to restore Bestival back to some sort of normality. Of course, this was the rockstars, popstars and divas fancy dress day of the festival, so everywhere you looked was like seeing The Village People.

The Saturday night was the strongest lineup of acts of the weekend and the treat of a main stage medley of PJ Harvey followed The Cure was wonderful. PJ Harvey, still on a high from her Mercury Prize win just a few nights before, had a relatively short but stunning set with tracks from all her albums stunning the audience.

In between PJ Harvey and The Cure we headed across the arena to try and catch some of Ed Sheeran’s set in the tiny Psychadelic Worm tent. However, after squeezing in, literally under the sides of the tent (to the dismay of Bestival security) we cut our losses (along with frustrated parents with children and hundreds of other fans) and headed back for The Cure. That was perhaps the biggest disappointment of the weekend, that the festival organisers had somehow not recognised the huge popularity of Suffolk-born singer-songwriter. It also could have ended horribly as the tent became crammed well over capacity.

Nevertheless, all was quickly forgotten as Robert Smith and co. took to the main stage to belt out a phenomenal main stage performance that lasted a staggering two and a half hours. Personal highlights included Lullaby, Just Like Heaven and A Forest but the whole set was mesmerising and proved they really were the main attraction at this years Bestival.

Saturday felt like an all-nighter as Primal Scream took to the Big Top straight after The Cure before a brilliant Metronomy performance at 2.15am rounded off a stunning and unrelenting 6 hours of music. Their excellent The English Riviera proving as popular and poignant as debut Nights Out.

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So, Bestival suffered from the year-on-year problems of it’s location (please just move it to somewhere in the south!) but proved once again that once you’re there it’s a fantastic festival that really does cater for everything. There’s certainly never a lack of things to do and pulling in acts like The Cure is sure to cement as one of the big-hitters of the festival circuit.