So what’s all this Fairtrade stuff about?
I don’t know about you, but I’ve heard a bit about Fairtrade, but I’ve not really understood it or even been bothered about it. One thing I did have experience of and that’s the Fairtrade coffee. I was given some once and it tasted awful. It was quite a few years ago and I’m assured that it has got a lot better.
Set against this very limited experience of Fairtrade, I was asked by the Co-op to cover their Fairtrade Fortnight event at the end of February. This is a nationwide attempt at increasing the awareness of fairly traded goods and every region in the country has their own ideas. Greater Manchester decided to bring over a ‘real live’ coffee producer from Columbia as their centre piece to a series of visits, talks and events promoting Fairtrade in the power bases of Manchester. The idea is to promote the purchasing of Fairtrade goods in the local government, schools and large companies within the area. This way the overall quantity of produce purchased should increase substantially.
Now this, potentially, all sounds terminally boring. On the surface, it is only for the devotee of Fairtrade and for the green eco-warriors and tree huggers. So, my challenge is to make a 20min short documentary which covers the events and keeps the pace up so I don’t lose everyone’s interest. Should be interesting. Hopefully.
I’ve made a start on the edit, and you can see it here. My brief was to cover the events and to, literally, document what happened. It’s been quite a challenge so far and one of the most difficult edits I’ve undertaken. I hope it’s light enough to keep you interested and detailed enough to satisfy my client. I have to say, I’ve been very impressed by what the Fairtrade Foundation has accomplished and the real difference it’s made to people’s lives. So, I fully expect you all to look out for the logo and buy Fairtrade when you can. The Co-op is a good place to buy it as well!
Here’s a few pictures to excite you…
Doing the leg work
Here’s another promo film for a prosthetic company called RSL Steeper. They have a cool new way of measuring patient’s limb shapes using a laser camera gadget. This makes the limbs they make much more comfortable for the wearer and they can store the shape in case the patient ever loses their leg or damages it. They also use a computer controlled milling machine to make the moulds and a fancy computer system called Meditech IT, to hold all the patient records in.
For those who are interested in the technical stuff. I shot this in HDV and transcoded to SD resolution ProRes 422(HQ) for the edit. I knew I wanted to grade the sequence so I tried ProRes to keep the colour gamut as wide as possible. The final piece was output to H264 for inclusion in a Powerpoint presentation. ProRes 422(HQ) was good to use, but heavy on storage and heavy on processing power when rendering. Managed OK with it though.
It was fun to shoot and to make something creative out of it. However, throughout the entire shoot the temptation to crack the “you’re pulling my leg” gag proved almost irresistible…
I’m washing my hands of it
Today’s events were slightly bizarre. I arrived at 2.00pm at the design studio where I was told to go. After a brief meeting, a group of us drove to someone’s house where I later found myself standing in that someone’s bath, filming a girl washing her hands…
This isn’t the script to a shady movie. The reality couldn’t be further away. In actuality, I was filming a short film for a web site about hand washing hygiene for the NHS. We needed a set and a model, pronto. So one of the guys in the office volunteered his house and one of the girls in the office volunteered her hands.
We had to work really quickly, so I shot it on the Z7 compact flash card to speed up the ingest. Also, I was using a couple daylight temperature lights. I bounced these from the ceiling to increase the overall ambient level of light and give the room a nice soft light. The voiceover was made by the medical professional stood to my right (just outside the bath!) during the shoot. After 40 minutes, I was on my way back to the office to start the edit.
Log and Transfer using Final Cut Pro is very easy to use and before so very long, the edit was underway. Aside from cutting, the biggest decision to get right was the grading. I generated the look you see to clean up the image and focus your attention on the hands. I added some appropriate music and top and tailed the piece with some nice motion graphics in After Effects.
The following morning, the clip was on Vimeo ready for client approval. They loved it (always a relief) and the master was encoded to Flash video ready for delivery to the client via FTP. Less than 24hrs from start to finish and not a tape or silver disc in sight…
Doing Something Funny for Money
Here’s a little film I made yesterday. It features my darling daughter, Emma, and her best mate, Becca, bringing shame to our family name by hounding innocent members of the public for money in the local Waitrose car park!