The show timeline, each artist’s section is a different colour to easily see the segments.
After creating the trailer for Imogen Heap’s improvisation sessions, known as “The Gloves Are On” (a reference to the Mi.Mu gloves that Imogen helped develop and performs with), it was decided to reduce the amount of performances as Imogen was finding the process draining, and she had received creative inspiration from them and wanted to work in the studio.
I was asked by Marco Napolitano whether I’d be up for being involved with something else, a way to give Imogen some time off, while raising some money for The Creative Passport – and it would be called “The Gloves Are Off”.
As of writing this, the latest edit I’ve done is a promo video for Imogen Heap. Being a fan of hers this was quite an exciting edit, but I possibly underestimated how much time this snappy 60 second promo would take.
Imogen Heap has recently been playing improvisation sessions to raise money for The Creative Passport, a way of utilizing blockchain technology to allow musicians to keep their details in a decentralised database allowing for royalties to find their true owner.
Imogen has an app to interact with fans, and on it she requested for some help editing a promo for these sessions. The deal was that she would do a personalised cover in return for a sixty second promo, this is something that had a value of £500, but for fan, to have a song of your choice sung for you – it’s priceless.
It’s all too common when working with digital footage, particularly large and uncompressed, that something gets damaged. When filming, steps are undertaken to avoid the loss of any recorded frame. Camera ops will do their best to handle their cameras correctly, even in difficult conditions, and DITs (Digital Image Technician) will make sure that the memory cards are correctly backed up into multiple locations – but still the unthinkable can happen.
When disaster strikes there is a wealth of software that claims to be able to recover lost footage from corrupted files, but in those desperate scenarios I’ve seen few that are able to actually do the job. The only software I dare put any weight in is called “Video Repair Tool“, but even that will often struggle to provide the needed results.
The next step is to get professionals who will charge extortinate amounts to get the file back to a working condition.
A few times I’ve used my own computer programming knowledge to create software that will bring videos back from the dead.
There are many routes to find out that you have a passion.
Sometimes it’s obvious, and people capitalise quickly. Many people interested in film do media courses and goto dedicated schools out of a desire to replicate shows and features that they had seen.
I didn’t discover my passion for editing until well after University, however it was a skill I had already started to put in place. The necessity to tell a story through video was something that had cropped up much earlier and I had found ways to do it.
Ethiopia, particularly Addis Ababa, is a place very close to my heart and each of the three times I’ve visited have been truly formative. I first went when I was 14 and the experience changed my mindscape; I saw people with nothing who relied on faith alone, political struggles, different cultures and had experiences that no 14 year old should have – like having a gun pointed at my face. Through all that I watched as my Dad helped film video footage and took photos, as I helped carry the equipment.
For a first post I thought I would start at a recent milestone. An event that meant a huge amount for me – the premiere of ‘The ParaPod Movie‘.
On the 7th January, at the Prince Charles Cinema in London, fans of the ParaPod queued around the block to be the first to see the film that had taken just over two years of my free time. Officially I’m listed as the Editor, Colourist, an additional camera operator, and an original backer, but the truth is that my list of credits could have doubled the length of the end roller (for example, post-supervisor, additional VFX, additional sound, DIT, runner, additional graphics, technical support… you get the idea!). Ian Boldsworth, the director, and I decided that we wouldn’t list everything as it would just start to feel odd to see our names on everything.
