Peatbog faeries, Wickham 2013

We have been allowed to film the Peatbog faeries at Wickham festival again this year.

The Peatbogs played a set mainly based around their last album with some old favourites thrown in. Unlike last time Tom (guitar) was playing, however the horns were not there this time, which changed some of the dynamics and gave rise to a number of different arrangements to the last time.

We had 12 cameras going through the show so we should have some good video, although one of  the cameras on the Drums failed to give a full recording. With the Peatbogs headlining the set was around one hour 20 mins, so there was some strategic change of batteries and media in a number of the older devices.

We had to fight for position among all the photographers as well as the crew filming for the festival, however the longer the show went on the less these people stayed, and the more freedom we got.

Next we will edit the clips down and see what transpires.

Medieval joust, Loxwood

Steph was working at the Medieval joust down the road from us, and over the year we had been talking with the organisers. Nothing specific came of this, but we went along to show to see if we could do some promotion.

The show was very much like a fete / county show, with a number of specific "events" repeated mid day and mid afternoon, all around was retail opportunities as well as some "Living" history from the re-enactors who were there for the weekend in the rough.

I took along one of the cameras and tried to get some close up footage of the melee and the joust, as well as a couple of tracks from the Medieval Babes.

We will see if we cannot mix it all up and get some impacting short trail out of it.

Consortium Tour


We got invited along to the Consortium tour .. ostensibly to record how things went and feed back information to the bands about performance, but also to help out and be an extra pair of hands.

The tour went over 2 weekends with many miles in between. Cardiff - Birmingham - Sheffield - York then London - Devon - Bristol.
We took the full camera set-up, together with a number of lights, although we never used everything, the stages were really too small and most of the venues had "adequate" lighting.
At all venues (bar one) we used a timelapse camera to see what effect that would have - still to really see the impact beyond novelty values.

We used the main FoH camera at most venues, and then started adding a few as we went along ... Cardiff - 3, B'ham - 3, Sheffield - 5, York -5 , London - 0, Devon - 0, Bristol - 8

All the FoH footage was taken off and put onto a series of DVDs for evaluation and general giggles from all concerned. but if anything come out of it then we will publish the tracks on YouTube and link.

Rhino campaign and Warren

Warren  approached me to help him with a video for his tune about the Rhinos and providing sanctuary...  Who are we to refuse!

The discussions went along the lines of where can we get some Rhinos? how can we show the message, is there any footage we can use ...  can the campaign groups help. the answer to all of this was stunned silence..

So we ended up with the idea of a picture show, and some green screen shots of Warren.

Warren came around to our place and we put up the green screen in the garage ..  good thing it is only him and an acoustic guitar.
First off we struggled to get the green screen straight, then the lighting was not good, but eventually we got a couple of takes on three camera so we could vary the angle.

This initial footage proved difficult to mask out, but we learned a lot about lighting. so Warren popped around one evening and we went for take 2 ...

this time lots of white light ...  the take was a lot more successful, but now we had issues with reflection from the shiny guitar, and this was being keyed out ...  but eventually we fiddled with the parameters and got something sensible.

Next we collated a load of Rhino pictures and compiled a slide show with some tweaks ,, and pulled it all together..

now published ...

Sankara - Chasing the Sun

the third of the Sankara videos from the Guided by Degrees album launch at the buffalo bar in Cardiff.



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Sankara - Lullaby for a Lost Boy

Second of three videos from the Guided by Degrees album launch from Sankara


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Sankara - In God We Trust

First of three videos from the Guided by Degrees album launch from Sankara

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