“The Shout” filming locations

Posted on October 14, 2011 by robin

I spent a few days in Devon and Cornwall to catch the last gasp of the hot weather recently and stumbled across the filming locations for one of my favourite films: The Shout by Jerzy Skolimowski, made in 1978 and starring Alan Bates, John Hurt and Susannah York. It’s a creepy supernatural psychological thriller about a man (Bates) who has spent 18 years living with the Australian aborigines and has learnt the secret of a shout that can kill. He manoeuvres his way into the lives of a couple (Hurt and York) and wreaks havoc with their relationship. It’s as good as the Wicker Man in my opinion and should be better known.

Jerzy Skolimowski is famous for shooting very quickly and you can see why he chose this spot: almost all the principle locations used in the film are within a half-mile walk. It’s an idyllic place that seems unchanged from when it was shot 35 years ago.

Film frame Today
The cottage looking inland towards Hartland Abbey.
The view from the cottage out to sea, showing the dramatic rock formations.
Hartland Abbey, the location for the insane asylum where the cricket match is played.
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“Have You Seen This Girl?” screening

Posted on September 24, 2011 by robin

Jonathan Luke will be screening his short film “Have You Seen This Girl?” at Moviebar in Brighton on Monday October 3rd at 7:30pm. He will also be there to talk about it.

Posted in Short Film | Leave a comment

“Up My Street” shoot

Posted on September 9, 2011 by robin

We’ve just finished 4 days of shooting for “Up My Street”, a series of interlinked comedy sketches by Nathan Cook. It was a tough shoot – don’t try and get location sound under Shoreham Airport flight path! – but everyone gave it their all and we’ve got some great footage. Thanks to everyone who contributed.

Photos: Dulcie Lee

Posted in Production, Short Film | Leave a comment

Panasonic AG-AF101 lighting test

Posted on August 27, 2011 by admin

A short night scene testing lighting with the Panasonic AG-AF101. Lit with redhead and soft box. Shot with Nikon AIS lenses.

Note: Please allow some time for the video to buffer.

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Converting AVCCAM .mts files to Quicktime

Posted on August 14, 2011 by robin

So we were on a shoot today, and the client asks (very reasonably) for the footage, shot on Panasonic AG-AF101, to be delivered in Quicktime. “Should be trivial” I think, but no, it is not. You can ingest the footage into Final Cut Pro 7 as ProRes and then export the file as Quicktime but then you end up with enormous files, not to mention an unnecessary encoding step. Since AVCCAM is really just a wrapper for H.264 video, it should be just a case of rewrapping the footage in the Quicktime container, resulting in a file of a similar size.

Panasonic have announced a Quicktime plug-in for AVCCAM that would allow Quicktime and FCP to play AVCCAM files natively. It was supposed to be available “this summer” but so far has not appeared. Presumably, once this was installed, it would be a simple matter of opening the .mts file in QT and saving as .mov.

After a lot of rummaging around the vaults, I found an app called ClipWrap which will rewrap the .mts file in a Quicktime (.mov) container without transcoding the video. It is fast too, rewrapping a 10min 1080p25 clip in 30 seconds or so.

This method is also invaluable for getting standalone .mts files into Final Cut, since FCP can only Log & Transfer AVCCAM clips which are in the original card folder structure.

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