I’m doing another three day hybrid course covering self-shooting. Plus as much as I can cram in about directing and the people side of this strange business. I did one of these during the summer (pictured). It seemed the best fit for the particular interests of the participants and it worked really well. The ability to chop and change courses is one of the advantages of being small and flexible. For my part, I enjoyed getting to work with people over three days. It felt qualitatively different than the two day dash. We will cover all the nuts and bolts of using pro gear. You’ll get used to put ..read more

I was thinking about how we see things. I spend a lot of very happy time looking at paintings and I was looking at the still lives in the Rijksmuseum recently. It’s not a genre that’s engaged me much previously. So I spent a bit of time with these, looking and listening to what the audio guide had to say. (Tip – it’s really helpful so thank you, Rijksmuseum!) TOTAL CLARITY What struck me was the tendency to total clarity throughout the whole image from front to back. And the efforts the painters made to try and get the illusion of depth into their pictures. Here’s a classic, Heda’s Still Life ..read more

I’m absolutely not a lighting DoP – I’ve worked with some deeply talented people and learned lots from them but they’re in a completely different league in terms of lighting skill. That’s as you’d expect – it was their job and their craft, 24/7, whereas mine was being a director. But, since I have been self-shooting, I’ve applied some of the things I’ve learned over the years. So here’s some simple lessons I’ve learned about interview lighting techniques and lighting interviews on a budget. Less is more Don’t blitz your poor interviewee with blinding lights. I see this time and time again &nbs ..read more

I’m re-booting Landmark’s short filming courses. I’ve been teaching and working for quite a few different organisations since the pandemic – the National Film and Television School (NFTS), the University of Oxford, UAL in London, training courses for Channel 4 and ITV Studios and NFTS Wales (who took the photo on this piece) and UK Screenskills. As the restrictions have eased and in-person courses have become possible again, I’ve enjoyed being in the same room with real humans. I let the face-to-face Landmark courses lapse during the pandemic so now I’m restarting them – and hugely looking for ..read more

BBC1 – One Life – Rat Attack. I always cite this film as evidence of just how deeply unglamorous the lives of documentary makers are. Its final scene was shot in a rat infested back garden in Bootle, Liverpool, at 1.30 in the morning. We were sitting very still in a dark smelly corner with rats running round our feet filming two fellas popping off rats with high powered air rifles.   It’s not a bad film – made for the BBC’s then flagship docco series One Life. In those days we used to have the luxury of a cameraperson to shoot most of the material – in this case, the peerless and indefati ..read more

I’m disproportionately pleased with this neat, idiot-proof set-up for smartphone filming. It’s ideal for filming action where you are following one key contributor who’s wandering around – to and from any camera-mounted mic. Or you are filming stuff taking place on the other side of the room and you want local sound. It uses Rode’s Wireless Go system to link the phone to a mic on your contributor. I have fixed the Rode receiver unit into a cold shoe screwed into the base of the grip – in this case, it’s a Shoulderpod model and the ¼ inch hole in the base would normally fix onto a tripod or st ..read more

Barry Austin died on New Year’s Day, aged 52. I worked with Barry for several months in 2001 for an ITV documentary. The film was called The Fattest Men in Britain and was about the nature of celebrity and the identities we construct and present to the outside world. You can judge it for yourself if you like here…. https://vimeo.com/356356636 Barry makes his first appearance at the start of part two – there are black spaces where the ad breaks used to be. Part one introduces us to the remarkable Jack Taylor from Bradford. Jack’s also dead now. Taken by itself, the film title does Barry a diss ..read more

Curious beast, this extraordinary two-parter, currently on BBC iPlayer as part of the Beeb’s wonderful Storyville strand. It’s an undercover investigation fronted by a former Danish chef into North Korean sanctions busting and arms dealing.   The chef, Ulrich Larsen, has a pleasantly rueful air to him as he burrows further and further into what seems to be an increasingly dangerous world. He starts off in dismal seminar rooms with small groups of weirdo North Korea groupies. They’re all men, everywhere, I noticed, and they all looked glum. I think I would as well if I were locked in a roo ..read more

Quite a few times throughout the Landmark Film School website I’ve talked about “intelligent” courses. I’d hate that to sound snobby or condescending so here’s my rationale. I’ve taught or assessed a lot of courses at a lot of different places where the emphasis is very much on the tecchy side of things. Understandably they want people to come out of the course with a good grasp of how to get technically competent pictures and sound out of the camera. That’s fine but what if the perfectly exposed, sharply-in-focus, wonderfully-composed 4K pictures material you’ve filmed is a bit, well…boring ..read more