Corsets & Red Hair at Paxton House
So yes, if you’re a local around this neck of the woods you may have seen some posters for the lovely Paxton House featuring the equally lovely Zoe Mills. Apparently, people have been coming up to her in the street and saying “You’re the girl in the poster”. But then, inexplicably they can’t remember where the poster was. Still, not to worry, it’s all gone to her head of course – she’s now wearing a head-scarf, shades and the phrase ‘No comment’ is never far from her lips 🙂
Zoe is the ‘face of Paxton’ in 2012, and we have a few more shoots to do in the summer, which promise to be something quite special. In the meantime here’s one and there’s a few others coming shortly. Also checkout the new website for Paxton here, it’s very nice. I’ve said it before, but great cake.
(S)he played it left hand / Zoe: Latest Shoot
Well, this turned out a bit Ziggy, but lets face it, you can’t go far wrong with that. Here’s Zoe in our latest shoot. We were in a tiny space so I couldn’t do the usual white BG of four lights and lots of distance, so had to resort to a soft box about three inches from Zoe’s ear, hence the light wrap. But hey, great make-up, great hair and a fab profile, makes clicking the camera so much easier. A sneaky location shot coming soon!
A bit grey today…Here’s some colour
The colour has drained away from everything here in Scotland over the last few weeks. The sky is the colour of wet clay and saturation has been bleached from anything that previously had colour. Still that’s only on the outside. Inside, everything is still a vivid riot of colour, brightness and tone. For example, here’s Zoe brightening up an old dusty attic looking as though she’s about to step out on to a beach in Goa.
Time for a bit of romantic fashion photography
Taking pictures of rock bands is great, but they are ever so loud. So, now for a shoot where earplugs were not needed….We’ve just completed a shoot with Zoe that has a real romantic/fantasy fashion feel about it – I can’t say who the images are for, but if you’re locally based you should start seeing them soon. It’s all very exciting and the shots came out great! Here’s a little taster – more to come soon.
Zoe - Fashion 1
Like, er, wow – didn’t quite expect that
So, there I was, standing in a field at 23:00, temperature of about 1 degree and hopping about from foot to foot trying to keep warm. I couldn’t see a thing, but above me was a quite glorious night sky stuffed to the brim with stars. Somewhere in the darkness was one of my Bowens studio lights set to full blast and being aimed vaguely at a big windmill. The camera is on bulb and I’m counting up the seconds…It’s all guesswork so after 190 seconds (about the same time my hand goes numb) I let go of the shutter. Fingers crossed it’s gonna look good – but I have to say, I didn’t quite expect this!
80:8 Green Room / Nearly Finished!
After copious amounts of cleaning, emulsion, more cleaning, polyfilla and hanging of photographs, the 80:8 Green Room and reception is now just about complete. This area is part one of facilities we have planned – ultimately the aim is to have a recording/rehearsal facility together with a video/photography studio – all under one roof. The concept is that bands and musicians can come in for day, and leave with a well recorded CD, photographs and  a professional HD video…It’s very exciting!
Johhny Cash – ‘Hurt’ 2008 Remix by David Conway
David Conway, the slightly mysterious yet talented musician, recording artist and producer we met last year in the cold darkness of a Glasgow Car-park has been secluded away in his studio producing a new album these last few months. Quite possibly the hardest man on the web to cyber-stalk (there’s a few other David Conway’s knocking about) he pops up every so often with a blinding snippet of music. Here’s one of them – a storming remix of Johnny Cash and ‘Hurt’. What’s more you can download it for free here – right click and choose to download….Luckily for The Borders, David is looking to play a gig in this neck of the woods very soon. Keep watching and listening ‘cos it will be ace or brill, depending on how old you are. In the meantime, check out the little graphic montage that accompanies the remix and well, turn it up.
Matt Wilson / Live at the Barrels Berwick-upon-Tweed
Matt Wilson / Live at The Barrels
What a great night it was at The Barrels in Berwick-upon-Tweed last night. Great music from Matt Wilson, Le Woodsmen and Electric Penelope, a great atmosphere and an appreciative audience. Matt played a great set, his voice now his main instrument given it’s newly husky, yet still sweet edge. Here’s a little edit of “Taste of a Smile’. It’s a little soft and grainy as I had to shoot it at 3200iso and wide open at f2.8 (The Barrels is a little dark) but it conveys a great night and a great song. One more from Le Woodsmen later!
Jason Kyrone : ‘Wisdom’ Preview / Now Available on YouTube
- Wisdom Preview
The preview video for ‘Wisdom’ by Jason Kyrone is now available. 30 seconds doesn’t do this amazing song justice…But the final cut will be revealed in a weeks time. This song and this performance is stunning and shows an artist bursting with talent who really needs to be heard. Give it a play, see what you think and come back in a week.
And remember, you can catch Jason at Paxton House on the 29th October.
Burning Up / Video Preview & How we did it
Here’s a little preview of the soon to be released official video of ‘Burning Up’ by Edinburgh based band, Lost In Audio. All shot, directed, edited, produced and colour-graded by 80:8. We shot the video over a six hour period between 9pm and 3am in a top-secret Borders location. And y’know, I think it came out really rather well. The full length video is a great example of constant visual and aural energy – the guys in the band put in amazing performances take after take after take (we did 21 in total)
For those interested in the how’s, why’s and wherefores we used :
– A Canon 5DII with 24-70 f2.8L & 24mm TS-E lenses, Full 1080P @25fps, converted to ProRes 422(LT) for editing, then output in 720P for uploading to YouTube. No sharpening, contrast turned down low and saturation down two notches.
– Lighting was an esoteric mix of my Bowen’s flash heads with the modelling lights on, Maplin disco lights, LED’s from 7 Dayshop and of course what every film director needs…Site floods from MachineMart!
– With all these lights I managed to shoot at 640 ISO so grain was kept to a minimum, aperture wide open most of the time.
– Editing in Final Cut Pro, titles via Motion and Colour Grading via er, Color!
– Syncing was done by eye (based on the audio waveform) then a multi-shot sequence was created in FCP allowing me to cut from angle to angle easily.
And that was it! A breeze! The intention was to create a high-powered take on the ‘Bubbles’ video by Biffy Clyro, except of course on a budget of £9.87 – or the price of chinese takeaway for four people. And, y’know what – I think it succeeded. I’ve projected the video at a size of 50″ and it stands up really well, while on YT I like to think it stands up to pretty much anything.
So, four blokes in a shed basically. Limits, actually, make you go further.
