This is Rob Harker, he is an engineer for a company called corgi. He specializes in home call-outs where he will make a visit to a house or flat if he thinks that his vast amount of knowledge, skills and training might just help someone out. All for a ridiculous fee obviously.
After passing his 6 month NVQ level 1 Engineering from Dulwich Technology college with flying colours in 1995 Rob was offered a place at the prestigious Corgi Organization for Contemporary Kentish Electronics C.O.C.K.E for short. Just 3 years after coming out of Dulwich Tech Corgi were satisfied with his level of professionalism and behaviour and was offically employed by the company on the 31st of October 1998.
D&AD 2008 PV Energy Sponsered by Solar Century Finding the correct font for the opening titles was a lot more time consuming than I thought, although I did find a very interesting feature on the website www.myfonts.com. It has a very clever search engine that can find pretty much any font as long as you have a sample of it. I'm putting this up as anyone who reads this might find it useful.
How it works : This is the sample image I took from the beginning of an episode of people like us.
Then it needs to be turned into a flat black and white image.
This image can then be selected on the site for uploading, it must be kept as small as possible something like 600k. After it has been uploaded the site tries to work out each individual letter by separating them.
After you have confirmed whether or not the site has got the letters right (for me it was spot on and I did not need to make any changes) then it is on to the final stage where it gives you its best 10 or so matches.
I was shocked when I found how good the results were, especially after spending a good 3 hours trawling the internet trying to find it by searching through various sites. I can see this being useful for future projects and just thought I would put it up here for everyone to see.
Wednesday, 6 February 2008
D&AD 2008 PV Energy Sponsered by Solar Century Quick video status update!
New video with title sequence and opening shot.
Wednesday, 30 January 2008
D&AD 2008 PV Energy Sponsered by Solar Century
Progress update!
Now that I have made the conscious decision to definitely use the voice of Chris Langham in the short, as I feel it adds authenticity and would work on a greater level if my actual goal is to create another episode that was perhaps never made or where the filming was not finished. 120 seconds is a short amount of time but I'm confident that I can get across all the key points in that time whilst still being entertaining. The nature of this project means that I might be able to get away going over 120 seconds if I need to because it's not an 'educational' or 'preaching' piece where after 2mins it could actually get quite boring.
So before I even start to work on a script and story board I need to make sure I have enough material from the show, which will allow me to put together a structure piece of film.
Here I have started to compile all of the different responses, phrases and sentences that I thing will be useful for the film. Once I have enough quotes that I am happy with I will be able to start the script which will only feature 1-2 other people depending on how I decide to pace the film.
Wednesday, 23 January 2008
D&AD 2008 PV Energy Sponsered by Solar Century
I have spent most of the weekend watching every episode of 'People Like Us' (12 episodes) to really get a feel for the style of filming, commentary and language used. I liked what I saw so much that I almost wanted 'Chris Langham' who plays the main character 'Roy' to be the interviewer for my mockumentary. After a couple of episodes in I realized I could if I was clever enough record voice samples of 'Roy' and use them in my short. I have about 12 different clips now that could easily be manipulated to form a structured conversation. The PV energy would feature in the short, as 'People Like Us' follows a day in the life of different jobs in the UK and the person that I would use would have PV energy in their flat/home. A mate of mine called 'rob' is currently a welder in London and that in itself is perfect for what I have in mind. I can see this short being a solid piece that would work well online as a viral or broadcast on TV as a short film filling in a 2min slot.
Here is a short demo using a voice clip of 'Roy' and footage I have taken outside of my flat.
BBC 2 Culture show Title sequence
Over the weekend I have started to experiment with film and tried to capture some footage of the sun rising, even though the weather has not been great. This is an easy and hard idea because the actual editing and putting together of the title sequence is fairly straight forward but getting the footage I won't is the difficult part. As you can see from the test footage it has turned out ok, but not nearly good enough for the finished sequence. It's a simple thing to film as all I have to do is set up the camera and let it roll for 60 mins. The difficult thing is judging all the different settings on the camera to get the best image. It wasn't a very clear morning but was good practice and I think the only way to get what I want is to keep taking different shots on different settings until I get something I am happy with.
TEST 01
There are a couple of really good mornings coming up over the next week on being Sunday and the other on Wednesday. I plan to really use these mornings to the best effect, and can by the end of the two sessions work out the best settings for what I need from the sun.
Create an opening credit sequence for the culture show that will surprise, inspire and challenge viewers.
My first ideas for answering this brief are to create and interesting piece that flows well and seamlessly blends together whilst accompanied by the soundtrack which has already been created by a friend called 'Depf' and perfectly complements the visuals I want to produce. I plan to capture a wide range of footage from around London starting with the sunrise from the 10th floor of my block of flats as it is a really beautiful view of the whole of London. Other areas I want to include are Brick-Lane, Borough Market, Hoxton square, Hackney road and other surrounding areas. Here are a few images from the 10th floor to give an idea of what it's like.
