Matt Brown's blog

zwsoft 3d animation

2012-02-27T08:17:00.001-08:00

I've been doing some work for a Chinese client Zwsoft. And working with a great London CGI team we came up with this:

Jamie and Jon the CGI guys were amazing!!! And the sound effects were done by Colin McNeil. Heres a link to all there websites:

Jamie Shiels

Jon Toogood (dont have a website for Jon but hes brilliant!)

Colin McNeil

writing a book

2012-02-16T14:17:00.000-08:00

for ages ive been throwing around the idea of writing a book on DSLR filming techniques.
This is not because i have writer envy (my wife) honest!

But over the last few weeks ive really been getting into it. Ive got a great editor on board and i have some super high profile people who are going to contribute to it.

The plan is to release it as an ebook with video tutorials still examples and other fun stuff.

The only issue ive got right now is I need a title! I was never very good at coming up with that so if anyone has any ideas that would be amazing and i will give you a special thanks in the book :-)

a nice article on fraser balgowan

2012-02-15T07:17:00.000-08:00

heres a link to make it british a great website where they are showing the film that i made for Fraser Balgowan

click here

Updates and stuff

2012-02-14T15:14:00.001-08:00

I haven't updated anything for a couple of weeks so thought I'd let you know what's going on! At the moment I'm writing an interactive book on dslr film making which is exciting! Working on some great projects for fife council, Scottish enterprise, jwsoft a Chinese software firm and several other high profile clients so as usual crazy busy but it is alot of fun!

I'm also working on 2 music videos and they are going to be amazing!!!!

I'll post pics of fun stuff soon :-)

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Edinburgh

A trailer I cut together for Late and Live

2012-01-27T12:54:00.001-08:00

For everyone that has missed the first episode of Late "n" lives guide to comedy, heres a reason to watch the next one:

Vengo Del Sol music video

2012-01-26T14:48:00.000-08:00

I was in LA late last year shooting a music video For Dolce Films, the directors Daniel and Bayou are amazing and this is what they came up with:

The Scotsman

2012-01-26T14:46:00.000-08:00

I have also been working with the Scotsman and working with Roger Cox we looked at the amazingly vibrant art scene in Leith Edinburgh, heres the link to the video:

the scotsman on Leith

late 'n' Lives guide to comedy!

2012-01-26T14:42:00.000-08:00

So the first episode of late and live aired on Monday which was very exciting but in case you missed it heres a link the the bbc iplayer version (sorry if your not in the UK) and its also only online for 30 days so if you look at this link in a years time doubly sorry :-)

iplayer link

And heres a link to a trailer for the show:

Late "n" Live Guide to Comedy

2012-01-18T23:38:00.001-08:00

Here is a teaser trailer for the new BBC TV series I worked on last year.

New Kit for 7d

2012-01-14T05:36:00.000-08:00

It's Been a while since I posted about any of the equipment I'm using just now so I thought I would upload some pics and talk about my new gear.

Let's start with the lens, its the sigma 10-20mm 3.5 and it is super wide!! I mean crazy wide its amazing, it is also pretty compact and not crazy heavy, i've been playing around with it and the image quality is incredibly good. The build quality is great and the auto focus is quite and quick. The only downside is that their is allot of distortion, this is expected from something so wide but it does mean that you are limited to what kind of shoots you can use this on.

Overall though I really love it.

Next my red rock micro custom built rigg, I say custom built as I put all the bits together myself haha. I wanted a rigg that was light, portable, really well made, had room to expand and was cheap (ish). I couldn't find anything like that so I decided to buy all the component parts and put it together. The Red Rock system is amazing, the quality is incredible and what I love about it is that I can improve on it and change it as funds come in.

Extended battery pack, I found this on ebay for £10 and I couldn't not buy it! Its been really useful, the build quality is awful! But it doubles my battery life and if im in a place where I can't recharge my canon batteries I can use AA's which is great although I don't know how long they would last.

And lastly an LED onboard camera light. I don't know much about it as it was a christmas present but I have to say it is incredible, you can power it from a whole host of different batteries and just with AA's the power off the light is amazing! and I think they are really cheap, they are really light and super portable.

More new kit to come but just now that's all i've got :-)

LATE ‘N’ LIVE GUIDE TO COMEDY – UNCUT, UNCOUTH AND UNCOMPROMISING - AND ON TV FOR THE FIRST TIME

2012-01-13T04:28:00.000-08:00

This is a press release for the BBC TV series I worked on last year its airing on BBC1 Scotland 23rd January at 11.15 and then for the next 4 weeks:

For a generation raised on Live At The Apollo and The Michael McIntyre Roadshow, the LATE ‘N’ LIVE GUIDE TO COMEDY will be a revelation. Edinburgh Fringe audiences have, for over the past 25 years, gathered like Romans to the Coliseum to watch comedians fight against hecklers at the leading Gilded Balloon venue. These people are renowned as the comedy world’s most unpredictable audience; never sedated by a famous name - they expect laughs or they give better than they get.

To many it’s known as the comedians’ graveyard, with some performances there becoming the cautionary tales of comedy folklore, but that hasn’t deterred some of the best known names in comedy wanting to take on the LATE ‘N’ LIVE crowd – a group of people who know that they are in control.

Now for the first time, narrated by LATE’N’LIVE veteran performer Lynn Ferguson, together with face to face interviews with the comedians who also performed there - exclusive archive footage of LATE ‘N’ LIVE can be revealed to those who never made it to the post-midnight show. Or indeed weren’t sober enough to remember it.

Amongst those taking part in the programme are Bill Bailey, Russell Brand, Johnny Vegas, Jason Byrne, Zoe Lyons, Shappi Khorsandi, Fed MacAulay, Caroline Rhea, Ross Noble and Rich Hall.

The raw comedy where anything can happen epitomises LATE ‘N’ LIVE. These BBC programmes look at four specific angles of comedy. The first deals with Hecklers; the second Comedy Virgins, the third Antics and the final looks at Scottish-ness (see notes at end).

The woman behind both LATE ‘N’ LIVE and indeed the Gilded Balloon venue is the First Lady of Comedy, Karen Koren who says; “When we started LATE ‘N’ LIVE it was the first late night compilation show at the Edinburgh Fringe. It couldn’t have happened anywhere else and was part of what makes this festival brilliant. I’d literally collar comedians during the afternoon or after their gigs and tell them that they were booked. We never knew what the audiences would be like, and in some ways the wilder they were meant that the challenge was greater. There was and is nothing bland about LATE ‘N’ LIVE; I’ve seen some of the best known names in comedy die on their backsides and others pack a punch that I didn’t know they have. I’m more than pleased that we can show people what real comedy is like”.

One of my pics

2012-01-10T04:48:00.000-08:00

This was a picture I took whilst with the young fathers in France earlier in the year and its now in Time Out :-)

A few pictures from Algeria

2012-01-04T06:46:00.001-08:00

Just Before Christmas I was asked by Emma from endeavour tv to shoot some stuff with her in Algeria and here are some pics:

The writer - Gill (my wife)

2011-12-24T10:17:00.000-08:00

My wife is an amazing writer, at the moment she is writing a novel and it's on an great website called wattpad heres a link to her novel: Wattpad,

She is also putting a facebook page together and asked me to take some images of her for it so here is one of them:

You can see the rest on her page heres the link:

facebook page

I hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas :-)

Day of the game by Gavin Foster

2011-12-12T04:39:00.000-08:00

This is a video I directed and shot for Gavin Foster, hes an amazing musician who has put a song together highlighting the issues of sectarianism within Scottish Football, let me know what you think.

colours Christmas image

2011-12-12T04:34:00.000-08:00

Heres another edit I did for Hamish, he took some great pics for the colours christmas image, and I put together an edit of the behind the scenes for him.

fashion video for hamish campbell

2011-12-10T09:27:00.001-08:00

Heres a video I edited for Hamish:

Music video in Los Angeles

2011-12-08T04:13:00.001-08:00

I was shooting a music video for the amazing Daniel and Bayou Lir from Dolce films, I had a great time out there and here are some of the pics.

Boy by Catherine Kubillus

2011-12-07T10:56:00.001-08:00

Here is a recent music video shot and edited for Catherine Kubillus, it was a really funs shoot, shes a great singer and I got to do some really fun stuff, the opening shot is a large format camera and I shot through it to get some really amazing colours and a pretty different look for some of the video.

Highlands

2011-11-25T02:14:00.001-08:00

I was in the highlands last weekend and here are a few photos.

Scottish Enterprise

2011-11-07T07:26:00.000-08:00

I've just finished a shoot for Scottish Enterprise, I was working with Dog Digital and Adrian Jeffery and together we came up with some nice ways of doing interesting talking heads, heres a link to the very nice website and the films : Scottish Enterprise

update and fun stuff

2011-10-28T15:02:00.000-07:00

So just finished a big job for Scottish enterprise working with Dog digital which is really exciting, ill post a link to the site as soon as its up. Got 2 very fun projects hopefully coming up in North Africa in the next few weeks which is a little crazy but really really excited. Got a great client in China who wants to do some amazing stuff with CGI. Waiting to go back to the US for some other great clients! Got a music video shoot in London on Tuesday for an incredible musician. Working with Elph on a great animation project based around a ruined island. And the fashion video we did for Fraser Balgowen has gone down incredibly well and fingers crossed they will be massive in America very soon! Oh and doing lots of fun stuff for Harper Collins and should have a day off around Christmas :-) Whooo love being busy!

Fraser balgowan beauty in the raw

2011-10-26T04:07:00.000-07:00

Here is a video i shot for fraser balgowan.

We shot it in the highlands and it was the worst weather i've ever shot in but the Canon 7d held up really well. The guys at fraser balgowan were amazing, the idea was by Adrian Jeffery, the model was Hannah Breen who was great putting up with the freezing conditions! The make up was by Judit Soltesz who not only did incredible make up but also helped style the clothes making 4 deer hides into an amazing outfit! and music by the incredibly talented Colin McNeil.

the beautiful world of the lensbaby

2011-10-24T14:14:00.000-07:00

At 1.45 on Friday afternoon the post arrived through the letter box of my flat and there was a “sorry we missed you” card from a well known courier service, now I know for a fact that they weren’t sorry they missed me and I’m (90%) sure that they didn’t even try to drop off the parcel that was now waiting for me in the (not so) local collection point.

This would usually annoy me but on the card it said from San Francisco and the only thing I was expecting from the states this week was 2 Lensbaby lenses this was great except I also had to be at a BBC shoot at 2pm! So I drove as fast as I could, picked up the parcel and whilst on my way to the location I opened up the box and had a look inside.

Just as a side note, I’m very geeky I get very excited about technology, lenses and new stuff! This isn’t the first time I seen a lensbaby , I shot with one a few years ago and it was the Control Freak version which was a lot of fun to use although at the time it was mounted on a lens adapter in front of a Sony ex1 which made it interesting to operate.

But with the advent of DSLR’s this really is a great time for lens baby to flourish and for people like me to make use of them!

So I got to the location and showed the BBC team the new lenses and they said great lets use them on some of the location shots! And so we did.

Lensbaby kindly sent me the Composer and the Muse to play with and what’s amazing about these lenses is that you can take out the optics and switch them around. So alongside this I got a fisheye optic and a soft focus optic which all have adaptable apertures (check this link to their website for more info www.lensbaby.com)

The Composer retails at around £170, the Muse £70, fisheye £100 and soft focus £65.

Lensbaby have been around for a while now and on youtube and vimeo there are many many videos shot with 5d’s, 7d’s, Nikon cameras etc… but I haven’t really heard many people talking about them, so what are they like?

Well I have been using the composer with fisheye optic for most of the week and im hooked! Now you wouldn’t just use this lens for a shoot as that would be crazy but as an accent shot, it excels its just fun and looks a little mental! I like it a lot because it’s not too serious and yet it can produce stunning shots if used in the right way. And for under £300 to get a fish eye that is this crisp is pretty amazing!

The nice thing about the Composer is that you can lock the movement of the lens into a static position where as the Muse is always moving and for video that can become a bit tricky.

The build quality is great the separate aperture rings are fun if a little tricky to use on location (wind and rain is tough to deal with at the best of times!)

The soft focus optic is also really nice although I have struggled with it a bit, for stills it seems amazing but for video I wasn’t really shooting anything that was enhanced by that look so I haven’t used that as much.

Downsides to the lenses, I had a look at a few sites that were talking about Lensbaby and one of the recurring themes is that these effects can be achieved in post… and yes you pretty much can create these effects in post but its more than just an effect as with all lenses the specific look and feel comes down to the skill of the operator and in this respect using the Lensbaby as an additional tool in the cinematographers arsenal is the point. For me personally it is much more fun going out with the lens and adapting the shot to the lens rather than shoot your stuff go back to the edit suite and then click a few buttons!

Overall Lensbaby lenses are exciting, different and pretty cheap, they aren’t suitable for every shot but they will be their if you want that unique look and feel that only these lenses can give, and most importantly they are a lot of fun.

apple and everything apple related!

2011-10-23T04:38:00.000-07:00

Ok so i've just upgraded to lion on my laptop and im really loving it, the reason i did it was that I wanted to sync my ipad and iphone to icloud, i was pretty concerned that it might kill everything but it has worked like a dream. FCP 6 is working fine, photoshop, and after effects are also working without any issues and my plugins are all working. at the moment the only thing that isn't working is xdcam transfer but as im using the 7d now I don't use that very often at all.