Saturday 31 December 2016

Wow there ends another year of photography and video production. It was another record year again for us and a big Thank You to all our clients!.

Among the many highlights of the year we filmed our first TV series for Canis TV, traveled to Sweden and Abu Dhabi to shoot some video's and photographed the super new Design Museum in London. We also made a lovely short film for Historic Royal Palaces at Kensington Palace.

Please follow us into 2017 and keep in touch!.


Tuesday 4 October 2016

Where did the time go!

I thought I was keeping up with the blogging then before I knew what had happened 4 months have just flown past..

We have been very busy all summer including throughout the summer holiday which is traditionally a quiet time for us.

I can't list all the jobs we have had since the big gap as there are loads but we here's a breakdown of the best bits!.

We shot our first TV series for Showbiz TV on Sky 266 in the superb Price Studio's in Battersea which was a very busy but really enjoyable session. The show airs in October and when we get the date for the first showing we'll share it here on the blog.

David launched his print sales website and took part in an exhibition with some of his personal work which was a great success. He shot a series of documentary photographs on a local Asparagus farm showing the manual process of harvesting the crop.

Here's a link to the full set of pictures on our Flickr page - https://www.flickr.com/photos/redshiftphoto/albums/72157658400893623


Our video created for Historic Royal Palaces at Kensington Palace was signed off and has been very well received. It's one of our favourite video's to date and covers a one off experiment where period candles were made specially by hand to compare to modern day LED candle lamps. Here's the link to the video on our Vimeo channel - https://vimeo.com/182372902


We've had a couple of very enjoyable studio shoots with Dhaler Rowney who make lots of art supplies and we has great fun photographing vibrant paint swatches and brightly coloured tubes of paint.


We have also created some product instruction video's in the studio in Milton Keynes for Holophane Lighting and a new product promo video for DW Windsor at Price Studio's in London.


 Another shoot we really enjoyed was for AEG power tools on a large building site in London with art direction by The Canopy Co - a very exciting young creative agency who we love to work with.

Last week we did a fun photoshoot for a local HR company called Russell HR who have looked after our HR on a freelance basis for a few years (they are excellent!) and we took a selection of formal portraits and fun group shots as well as shooting some video content for their website and Youtube channel. If you need good HR advice check the website for some great tips - https://russellhrconsulting.co.uk/

Overall we are very lucky to be so busy and we would like to thank all our clients for their valued support and the continued business that comes our way.



Thursday 2 June 2016

Awards Ceremonies, Interviews, Office Photography and Genie Lifts - another varied month!

We started May off nicely by shooting some video presentations for Kate Russell at Russell HR in Stony Stratford for their very informative website and Youtube channel - https://russellhrconsulting.co.uk/. Kate is one of our regular clients and we shoot video updates every other month to keep the content fresh on their website. It's lovely to work so close to home as much of our work involves a lot of travel.


We then had a really busy couple of days covering the Lighting Design Awards in London where we video'd and took stills of the entire event and then worked through the night in our London hotel room to deliver the finished video and stills for 11am the following day!. This involved meeting at the venue in Park Lane at 5pm for the rehearsal, working through until 1am photographing the closing party and then starting the edit in our hotel room at 1.30am. We did it and delivered the final edits on time - great work by Jack and Toni to keep going and I managed to hang in there too doing my bit to help until I fell asleep at 4am!.




Our next glitzy awards job was our 6 monthly shoot for Philips at The Ritz - The Philips Chairman's Awards. I love this job and it's one that I always shoot myself as I get coffee and shortbread upon arrival and a stunning lunch too in a private dining room!. Six employees and their partners get lunch at The Ritz with the Chairman and also a suite in the hotel along with show tickets. A great prize and it's lovely that companies like Philips still reward their staff like this.



Etap Lighting commissioned us to photograph the AB Agri office in Peterborough to capture some classy images of their recessed LED light panels that have been installed and both Toni and I photographed the job together. I like this approach as offices can be difficult to photograph in an interesting way and I like to have two different styles of photography for a project like this as I think the client gets a more interesting set of images. The lighting was a great improvement over the old recessed fluorescent fittings that they had before and we did take a couple of snaps of an un-refurbished floor to show the difference.

Our next shoot captured the handover of a brand new MRI scanner to the Nuffield Hospital in Haywards Heath. The pictures were used on social media and online the next day to showcase the product being commissioned. These machines cost around £1M each and save countless lives so when a new one goes into operation it's worth documenting.



Lastly we took on a shoot over near Royston for a PR company where we photographed a Genie lift in action building a new pop up barn building on a farm. These lifts are really cool as you can ride up in the lift to a good height and drive the machine from the raised position making it easy for one person to work on a roof structure and move around the site without coming back down!. The sun was shining and I was working out in the countryside with some really friendly guys photographing them build a giant "big boys" Mechano set (their words not mine!) using these cool lifts. Not a bad day at the office!.






Sunday 24 April 2016

Where did March go (and April for that matter!)

It's been so busy here at Redshift Media that I not only failed to post another update for March but I've almost missed April too!. The time is really flying right now and we've been travelling all over the world (literally) trying to keep up.

One of our rigs in use in Abu Dhabi
It's been an interesting mix of jobs for us with both the photography and video sides of the business going really well. From a water based pole dancing class in Milton Keynes to a trade show in Abu Dhabi with some product photography and interior photography mixed in.

To bring the time line up to date since the previous post we filmed some video footage at a factory in Milton Keynes for a corporate video for Holophane Lighting. The finished video is going to be used to show all visitors to the site and we captured some really nice creative angles and used lots of cool camera movements to bring the shoot to life.

Water Pole Dancing!
Next we filmed a charity video at Bardwell School for the Wooden Spoon charity - we film there for free a couple of times a year and edit them a nice video to play at their fund raising events.

Then came the swimming pool based pole dancing class - a first for us - which looks like great fun and a fab way to burn some calories. The next day we did another free charity shoot - this one for Holophane Lighting who celebrated their 125th anniversary with a sponsored walk in Broadway in the Cotswolds to raise funds for Cancer Research. The walk was about four miles and we stopped at the lovely Broadway Tower half way round for a cake and coffee.

A three day trip to Frankfurt followed that where we filmed for two days on the Feilo Sylvania stand at the Light and Build show. We then did a third day of filming for Lux Magazine filming interviews on the Osram stand.

Filming for Feilo Sylvania in Frankfurt
We then had a photoshoot for Kinnarps UK a large office furniture manufacturer at a council HQ in Staines where they had supplied some super new sit stand desks. These are really in at the moment and standing at work brings real health benefits in terms of posture and calories burned.

We then split the crew into two and half of us went off to Abu Dhabi to film and photograph the Lux Live trade show and the other two of us stayed here in the UK and filmed a beautiful video at Kensington Palace for the Historic Royal Palaces. Here they were trialling some candle light against LED replacement candles to see how the gold leaf finishes appeared under each light source.
Charles using a new AEG drill
Awards Winner at Lux Live Abu Dhabi
I won't say who felt they had the best deal but the guys loved Abu Dhabi and the other two had tea and sandwiches at Kensington Palace - both sound pretty good to be honest.

Our photoshoot with AEG drills went really well on a building site in Waterlooville. We worked with the creative team for AEG and their agency and also a great model called Charles who really looked the part. We also shot some product images of the drills in the studio the following day.

To finish off a very busy few weeks we did a large architectural shoot at Lotus Park in Staines for Hilson Moran and we photographed the stunning chapel as Brasenose College in Oxford for LAPD Lighting Design.















Saturday 5 March 2016

Busy Busy!

Apologies for the delay in getting the new blog entry written up - it's been almost a month since the last one but we've been out shooting video and still nearly every day since then.

On Friday 12th of Feb (the day after the last entry) we filmed a fun little video for Bicester Village at an event at the Farm Shop which was laid on to promote apprenticeships for young people working in retail. The Farm shop is a lovely venue (the coffee and pastries were fab!) and the speakers did very well to engage with the young people there. We took some promotional stills too and we covered the event with just the two crew - David did video and sound while Toni took the stills.

Bicester Village Apprentice Event
Sound can be a challenge for videoing events like this especially with several speakers appearing in fairly quick succession so we used a boom pole with shotgun mic and a hand held Tascam recorded to capture the audio. There wouldn't have been time to fit each speaker with a lavalier mic and the Tascam did a great job.

The video should appear soon on the Bicester Village Youtube channel and I'll paste a link to the blog once it's out.


Jez Rose presenting at the Philips conference
The following week was filled with a mixture of edit days with clients and calls to new contacts in London and a large photo shoot for Philips Lighting and Philips Healthcare. Many of our clients like to come to our edit suite in Milton Keynes for the final edit day so they can leave with the video signed off. This is a great way to work as we can get the edit 85% complete and the final touches and any minor changes can be put in place during the last day. We were very pleased to welcome Castleoak to our office for an attended edit and Jack completed two video's which we had filmed in the previous weeks and which are now signed off.

Add caption
The Philips photography was a two day shoot at their joint Lighting and Healthcare conference at the ICC in Birmingham - a venue we work at quite regularly. David and Toni covered the first day together and David stayed on to cover the evening party too and stayed over to photograph the second day too. Conference photography is great fun as the staff are on a high and full of energy and there are usually some great breakout activities going on too. Jez Rose appeared as a guest speaker and it's the second time we've worked with him. He is a fantastic presenter and inspirational speaker and always gets the delegates fired up.

A trip to Edinburgh followed on for David where we were commissioned by Zumtobel Thorn Lighting to photograph an indoor golf school. The entire building was illuminated by Thorn and the lighting levels were superb throughout. As with most new building these days nearly all of the lighting products are LED based so provide a crisp white light and save loads of energy at the same time.

Kirsty Groves Presenting
We had an exciting meeting earlier this week at Kensington Palace regarding a potential documentary video and as an added bonus we were treated to a quick look around the museum there - well worth a visit!. This would be a fabulous short film to make so we are keeping our fingers crossed here and hope to post some good news in the coming week or so once we've heard back.

On Thursday we filmed a three hour presentation for Kinnarps UK and the new WWF HQ in Woking and we had a crew of four for this job covering sound, video and stills photography. We're busy editing the video right now and we're half way through completing the stills edit too although we've popped a picture in here of Kirsty Groves presenting at the conference which is still warm from Lightroom!.

To complete a very busy couple of weeks David Jack and Matt spent yesterday at Feilo Sylvania's London HQ videoing a sales event with several presenters, with the crew split between the main presentation and some informal interviews of the speakers once they were finished in a separate room.

Thanks for reading this and for following the blog and see you next time!.















Wednesday 10 February 2016

Pitt Rivers Museum, Portraits and a lot of video!

Hi everyone!. Another busy few days have flown past here at Redshift Media Production - I don't honestly know where the time has gone!.

Last Monday we had a lovely photo shoot in Oxford at the Pitt Rivers Museum where we were commissioned by Soraa to capture the quality of the lighting on the exhibits. Soraa are quite new to the UK market and they manufacture very high quality LED lamps that are designed to replace existing Low Voltage lamps in light fittings. This gives a considerable energy saving to the end user and also reduces the maintenance costs as the lamps last for 10 years or so. The colour rendering is also very good and the clarity of the light is superb.

Pitt Rivers Museum Oxford

We've been busy in the studio too photographing a new lighting fixture for Holophane and also shooting some green screen interviews for an internet TV channel.

Philips Healthcare Portrait
At the weekend we starting shooting a short indie film that we've written in house. It's always great to shoot something for fun and we spent a fun day on Saturday shooting the first couple of scenes for our film. We'll post a link to the finished movie once it's all in the can and edited. We're hoping to have it ready within a couple of months and we'll enter into lots of festivals.

We're photographing the Philips Lighting and Healthcare conference in a couple of weeks and I was called in this week to take some staff portraits on location in the office. These are going to be printed onto banners for the day. It was a really fun shoot - I love working with people and there was lots of energy coming from the people of volunteered to be snapped.






Sunday 24 January 2016

The Ritz and The Post Office Tower

We've just had another action packed week which culminated in a large awards video and photoshoot for the UK Cabinet Office on Thursday and our regular booking at The Ritz hotel in London.

Winner of a TW3 award
The Cabinet Office have an annual awards ceremony for the winners of their TW3 competition which sees the various Government departments entering their best agile working concepts for recognition. The days of people working 9-5 at the same desk day in day out are thankfully on the way out, and the TW3 program is all about helping people to develop a more flexible approach to work. We created a video and some stills to be played on the day before the awards began and we also photographed and video'd the event too. We had a crew of three and we used three Sony cameras to record the actual awards ceremony in the theatre with Jack running the show from the rear camera whilst watching a large monitor feed from the other two Sony's. We had a walkie talkie link up and Chris was operating the camera at the front near the stage. I took the still images and shot some B Roll on my 5d MK2.

Jack and Chris with two Sony's
We also had a Sony A7s MK2 and a set of LED panel lights set up outside to record interviews and again my trusty EOS 5d MK2 captured some B Roll and the stills.

On Friday I photographed the Philips Chairmans Awards at The Ritz which we are lucky to cover twice a year. The six best employees as voted for by their peers are invited to lunch at The Ritz with their partners, are treated to a suite for the night and show tickets too. I take the pictures and provide everyone with a leather bound album which captures their day.

We also had several client meetings last week which resulted in a few new booking for both stills and video, and we have just been commissioned to shoot for three days in Germany at the upcoming Light and Build show in Frankfurt.
One of the winners of the NHBC Supreme Award

We may well be off the Adu Dhabi too in April to the Lux Live show which will be a great experience. It will boost  the Airmiles a bit too!.


The previous Friday we had great fun shooting the Grand Finale of the NHBC Pride in the Job awards at the Intercontinental Hotel at Westminster Bridge in London. That was another long but rewarding day and the event went off really well. We are so lucky to have so many large clients and we do get spoiled on these super events!.





Monday 11 January 2016

Happy New Year!

Well that's Christmas out of the way and we all feel refreshed here at Redshift Media Production after a good break. We started back last Tuesday and it was a really fantastic week back. We had a large project for the Cabinet Office signed off where we are videoing and photographing an upcoming event in London at the Post Office Tower. For this project we're using our Canon 5d MK2's and our Sony A7S2 for the roving footage and to capture interviews and we'll be using three Sony EX3 cameras to video the actual awards ceremony. We have a set of LED panel lights which can run off V lock batteries and these are perfect for lighting interviewees without having cables trailing everywhere.

We also had a smaller conference job confirmed where we'll use the 5d's to capture some interview and presentation footage for Havells Sylvania in London.

Two stills jobs were booked last week too including one at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford for Soraa lighting and another for corporate headshots in two office locations near Reading for a brand new client. All in all a pretty good week back at work.

Today I've taken a booking for a shoot at John Lewis in Birmingham so a good start to this week too.

Here's to a Happy New Year to all our friends and we hope you'll keep following our blog in 2016.