Paul D

Selected by St Albans Film Festival (again).

I’m delighted to announce that ‘The Toadlickers’ – the music video I directed & produced for 5 times Grammy Award nominated electronic music icon, inventor of the polyphonic ringtone synthesiser, Musical Director of the TED Conference and first Homewood Professor of the Arts at Johns Hopkins University, Thomas Dolby, has been selected by the St Albans International Film Festival.

This is the second time that St Albans International Film Festival has selected one of my music videos. Last year they screened ‘Every Time I See You I Go Wild’ – the video I directed & produced for B.E.F. featuring Kim Wilde.

‘The Toadlickers’ will be shown at a 71 minute screening with the 14 other selected promos. The exact date & time of this screening will be announced on the festival’s web site as soon as their programme is finalised.

St Albans International Film Festival takes place 1st-3rd May 2015 in St Albans and, having attended last year, it’s a festival I highly recommend.

Vote For The Toadlickers

The ‘Toadlickers’ video that I Directed & Produced for Thomas Dolby, is in The Sony PROduction Awards and is open to a public vote. If you would like to vote for Toadlickers to win, you can do so by clicking here.

Canon EOS 5D Mark III Clean HDMI Out Firmware Announced!

Nine months ago, in a piece about the just announced Nikon D4, I wrote “Chief amongst these features is a clean, uncompressed 4:2:2 HDMI feed with simultaneous output to the D4′s rear monitor…a clean uncompressed 1080p output…[is] MAJOR news, both in terms of what the Nikon D4 can offer filmmakers and because it could force Canon to reverse its decision not to provide a clean, uncompressed HDMI output on the 1D X. In fact, it could mean, dare I say it, a clean, uncompressed HDMI output on the Canon 5D Mark III…” Well nine months later, Canon has given birth to (the announcement of) a new firmware update that will provide the EOS 5D Mark III with a clean uncompressed (8 bit) 4:2:2 HDMI output. Continue reading “Canon EOS 5D Mark III Clean HDMI Out Firmware Announced!”

Music Tech Fest

Last Saturday I gave a talk, at Music Tech Fest, about the making of The Toadlickers. I explained how we achieved things with the Canon 5D Mark II that are supposedly impossible, such as green screen and perfect focus whilst both camera & subject are moving. I also talked about lighting, editing with Adobe Premiere Pro CS5, using Adobe After Effects CS5 to comp live action and puppets, create night vision & security camera effects. After demonstrating how Magic Bullet Colorista II was used to grade footage, I showed The Toadlickers on the festival’s 66” plasmas, on which, from a technical perspective, it looked impressive, underlining the power of this technology.

Highlights of the three day event included Friday’s keynote by my friend, Martyn Ware, who talked about Heaven 17, B.E.F., The Illustrious Company – the 3D sound design company he runs with Vince Clarke, and the multitude of other projects upon which he is working; Daniel Jones’ and Peter Gregson’s ‘The Listening Machine‘ which sonifies Twitter feeds (and to which I could listen all day); Jason Singh, the Asian Tim Exile, who tore it up during his performance on Saturday night; and my friend Matt Black, who gave a presentation about ‘Ninja Jamm‘ the new Coldcut/Ninja Tune app that’s guaranteed to get everyone addicted to DJing and hosted a surprise jam session for hack camp attendees.

As I had a 5D Mark II with me, for my presentation, it would have been churlish not to have taken some pics…

Matt Black:

Jason Singh:

Hack camp:

This guy hacked the contents of his kitchen cupboard:

Matt Black’s jam session:

Focus on Imaging 2012

After last year’s disappearing act, Canon were back with a vengeance at this year’s Focus on Imaging expo at the NEC in Birmingham. Unsurprisingly, the EOS 5D Mark III, announced just two days before the event, was the star of their stand and of the show, with long queues to get up close and personal with one. Continue reading “Focus on Imaging 2012”