Working on a project for Publicis, the advertising agency, on their LG Loop campaign and launch of their latest camera phone, "the Renoir", which will be shown at some point on their website.
Am Directing, Filming and Editing six to seven videos. Here are a couple of recent finished ones. They are without any copy/text as I liked the natural look (!)
They are all shot on the Sony EX1 with the Letus adaptor and a range of Nikon Prime SLR lenses. Music is by my brother blog.davidterranova.com
Nathan Gallagher is a pro winter sports photographer (www.nathangallagher.com) and does a great job as a presenter and tutor(!) showing us the wonderful workings of the new LG phone ;-)
Again, this was filmed on the same day with the same camera.
Some shots I did in Iran a few years back for "The History of Football" a 13 part 1 hour TV series.
While we were filming the "large mural of soldiers with traffic in the foreground" a secret police vehicle spotted us and we were arrested and held for six hours while they made sure we weren't spies! It wasn't a pleasant experience, but that didn't change my feeling for the country and its people, some of the friendliest and hospitable on this planet.
Someone on the street in Yamassoukro, Ivory Coast
Market in Kano, Nigeria
Street cleaner, Tunis, Tunisia
Army and police watching the African Champions League Final, Cairo, Egypt
Drive-by picture of an afternoon prayer in a slum in Kano, Nigeria
We had decided to go to Kenya to film a promo on Luke Gamble, a Somerset based Vet who's charity, Worldwide Veterinary Services sends young vets to help communities and people in far flung corners of the globe, in need of treatment and medication for their animals.
Luke was asked by the Kenyan government to help out with the farmers who were now living in displacement camps set up after the political unrest in Feb 2008.
Thousands of people had lost their homes, farms and livelihoods as warring tribes fought each other over land and power around the Rift Valley region in Central West of Kenya.
We knew it would be a great backdrop to film Luke's pilot programme and only filming it on HD would do, but we had to keep the costs low as we were paying this out of our own pocket. We did a deal with Hammerhead and they gave us a Sony 750 for the 10 days hire; So myself and Marc headed out to Nairobi with Luke and his good friend and assistant Clive, for a bit of a kenyan adventure.
Luke vaccinating a dog
Marc and Clive vaccinating some cows
Marc happy in his new role
I love this pic. Myself, left, Luke and Marc, walking down the street discussing a piece to camera that we have just done, oblivious to how much we stood out and everyone staring at us.
Reality soon hit home once we set foot inside the camps. The conditions people were living in ware dreadful.
Funny, looking at these pictures, everything looks so clean. It doesn't look as bad as it was.
I haven't captured the grittiness of it. Shame there isn't a smell-a-camera.
Interviewing one of the councillors of the camp who told us some pretty horrifying stories.
Despite their suffering, everyone was welcoming and happy to see us and talk to us.
Take 87!!! We shot this scene so many times and we never used it!
Luke introducing the camp to camera with 20 kids in tow.
Beauty salon in a camp
Marc filming the kids on a little camera.
A house destroyed in the troubles. 2 people were killed in it.
This woman threatened to spit at Luke, then told him she had HIV and cracked up laughing! Weird!!
Shit conditions in a camp, up near Mount Elgon, near the border with Uganda, which had some of the most incredible fertile and beautiful land I have ever seen. No wonder they are killing each other for it! Hardly surprising that a lot of these farms are run by big multinationals and ex pats.
The crew, minus me, who is taking the picture.
Our trusty vehicle "Willie". That was its actual nickname, it even had a sticker on the back.
It had a tendency to break down a lot!
But not as bad as this guy in his 3 wheeler tractor though!
Crossing the equator. Yes we did try pouring the water to see if it went round one way in the north and the other way in the south and it works.
We had a morning off and decided to visit Nakuru National Park. It was an amazing experience.
This promo was shot over ten days in and around Sao Paolo, Brazil. Filmed on a HD Sony 900, it was co-production between Red Earth Studio (my company) and a Brazilian production company called Canal Azul, who are part of the TRAFFIC Group.
Myself and Marc, one the our producers at RES who had developed the idea, flew out to Brazil to direct the promo, while Canal Azul helped out with production, crew, kit and post, which they had in-house.
We landed in pretty drab weather, actually Sao Paolo is always drab. It is when I'm there anyway, I always end up getting colds, flus or some sort of reaction to the pollution. Its not the greatest looking of cities, its skyline a jungle of tall buildings as far as the eye can see, covered in a strange gothic graffiti.
The production crew at Canal Azul were amazing and had organized some amazing locations and actors, so from the first day of the shoot to the end, apart from the post, but that story comes further down(!), everything went smoothly; I think they even had a hand in the weather, as the clouds dispersed and out came the sun tan lotion for the remainder of the time we were there.
Our first location was the beach in Guaruja, 100km south of SP, near Santos.
It was a stunning morning with a beautiful pink sky as the sun rose above the waves of the atlantic ocean. We filmed a young girl performing Tai Chi with a sword. The sunrise and water in the background made for an amazing picture and a promising start to the shoot.
We have so much beautiful footage, I'm gagging to make a second edit. Hopefully sooner rather than later.
Later on that afternoon, a local capoeira club agreed to show off some of their skills, a mixture of dance and martial arts that came over to Brazil during the slave trade from Africa.
The scariest part of the shoot had to be filming the scene of the Tai Chi guy on the rooftop of the Copan building, one of the tallest in Sao Paolo.
I don't know if you can see it in the photo, but there is a two foot wall around the edge, beyond that is a sheer drop to the traffic below.
It was harrowing and I had been worried about filming there for days. I kept having these nightmares of tripping over the edge.
I never did trip over the edge and after a while I got used to it; kind of!
This is where I forget the names of everyone and I am going to have to ask Marc who a couple of these people are. I'm crap with names!
Bottom right to left: Me, Marc, Grip (forgot his name)
Top right to left: Joao (camera assistant-amazing, brilliant and a great guy), production assistant, Joana Fava, Lygia, producer and asst director (also brilliant and helped immensely) and the runner and general assistant (forgot his name)
Marc and Joao discussing things during a break in shooting
These two guys were pretty good. Especially the guy in red, he really thought he was a film star in the way that he carried himself.
The setting was amazing.
Brazil has the largest japanese population outside of Japan as well as a large chinese and asian community, which made filming in Brazil a hell of a lot cheaper than going to China and Japan.
With a great location like this temple, situated in the middle of a bush about 150km north of Sao Paolo, we couldn't go wrong.
We had two days to film a corporate video for the P1 Motorsport Team while they tested their new cars at the Valencia race track in Spain. We had carte blanche to do what we wanted and decided to spend the money on a Varicam with a Pro35 adaptor and prime lenses to create a slick film look.
On the first day at the circuit, strong winds blew a media centre tent, cleverly placed on top of a stand, on to all the trucks and race cars causing a lot of damage. A morning of havoc ensued with some serious clearing up and one hell of an insurance form for some poor sod. Luckily no one was hurt!!
The Renault World Series is a launch pad for aspiring pilots to become Formula 1 heroes.
All the cars are supplied by Renault and are all the same. No team is allowed to tamper with the engine or its design. Each team consists of two pilots and the two at the helm for P1 Motorsport were Giedo Van Der Garde from Holland and British girl Pippa Mann who also happens to be the only female driver in the series.
Due to delays in production, only one car was delivered to the team for testing, so both pilots had to share the one car. They weren't too happy about that and to top it all off they only had one day of testing left before the championship started so performing for the camera was the last thing on their minds.
The next day we woke to a glorious sunrise; the winds had died down and when we arrived at the track both Pippa and Giedo were in surprisingly excellent moods, getting on with the job at hand as well as giving us time to film some set up shots.
Pippa's interview was filmed in her hotel room in Valencia, Giedo wasn't in the mood so we had to go and film him in Amsterdam a week later, while Roly the team manger and close-ups of the car were filmed at the team's headquarters in Norwich.
I'm a Director of Photography with 15 years of filming in nearly every corner of the globe, shooting pretty much everything from docos, sport, corporates, commercials to music videos.
I have used all formats of cameras, both in HD and SD.
I'm also a Director of London-based Red Earth Studio, a TV production company that specializes in Docos and Factual. We have two edit suites with Digi Beta decks and a Varicam Frame Rate Converter and our own camera kits; a Panasonic Varicam and a Sony 570.
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