videography & film making
My filmmaking really began with technology. It began through technology, not through telling stories, because my 8mm movie camera was the way into whatever I decided to do.
Steven Spielberg
Actor Luke Blackmore with a Crown standard 8mm clockwork cine camera [1960]
Luke with a Pathescope 9.5 cine camera from the early 20th century [press image to start movie]
Steve Farrell shooting web series "Our Town" with actors Dawn Funnell & Craig Bowen - April 2019.
actor Craig Long @ the station
Perhaps the only similarity I will ever have with Steven Speilberg is we both discovered the joy of film making with Super 8 film. In my case with a Chinon 609.
In fact had it not been for cost I may well have shot more movies and taken less pictures - but cine film was expensive at 3 minutes a cartridge , and you had to send it away for processing. It was also silent - in camera sound recording happened much later. But the bug was there and I spent much of my summer holidays shooting animation films at 16 frames a second.
As time moved forward I upgraded the cameras until two things happened - one movie cameras came with an inbuild sound option and two I began training in film and tv which introduded me to Bolex - 16mm film and studio video. I hated film editing at the time, but it was the evil we had to learn - until I was able to shoot and pass it on to the editor of the production.
The advantage of being in the business meant that new cameras came my way and in or around 1986 consumer rather than professional video camcorders became an option. The first used home formats like VHS and it's smaller brother VHS-c - later we got Video 8 - which really got me started with video.
The next big consumer advance was Mini DV a tiny digtal 60 minute tape camera, and that format was the last I was to use before solid media.
Mini DV was good and like Video Hi 8 before it even the tv companies were using the formats.
There was an uncertain period when gigital formats began - with both a Mini DVD option, a hard drive option and then a SD card option [I am still talking consumer electronics]. I tried all 3 and settled on SD cards - first with a little Panasonic and then a larger Canon.
By this time things were really moving - and a whole range of photo compacts had ever improving video modes.
Stills compact cameras were rapidly becoming affordable digital devices and then suddenly video was introduced to the DSLR and that bring us to today.
Except now we also have smartphones capable of amazing quality - and I am now moving to use such devices within my work here.
The main equipment currently used by me is Canon EOS DSLR and Panasonic HD camcorder .
Video is now big business - the You Tube generation has seen to that - and it's no longer out of reach for most of us.
However the equipment is only part of the story - film making is a creative process - as we will see.
Looking at the image of actor Craig Long at the station this year it can be seen that green screen is now part of the process - useful in times of lockdown.
Lighting is now cool and LED - which also means silent - cameras are adaptable to low light with high quality.
Away from the shooting - editing is now all digital and much simpler - we just need ever increasing sizes of hard drives.
Film making however is still a talent - things may be easier - but directing if anything is way more complicated.
Filming for Dramania tends to be kept simple by design - we concentrate on the performer and are not producing feature films.
But many now do - who produce dramatic web series such as Steve Farrell with Our Town filmed in Great Yarmouth.
Looking back at where I started - it's a whole new ball game now.