Ollie Tristram

Yesterday I was asked by BCS to film as video evidence, the world record of the tallest stack of poppadoms at the Curry Lounge restaurant in Nottingham.

Other press were there including ITV and Trent FM and the record was beaten, standing at 151cm tall.

As well as including a full length video of the attempt from start to finish that was sent off to ITV, I have also done a bite-size version that could be included on the Curry Lounge website:

Tensator are one of BCS's clients that design and manufacture tensabarriers, those barriers you see for queuing in cinemas, at airports, etc.

They have come to BCS for a new demonstration to be produced to show how their barriers are safer than the cheaper alternative.

There are two animations one showing the Tensator barrier and one showing the competitor barrier and how the Tensator one is much safer. My job is to work out how we can improve on these two animations in making the product look better.

During a meeting at BCS on Wednesday we discussed how filming the 2 barriers would give a better realistic impression of how they work, but the problem was that we can't really show it hitting a child. We could create 2 new animations from scratch but that could be time consuming and again not be as realistic.

What we do know is that we would like both the competitor product and the Tensator product to be in one horizontal split-screen so the viewer can see how both products are working simultaneously, and to include a timer showing how the quicker one is more more dangerous.

**UPDATE** Tensator opted to edit their existing animation for a quick turn-around, therefore I was not needed in the end.

Ok so my plans for doing Multimedia work over summer are not all finalised yet but this is what my intentions are:

1) Filming a music video for a friend of a friend called Sam Bennet who is a singer/songwriter and has just released his HUMMINGBIRD EP. I already have a first draft of the script and it aims to be a narrative-based video in a guy-meets-girl scenario.

2) Some friends and I plan on making a comedy sketch when the 'beach' is created in the city square. My friend Andrew has a wet-suit, flippers and a body board so getting him to walk down in that attire will make for some funny scenes we think.

3) I have asked BCS, who I have worked with for work experience in the past (see earlier blog posts), for some work experience. They are a PR company so it is not directly related to my direction, but they are a well established company with a good reputation so experience with them will look good on my CV. Also, if they have any work at the time I'm there involving broadcasting/filming then I'll be put in too help out with that. Next year, Tom, Jason and I plan on using BCS to create our client project, so this work experience will certainly boost relationships before then.

Admist this work I plan on going camping with friends (although would prefer to be going abroad but nevermind) and... that's it.

From Wednesday to Saturday I have been working as the sound assistant for an indie short called "Coffee".

The film is about an underground betting organisation that bets on when volunteering insomniacs will fall asleep. It follows the main character Jeff as he suffers from sleep deprivation and his relationship with his friend Jack who is betting on him to stay awake also.

As for the experience as working as part of a film crew, I enjoyed it so much. To watch professionals at work, such as Felix Weidemann, the Director of Photography and to be using all the proper equipment it was a brilliant insight into how it all runs. I think the most interesting thing I found was how they light all the sets and the different techniques they use to do this.

The days were all at least 12 hours and there was lots of hanging around between shots, but I expected that to be honest, and it was at these times where I got to have conversations with some of the crew. Not only that, but I made friends with some girls from the Design for Film and TV course at Uni, whose roles it was to keep continuity notes as well as props.

I worked with Ian Currie on sound who has been working freelance for over 20 years. He has done a lot of TV work for shows like Derren Brown: Trick of the Mind and Grand Designs, but also worked on film sets with actors like James McAvoy. He gave me a lot of help in knowing how sound recording for the screen works and couldn't really have asked for any one more patient. I will also be working with him on the post-production of the film's audio so there is still some more exciting to work to be looking forward to.

Here are some of the best pictures taken from the 4 days shooting in the various locations.

An interview with Sam Baird of Whitehill Media about the IPTV World Forum and how his company is doing.

An Interview from the IPTV World Forum with BCS Account Manager Chrissie Walker giving her view on the days events with their client Broadband Forum.

This is an edit which is an package for SeaChange, another one BCS' clients. It follows a similar principle to the Broadband Forum one below.

On Wednesday 25th March, Tom Pearson, Jason Bickers and I went down to London Olympia exhibition centre where the IPTV World Forum was taking place. This was to film some promotional videos of some of BCS's clients and this is the first of them, Broadband Forum.

All 3 of us filmed and recorded sound on the day but this time I have the job as editor as I live in Nottingham and can easily show Brian (Managing Director of BCS) different versions of the film while the other two are home for Easter.

The film is going to be sent to the client to be used how they like to advertise themselves, but also on the BCS website.

Tom Pearson, Jason Bickers and I were given the excellent opportunity to go down to Arnold Town FC's new football ground to film a promotional video of the newly built stadium. The opportunity was given to us by Jools and Brian of BCS, a PR and Broadcasting company based on North Sherwood Street. We spent the cold day filming the first match of Arnold Town on their new pitch. I did the sound, Jason did the majority of the camerawork and Tom did the editing. Very much in the style of a news report, here is the end result...


Arnold Town FC from Tom on Vimeo.

It's been over 2 months since I posted on here last.

The above video is a competition entry made by me and my friend Andrew (who did most of the work). The competition was to create your own music video for Feeder's new song "Miss You" and the prize is to have it featured in the extras on Feeder's upcoming DVD, plus some other stuff I think. The quality is pretty poor because it has been compressed so much (I think I'll have to let Andrew know), but you can understand it lol.

The video is mainly old footage from our A Level music video to a different Feeder song which we have re-cut. Other footage you will see is from my Uni work such as the One Shot Film and Pixelation. We did shoot some new footage in the same woodland area so not to lose continuity, but on saying that, the video doesn't really have any particularly continuity to it other than repeated effects. Nonetheless, Andrew has done a very good job editing it and is easily in the top 5 compared to the other competition entries.

Have a look at some of the other entries by clicking this link: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=feeder+competition

Over and Out.

Hey everyone.

On Friday 22nd February I spent the day at a Multimedia company based on the outskirts of Nottingham (with St. Anns) to see what work they got up to and to gain an understanding of how a company of their size works.

After being in contact with them for a week or two before visiting, I was originally going to attend an on-location shoot for one of their client's DVDs. However due to the nature of the business, the client had some issues to sort out for themselves, so that day (Friday 15th February) did not go ahead.

So a week later, I was invited to spend a day with them. Now, to be honest, I was expecting a big flashy office block with D3 Design in big letters along the side and then to be greeted by a receptionist. Was I wrong! Instead, the company was run from an upstairs room of an ordinary house in which the Creative Director and his partner lived, with their son and two chocolate Labradors.

Adey and Jo were their names and after having spent the day with them they were nice people. Me and Adey in particular had a lot of similar interests, especially that we both dislike coding! It was weird because originally I asked whether to come dressed in a shirt and tie, but after being greeted by Jo in jeans and a t-shirt and then Adey in his dressing gown I can see why I didn't need to.

To cut to the chase, their work room was phenomenal! I walked into this average-sized room to see a desk near the back with two 30" Mac screens on it. I then saw hooked up to them was a graphics tablet, mixing desk, drum machine and full-size electronic drum-kit. Not to mention the machine that was powering everything. I asked him the specs of his Mac G5 and if I remember rightly it was a Quad 3.0GHz processor, 8GB RAM, 4 hard drives equalling 1.5TB and dual top of the range nVidia graphics cards. I might have got those figures mixed up a bit, but it cost £2500. I was quite shocked that a normal house could have such amazing equipment in it.

Anyway, throughout the day I was shown all the different software they used which was pretty much anything you can think of. As a company that produces video, animation, music, graphics, flash, websites, etc for clients - Adey was the one that did all of that, he was so multi-talented. As we went through all the programs I thought I'd take advantage of my time there and ask a few questions about how to do things that would help me on my course, such as music mixing techniques and flash advice.

At the end of the day I was welcomed back anytime and I will still be hopefully going on the next video shoot they have. I enjoyed myself and time went by fast which is a good sign of course. Now after having established myself with them I can hopefully pop round or contact them by e-mail if I have any queries about software, because they seemed willing to help me, and again, they were nice people.

Check out their website at http://www.d3-design.com

You can watch my weekend break holiday video which I have edited on my Facebook videos page. But if you don't give a shit about what I did then you don't have to (there are ghosts in it though so you should).

Also, I'm going to create my own music to go in my Identities project thing when it is done. But I don't want to give anything away, other than it's very 'personal' to me.

Until next time...

This is a fairly big update. Not that anyone reads this blog.

Here are some videos that me and friends have made over the past years. Some of them are good. Some of them are not. They're all hosted on my myspace but here they are anyway.

#1
Feeder - Standing on the Edge (A Level Coursework)

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#2
Trigger Unhappy TV (Extended Version)

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#3
Jim1 Music Video

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side note: This was a little piss take on a 'rap' a guy at my school did in year 11. I think the picture timings are out tho.

#4
Psychodistortion

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#5
Bee Boat

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side note: The bee was already dead (sort of).

Thats all you need to see right now. Enjoy!

Another update for you.

I really tried to get a flash mp3 player for this Blog so you could hear my tunes, but it's a lot harder than it seems to actually get it to work.

Anyway, here are the myspace links to my music-making site, aka Pyrodrifter which can be found at:
http://www.myspace.com/pyrodrifter.

And here is the link to my band's myspace, Era which can be found at:
http://www.myspace.com/musicour.

Enjoy!