Last week, I had the pleasure of watching 3 great drummers at work. I went to the Benny Greb drum clinic in Manchester, UK. He was supported by Ash Soan (you may not have heard of him but I bet you've heard records he's played on) and Jake Brown. All 3 were amazing, entertaining and instructive.
Jake is 14 and has been playing drums for, I think, 4 years. Sheesh! I wish I was that good after I'd been playing for 4 years. I'm still not that good!
Jake had planned out a solo incorporating quite an array of my instruments but, as he had his set time cut short, he had to scale back, so just one gong was used. But it's a beauty. Check the video here of Jake's drum solo piece - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7PDeBoDZxk
Next weekend, there's another outing for my creations - this time with top L.A. drummer, Tom Coyne. He's playing with Autumn Cannibals at the Whitby Gothic Festival over the Halloween weekend. Tom will use a full set of my cymbals on his kit, plus a Gothic gong or two. Hopefully, I'll be able to film some of that too. I'm looking forwards to watching Tom play.
Sunday 24 October 2010
Monday 11 October 2010
Most illuminating
Each time I shoot a promo video for my work, I try to do it a litle better than last time; learning from mistakes and experience. Apart from the ones where I've had direct help from Andy Mac (which are of vastly superior quality!), hopefully you can notice a gradual improvement from video to video.
The latest one was a medium scale production for me. Not too long, elaborate or fancy, but not a short, thrown together with little care piece either. Here it is on youtube - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUQOZ4_b_zQ
I wanted to get the lighting better than before. But without spending any money on fancy equipment. Before, I have used multiple small spot-lights (the ones from my exhibition booth rig), but these are actually pretty dim for photography / videography and they cast hard shadows and give you over-sparkly point reflections.
What I needed was flood-lights in "soft-boxes" - to create a larger, more diffuse light source to soften the shadows and make reflections of the lights less offensive.
I made 2 of them in very Heath-Robinson fashion. Both from cheap halogen flood lights that I already had. One with two microphone stands and a large sheet of tissue paper:
The second, I made with a cymbal boom arm stand, a microphone stand and an old coated drum head:
I had them either side of the scene so the drums were illuminated quite evenly from both sides (and also from the existing overhead lighting in the room):
Seemed to work pretty well. I had to add a "flag" to screen off the right hand soft-box later on, when I had a video camera with a wide-angle lens on it out in front of the kit. The light, even though out of shot, was still getting into the lens and creating a lens flare. So I hung a black sheet (like the ones I've used as the backdrop) from one of the microphone stands that was actually being used to hold a microphone to block the light to lens path, but not the light to drums path.
So, you don't necessarily need proper, expensive Gobos and soft-boxes to do a reasonable job...
The latest one was a medium scale production for me. Not too long, elaborate or fancy, but not a short, thrown together with little care piece either. Here it is on youtube - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUQOZ4_b_zQ
I wanted to get the lighting better than before. But without spending any money on fancy equipment. Before, I have used multiple small spot-lights (the ones from my exhibition booth rig), but these are actually pretty dim for photography / videography and they cast hard shadows and give you over-sparkly point reflections.
What I needed was flood-lights in "soft-boxes" - to create a larger, more diffuse light source to soften the shadows and make reflections of the lights less offensive.
I made 2 of them in very Heath-Robinson fashion. Both from cheap halogen flood lights that I already had. One with two microphone stands and a large sheet of tissue paper:
The second, I made with a cymbal boom arm stand, a microphone stand and an old coated drum head:
I had them either side of the scene so the drums were illuminated quite evenly from both sides (and also from the existing overhead lighting in the room):
Seemed to work pretty well. I had to add a "flag" to screen off the right hand soft-box later on, when I had a video camera with a wide-angle lens on it out in front of the kit. The light, even though out of shot, was still getting into the lens and creating a lens flare. So I hung a black sheet (like the ones I've used as the backdrop) from one of the microphone stands that was actually being used to hold a microphone to block the light to lens path, but not the light to drums path.
So, you don't necessarily need proper, expensive Gobos and soft-boxes to do a reasonable job...
Friday 1 October 2010
Fair enough
The UK National Drum Fair was great fun last week. It was good to see lots of great British custom drum builders and their fine work - Highwood, Guru, Liberty, etc. Nice also to have a full-booth representation from UFIP. Mighty fine piatti from Italy.
My booth remained fairly busy and business was good. Several gongs and an InfiniTri triangle sold. Many thanks to the forum members of MikeDolbear.com for keeping me entertained!
This week, I've been busy with follow-up from the show, plus designing and pricing up a new lathe. I decided to abandon earlier plans trying to combine low speed cymbal lathe and high speed tool sharpening grinder in the same motor and belt system as it was getting impractical. Separate grinder methinks, but the lathe will still have 3 speeds.
There was an article about me from the London Drum Show in the Croatian Daily Newspaper "Jutarnji List" on Saturday 18th September. I've only seen a blurry photo of it so far - but it looked good. A paper copy is due to arrive here soon. Though I think I will stil struggle to read it! There may be something else forthcoming in a Jersey / Guernsey publication too. Watch this space...
My booth remained fairly busy and business was good. Several gongs and an InfiniTri triangle sold. Many thanks to the forum members of MikeDolbear.com for keeping me entertained!
This week, I've been busy with follow-up from the show, plus designing and pricing up a new lathe. I decided to abandon earlier plans trying to combine low speed cymbal lathe and high speed tool sharpening grinder in the same motor and belt system as it was getting impractical. Separate grinder methinks, but the lathe will still have 3 speeds.
There was an article about me from the London Drum Show in the Croatian Daily Newspaper "Jutarnji List" on Saturday 18th September. I've only seen a blurry photo of it so far - but it looked good. A paper copy is due to arrive here soon. Though I think I will stil struggle to read it! There may be something else forthcoming in a Jersey / Guernsey publication too. Watch this space...
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