The Tar Sands Oilympics

The London Tar Sands Network and London Rising Tide hold the inaugural Tar Sands Oilympics in Trafalgar Square, London. Corporate contenders RBS, Shell and newcomer BP compete for the chance to wreak environmental havoc in their scramble for Canada's tar sands.

In the process they will lay waste to vast areas of boreal forest, poison First Nations communities and push the planet towards catastrophic climate change. The race for the most polluting fossil fuel resource on the planet is on. Forget the Winter Olympics in Canada, the real competition for the future of the planet is here.

Spent a few nights trawling through excruciating Winter Olympics promotional videos for this, even sat through (most of) the naff Vancouver opening ceremony.

Stop the Red Bullsh*t

Plane Stupid pay a stinky visit to Red Bull's HQ to protest against collusion with City Airport expansion plans.

Shortly after this Red Bull withdrew their planning application to build a temporary runway and moved the Red Bull Air Race to another venue. We don’t know what (if any) part this protest played in that decision. But it was a good lesson in the vulnerability of corporations extensively invested in their PR presence. The extreme brand sensitivity of companies like Red Bull can be a useful soft spot.

Endless debate about efficacy of different campaign hierarchical or consensus, lobbying vs disobedience approaches. The value of ‘full spectrum activism’: every level of political campaigning can reinforce each other, from drinks parties to petrol bombs. The strategy of (not No2ID’s).

Respectable organisations can distance themselves from the lunatic extremists and gain more of a lobbying ear, even if they happen to be the same people.

The turnaround for this video was about 3 hours to try and get into the media the same day, so the editing is pretty scrappy.

Dinner on the Tube

London Underground Dinner Party. A Tricycle Theatre

youth project (cameraperson & editor).

This is the most ‘viral’ project I’ve been involved with. The Tricycle Theatre held a competition to find and produce 5 short film scripts. I was the video tutor, giving feedback on the scripts, and assisting the winners to produce their short films. One of the winners, Jon Molinari, wanted to hold a dinner party on the Tube. We didn’t think we’d be allowed to but it was such a good idea we asked London Underground for permission to film. There was no response so we took the Jubilee Line out East, then set up the dinner party as the train under central London. No-one tried to stop us, the only LUL employee to notice what we were doing just gave us a smile.

I edited the film to Jon’s school orchestra, which gave it

much more character than using a polished professional recording.

Natalie Bennett and the UKCMRI

Natalie Bennett, the Green Party candidate for Holborn & St Pancras, London, discusses the proposed UK Centre for Medical Research & Innovation (UKCMRI) to be built next to St Pancras Station. The research buildings as currently planned would be severely detrimental to the residents of Somers Town. Camden Council has seemingly abandoned its obligation to set aside 50% of the site for urgently needed social housing.

The oversized UKCMRI complex would look impressive from St Pancras but will leave Somers Town residents with more isolation, less space, less light, constant heavy goods traffic and concerns over the security of a Level 3 Biohazard facility on their doorstep, not to mention its proximity to London's Eurostar terminal.

In return for all this, the developers have so far offered residents a grass verge, the use of a juice bar and a 'virtual health centre'. Their dismissive, patronising responses to residents' concerns have generated much resentment and a number of resident and campaign groups have come together to oppose the development.

As Natalie points out, what her community desperately needs is housing and recreational facilities, not speeches about their duty to the 'public good' and the backside of a glass edifice.

The residents' campaign against this development is still ongoing, despite a stepped-up PR offensive by the consortium. The architect’s newest redesign is still a piss-take as far as respecting the quality of life in the surrounding neighbourhood: The glamorous St Pancras end gets a ‘piazza’, and Somers Town residents are stuck with the arse-end of the building blocking their sunlight and nonstop lorry deliveries.

The sun/shadow contrast was a problem during Natalie’s pieces to camera and I invested in a reflector set after this shoot. In my eternal struggle with tinny camcorder sound I tried EQ-ing the audio with slightly pumped up bass and reduced treble, which (psychologically) improved it quite a bit.

Election Day

Performance poet Danny Chivers performs ‘Election Day’, his poem for the 2010 UK general election and how people should really vote in a fading democracy.

After the general election, in the spirit of Danny’s poem, a group of people voted with their tents and turned Parliament Square into the Democracy Village, ruining a bland, polluted roundabout with lively political protest, community activism and flowerbeds. Three months later London Mayor Boris Johnson finally managed to restore the square to its rightful diesel fumes. Brian Haw’s 11 year protest endures though, inadvertently protected by the legislation specifically enacted to evict him. (Ha).

For this shoot Danny brought along a pro sound recordist friend with a neat homemade moleskin wireless mic mount. It was a lifesaver getting professionally recorded audio in such a noisy location.

Ask The Climate Question Campaign

On the eve of the 2010 general election the Cleanpeace team bring their polishing skills to the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat constituency offices in Hampstead & Kilburn. Glenda Jackson (Labour), Ed Fordham (Liberal Democrat) and Chris Philp (Conservative) have all answered our climate questions over the last few weeks, and are aware of the crucial importance of decisive action to combat climate change during the next Parliament. Greenpeace's reverse graffiti reminders may not last long but the consequences of failing to take effective action now will be felt for generations.

These videos were part of the Ask The Climate Question campaign, run by a coalition of NGO’s in the lead up to the general election. Local Greenpeace groups were asked to stage hustings and other events, without causing the 'safer' NGO's' in the coalition any risk of being seen to be political (a bit of a difficult line to tread). For the Hampstead & Kilburn campaign we decided to set up a youtube channel and collect soundbyte questions from constituents to show their candidates.

My vision of mass spontaneous climate demand uploads from all over the country didn't quite materialise.

First use of Jamendo to find a great soundtrack by Sevish.

Additional cameraperson:  

Antonio Cardoso, volunteer, Greenpeace UK

Interviewer:                       

Neil Jones, Coordinator, Camden Greenpeace

Boy Masturbates Violently in His Bedroom

And of course the least unpopular thing I’ve ever made is nine seconds of pseudo-smut. (Check out the depressing audience demographic in Youtube Insight). What the hell, I’ll be clicking on it in 10 year’s time.

Charly Modeuse A Paris A Jimmy Choo pour H&M, Londres

Fashion blogger Charly reports on the launch of the Jimmy Choo range at H&M on Oxford Street. Things get a little frenzied as shoppers scramble for the knock-down fashion labels.

Incomprehensible mass-excitement over tatty sweatshop clothing. A very cross H&M woman ejected us from the store after 15 min. Length of unauthorised recording time is inversely proportional to camera size.

Party At The Pumps II

The second Party at the Pumps organised by London Rising Tide and the London Tar Sands Network. The first party was hosted by BP, this time the venue is a Shell petrol station in North London. For one afternoon the forecourt is transformed into a zero carbon emissions zone. Samba bands Rhythms of Resistance, and Sambatage from SOAS university, join forces to provide the fantastic music as protestors dance, picnic and leaflet passers-by.

Not all the drivers hoping for their petrol fix are happy to be confronted by banners warning them about the devastating environmental impact of Shell's tar sands extraction project in Alberta, Canada. Transport accounts for 21% of UK carbon emissions, which, give or take a financial crisis, are STILL rising in real terms, pushing us ever closer to the planetary catastrophe of runaway climate change.

I think this protest was more interesting politcally & visually than the recent Greenpeace petrol station shut down, but  Greenpeace’s phenomenal media machine publicised their action around the world, whereas no-one paid much attention to this protest. It's the age-old dilemma of whether to effect change through topdown media savvy organisations or smaller, more democratic groups. Think I prefer the Rising Tide end of the scale, even if they rarely make it to the BBC’s attention.

The samba music  made this an opportunity for more of a music video. I experimented with the ‘cinemode’ on my camcorder but the result wasn’t great: the reduced contrast range which was nice (no blown out highlights / skies for once) but it also softened and warmed the image to the point where everyone had suntans. A bit inappropriate for the sustainable travel message so I reversed some of the effect afterwards (re-sharpening & blue-shifting the image).

Summer Lovin'

A youth drama group rehearses 'Summer Lovin', a stage adaptation of Grease, at the Tricycle Theatre.

The audio is terrible but I've included it here because the editing is ok. When I first started recording digital audio I didn't understand the vital importance of not peaking the levels, instead recording as near to 0dB as possible. Thus started my bane of crappy sound; the battle continues to this day.

BAN: The Bully Abolition Network

A Lambeth Council funded video project to explore the problem of bullying. This was the only project I've worked on where the aims of the funders struck a chord with the kids. Usually a worthy subject like 'drugs are bad' leaves them cold, so we usually let them interpret the subject in their own way, not always with a good result. For one project involving a boy being led astray at a pot party, they turned up with actual narcotics, which was hell to edit.

1st use of anamorphic widescreen, which caused a rendering headache during the editing.

A group of children form the Bully Abolition Network to protest about the bullying of one of their friends.

Trailer for One Arm Jack

This was based on a candyman-type urban myth of a man who loses an arm and wreaks vengeance on the neighbourhood (or something like that).

The short film itself doesn't hold together plotwise, but it was fun doing a 'what might have been' trailer, complete with the naff title, 'only those with no past have nothing to fear.' Hopefully the production was a good experience for the kids (a little too good at times; I think one of the cast got knocked up, the sound of which was faintly audible in one outtake c/o a sensitive shotgun mic. Oops).

This was good practice at 'horror lighting'; I took the risk of exposing everything fully to ensure faces were always visable, then using the procamp filter in FCP to up the contrast and drop out the dark areas, which I think worked ok.

Spent too much time on the lighting, which showed the tension between trying to make a decent film and provide a good educational experience for the participants, which can sometimes be mutually exclusive.

X'ed

A Tricycle Theatre Education Dept project about the consequences of school exclusion. The film itself isn't great (way too long), but its youtube popularity is due to the starring role played by... of Lady Sovereign fame. According to her, working on the soundtrack for this video was her first step into the Music Industry, so community/educational video

I always felt that another of the cast would have been the better casting choice, but you can't argue with fans.

Interesting comparing the media image with the real person.

Roles: assistant director and lighting assistant. The lighting was a steep learning curve - it's really easy to make video lighting look crap. We used a Dedo lighting kit and loads of diffusion for interiors, and an (overkill) 2K for the exterior night scenes.

Our first try at lighting an interior bedroom night scene with diffused low light was a total luma-fail; so we tried the convention of a blue streak of 'moonlight' across the actor's face, which looked ludicrous on set (who the hell sleeps like that?) but totally normal on screen.

Round London

A group of teenagers attempt to make a documentary about their home city. This was funded by the LWT 'Whose London' competition. The Roundhouse Education Centre. This was before the swanky new buildings so it was portacabins.

We spent a long time gathering footage about Lonon (interviews etc) during weekly workshops. By the end though we had nothing particularly exciting. The usual problem of platitudes.

So I bought an old camcorder off ebay and we shot this fictional day in the life of a less than professional documentary team. The kids found the end result funny, although the LWT comment was the universally chilling 'interesting'.

The end shot of the camera dropping into the Thames was accomplished with a rope and an underwater camera housing (the rental house weren't too pleased with the damage we caused to their housing after scraping it along the river bottom, even though I tried to cover up the scratches with a marker pen).

Empirion: A Space Illiad

Scorched and battered by an alien atmosphere, the surviving ships of the Empirion Expedition have finally touched down on an uncharted planet, lightyears from home.

Shown on Channel 4 (primetime 2am slot). Probably fewer viewers than the 31 youtube hits in the last year. It's not fucking Kubrick but please somebody click on it.

Handbags

A short documentary about handbags and what women keep in them. This was the first project I did with my shiny new PD-150 camcorder & G4/Final Cut Pro investment. I got the idea after a friend (1st interviewee) revealed she kept a voodoo doll in her handbag for past enemies.

Dot com bubble tale of woe: a web TV start-up said they would buy the documentary for £500, pending a (justified) re-edit of the end audio sequence. Re-edit submitted I didn't hear from them for months. I finally extracting a promise of payment on a particular date, only to find out they went into receivership on the day before. I was at the bottom of a long list of creditors, so not much hope of compensation.

I then made about 30 VHS copies and shipped them off to several festivals.  That's right, I placed a crummy copy into a large tape-filled plastic box and sent it by hand to the other side of the planet; with nary a word back.

I was learning FCP as I went along but made the mistake of trying to work painstakingly through the instruction manual, resulting in very impeded workflow (eg laboriously labelling imported clips: not necessary when editing your own footage). Learning from text isn't necessary nowadays - we're spoilt for choice with online tutorials. It's hard for young'uns to imagine what it was like in the pre-youtube dark age.

Began a long battle with mildly OCD perfectionism (see salutory tale here). Perfectionism isn't much to do with creating something 'perfect', more a self-esteem/confidence/sabotage thing. I've always found it incredibly difficult to finish projects: have to force myself through the final stages, wrenching my brain away from miniscule technical issues.

No2ID Protests at the London ID Launch

No2ID greets Meg Hillier, the Minister for Identity at the launch of ID cards for Londoners.

Meg Hillier actually failed to appear and we just missed her scuttling into a side entrance for the launch. It was interesting how effective the No2ID masks were: they made a tiny demonstration much more dramatic.

The ID cards scheme was an amazingly crap idea that various governments seem to want after being in power for a certain time (the Conservatives were obsessed with it back in the 80's). The scheme was scrapped by the coalition government after winning the 2010 general election, although the data-state threat is never very far away. MInd you, they might as well check up on us via facebook, must be a police state's dream.

A year later the BBC noticed the video and ran a story on upstart youths gastro-marauding around the Tube.

Tar Sands Protest

Tar Sands protest outside the Canadian Embassy in Copenhagen during the UN Climate Change Conference.

Turns out this demonstration has appeared in loads of other videos due to the impassioned First Nations speeches. There were 20+ cameras there, most of them with better angles, it's getting harder to find audiovisually under-covered protests nowadays.

OBJECT: Ladmags

OBJECT activists go on a guerrilla rebranding mission to highlight the destructive misogyny of the ladmag industry.

Another project on my new career of annoying security guards / receptionists etc. The store manager was much faster to eject the group with a camera present than on the usual  OBJECT expeditions. After this I removed the fluffy mic covering to try and increase camera-stealth, although I think his type of protest is probably best covered by mobile phones.

Learnt from the poor quality interview sound: avoid train stations and pubs for interviews.

BP Goes Back to Black

BP is about to join the scramble for the tar sands. 'Beyond petroleum' has become 'back to black' as BP's plunge into the most destructive extraction project on Earth makes a mockery of its own PR greenwash. On Fossil Fools day, 2010, London Rising Tide and the London Tar Sands Network decided to help BP with a rebranding strategy to reflect their renewed commitment to environmental devastation and catastrophic climate change. Unfortunately, BP's UK head office didn't appreciate the delivery of the new 'back to black' marketing materials, although they kindly decided not to press charges over the 'criminal damage' caused by the protest. Sadly no-one seems to be pressing charges against the corporations engaged in planetary scale criminal damage in the Canadian tar sands.

Rising Tide is a environmental campaign network that specialises in creative protest. They don't get the publicity they deserve compared to larger, wealthier organisations.  This action took place a few weeks before the Gulf Oil Spill catastrophe; BP would probably prefer ‘Back to Black’ to their current status as British Pariah.

At the end of the shoot the photographer Zoe Cormier and I stayed behind to get some shots of the Back to Black sign being removed. Two police officers detained us and threatened us with arrest, court orders and rendition (not the last one) if we didn’t hand over our photos / video, with their evidence of heinous criminal damage (a plywood sign D-locked to BP’s railings). I couldn’t work out why they didn’t just rip the plywood sign off, but apparently that would have constituted criminal damage against our property..

I missed getting a shot of the sign being attached to BP’s railings: it’s a good idea to have more than one cameraperson to make sure everything gets covered. It was also a good lesson in making sure you know your media rights and handling police intimidation.

Much of the audio was useless due to noisy roadworks taking place opposite the BP building, but a bit of Matt & Kim covered it up quite well. Pete Davis did a great job as the slick PR consultant, and it was a fun incorporating him into BP’s 2009 corporate video: The next best thing to having graphic design skills is borrowing your opponent's.