Blogs

Bailey & Anderson Brothers: Umbrella Studios

It Ain’t Easy
April 2010

Wow! What a hard month. It seems to be getting more and more challenging as the days go by. Shall we give up? OF COURSE NOT! That’s not an option. It’s our duty to see this through to the end.

 

“We can do all things through Christ that strengthens us”. (Philippians 4: 13).

No matter how difficult this period becomes.

We’ve broken up from University and are back in Birmingham, Brum town, Birmz, B-city, the second city, the West Midlands. Call it what you like, but for us it’s home and it feels good to be re-united with family and friends. One crucial element we’ve learnt about entrepreneurship is that spending time and sharing your business with loved ones is extremely important as it grounds you and gives you that accountability to the ones who love you the most and have your best interests at heart.

If you have a major vision, that can be at times a burden and overwhelming, then the closest people to you will hopefully be there as a support network to help guide you through the tests and trials. Especially when you feel that you may want to give up. For us this has been through our families praying for and with us and dealing with us in truth and love by letting us know that no matter what, they will support Umbrella and Broken Souls and treat the movement as their own. This encourages us every day and night.

So we’re currently in heavy pre-production and are also working on our second term’s negotiated project for University, which we have chosen to concentrate on producing. So we’re kind of killing seven birds with one stone, as everything we’re working on right now is preparation for our master project “Broken Souls”. Our negotiated project is proving very challenging at the moment, as we are developing our unique method of producing a feature length film; casting, (we held auditions early this week and it just confirmed our understanding of Birmingham talent, IT’S AMAZING!). Locations, permits, armourers, intellectual property, second drafts, film crew etc and most importantly pulling down the finance needed to go into production.

Last year we held a private investment evening before we started the course in Plymouth and thank God we raised enough finance to get to this stage of pre-production. However we have been preparing physically and spiritually for the last month for our next investment evening for production that will be taking place next week on the 17th April in Birmingham. This night will be a special one.

To produce a film is no easy task, and we are realising, especially as independent filmmakers that in order to begin a journey that leads to a place of significance, you have to be willing to sacrifice.

The reality is... Yes! We need money to make the film. We can’t neglect that at all. As we work on our negotiated project and the producing of Broken Souls, we will practically enter the arena’s we need to, in order to gain access to the funds that are out there. However where the money will come from? We don’t really know. But what we do know is that God is a powerful God and we trust him with all our hearts.

We are not depending on our own logic, understanding or film intelligence to get this film made. We are depending on the God in heaven who gave us the vision of Umbrella and Broken Souls to get us through. God Bless.

Umbrella Studios are hosting a fundraising event for their film, Broken Souls on 17 April, 2010. For more information, visit www.umbrellastudios.co.uk

Dan & Josh

Bailey & Anderson Brothers: Umbrella Studios

Caption: “I’m Daniel” (Left of photo) “And I’m Joshua” (Right of photo)

bfm's 2010 bloggers: Daniel Anderson and Joshua Bailey AKA B.A.B (Bailey & Anderson Brothers), Umbrella Studios

They are Birmingham entrepreneurs, creative artists and current Master students at the University of Plymouth, studying Contemporary Film Practice.

Introducing B.A.B

Greetings people…

First and foremost we want to say thank you for taking the time out to read our first blog. Hopefully during our time here on the bfm Media blog page you will begin to gain an understanding of what we’re about, where we’re coming from and the vision we are hoping to achieve. We are looking forward to sharing our journey with you all and trust that throughout it you will be inspired. Oh yeah!

We are both originally from Birmingham and have been best friends all our lives. We were both brought up in different sides of Birmingham, which people love to call the “ghetto”, Daniel being raised in Handsworth and Joshua being raised in the Newtown area. Funnily enough these two opposing areas are well known for the gang warfare and their hatred for one other, resulting in many lives being prematurely cut short. This disturbs us greatly and we know is problem not just in Brum but in other cities across the UK also.

However this did not stop us both from removing ourselves from that mentality. We had to use our God given gifts and talents to begin a journey together as business partners aimed at offering hope, inspiration and solutions for the youth within these challenging times, through the means of audio and visual.

We live in Plymouth, (The South West), where we are studying our Masters Degree in Contemporary Film Practice. The course is geared towards individuals who wish to be creative and innovative with film, seeking to challenge their concepts and visions. This is what attracted us to this course knowing that we would be able to, with a lot of hard work achieve a low budget feature length presentation, purely driven by high concept, character, story, vision, and strategy.

We know and believe that music and film, especially in the climate we’re currently in, can be used effectively as a fundamental change agent, catalyst and expression of hope amongst so much corruption, hatred, and confusion within the minds, choices and lifestyles of our young people. This is why we have chosen to tell a unique story called “Broken Souls”. It deals with loss, death, suicide, murder, regret, forgiveness, anger, hate, evil, supernaturalism, homelessness, Bipolar Disorder, Mental instability, isolation, hope, faith, God and so much more.

It is a rags to riches story, and a love story. Think Lady and the Tramp meets Beauty and the Beast. City of God meets the Exorcist in Birmingham and Plymouth. Crazy, we know. But it’s a story that needs to be told, and is ultimately about hope, discovery, realization and freedom from mental slavery.

Thank you and until next time, stay blessed.

Dan & Josh

Related links
www.umbrellastudios.co.uk
http://twitter.com/Umbrellastudios

Geoffrey Sentamu's latest blog: Me? A Camera Trainee?

Me? A Camera Trainee?
November, 2009

So I'd been in the running to be a camera trainee on a feature that started a few days ago but sadly I didn't get the gig. It was a 7-week feature shooting in Newcastle and the rumblings were that they wanted someone local, which they went for in the end. As is often the case in this business I heard about it through a guy I know who is the focus puller on the film. It's shooting in Super 35mm and as you can no doubt guess using Panavision cameras

So I got a call from said Focus Puller (yes you Richard) a day into their prep asking whether I'd like to come along for a day or two to help them prep. He said It'll be boring stuff but maybe he didn't know how geeky I am and that I'd actually find this exciting? It was awesome. Just being in that environment alone was worth it. But I actually got to be of assistance and the picture above (taken on the beloved iPhone) is when we were testing the lenses and I'm taking down lens info before we do the infinity test.

I could ooze on about all the geeky toys I got to play with but you'll probably fall asleep. So suffice to say that it was brilliant. I learnt a heck of a lot and we weren't even on set. And you'll never guess the crew of what film was prepping in the room next door to us? Go on guess. Ok I'll give you a clue. Its a series of films and there are lots of kids in them. And yes it rhymes with Beatrix Potter.

What was really great is that although I didn't get to be trainee on the shoot I got to work with the crew (Richard and Simon - great guys too) and they said that if they ever do some 2nd camera stuff on the shoot that they'll try and get me on it. That would be brill.

It's great to feel that I'm progressing forward and I'm really looking forward to the BSC screening of one of my film school films in a few weeks time (more to follow on that in my next post).

Geoffrey Sentamu's latest blog: So What Now?

So What Now?
October, 2009

Apologies to all of you who’ve been clicking on this page hoping for another blog entry (yes I mean you mum), its been a crazy few months since my last entry.

Was director of photography on another LFA film (as seen in the picture) and failed to get into the National Film and Television School. Was tough to take as first (for a few hours) but all it means is that I can start making things happen now rather than having to wait two more years.

Rather than fill you in on all the minutia I thought I’d give this entry a more forward looking feel. For those of you who’ve become fond of the blogs where I fill you in on all my little capers don’t worry that will restart in the next entry.

So the major thing is that it’s almost a year since I started the one-year filmmaking diploma course (September 2008 was when I started) and thankfully things have begun to get quieter in terms of the intensity in school. In some ways I’m busier than ever trying to get my future career off the ground but it’s allowing me to have more of a regular life at the moment, which is good news for my wife.

So I spend most of my time plotting how I’m going to take over the world…

Joking aside, for someone who is going to be a cinematographer one day (you have to proclaim these things I’ve been told) there are few paths to achieving that goal. The more traditional path is to become a trainee in the camera department of feature films. This is an awesome way and something I’m pursuing right now (I might have some news for you on that front so keep checking this blog in the future).

The trainee way is a long ladder-like path where (for those of you who don’t know) you start assisting the camera crew then the aim is to work up the positions (Trainee to Clapper Loader, then to Focus Puller, then to Operator, then to Director of Photography).

The other way, which is more commonplace in the States than here, is to become a spark then a gaffer then a director of photography.

Both routes can take upwards of 10 or 15 years to reach the position of cinematographer and you better be certain that you want to WORK day in, day out in features.

There is, however, a quicker way, which is a break from the norm, quite risky, and can all end up horribly wrong if you are not careful.

It’s to make a short film with an unknown director and it wins awards and mass critical acclaim. People will then want you to recreate that magic for projects that they have and before in the role of director of photography.

A few people have made it this way. It’s very illusive and because you may not have worked on tons of features, observing fantastic DPs (which you would’ve gained from the trainee route) you will feel as if you’ve really been thrown in at the deep end and the chance of failure is greater.

So if any of you have any great scripts out there and some finance just let me know…

Seriously though it’s not something you can ever plan and it’s definitely not part of my plan. But if it happens naturally… Enough said.

So what am I going to do until I get that first trainee gig?

A good friend of mine (who is a director of photography) gave me this piece of advice as a roadmap for becoming a DP. It’s “Shoot. Assist. Then Shoot Again”.

So the main thing is to keep shooting no matter how small the project is. The key thing for me is to just make sure there is something that excites me about it.

I’ll be going freelance (starting up my own business probably) and assisting/observing friends who have more experience than me as well.

So my plan for this blog is to keep you guys updated on my journey in trying to “make it” in the film business.

So get ready for a more frenetic “blogging posting rate thingy” from me.

Latest post: Jack Frost Nipping at Your Nose

Jack Frost Nipping at Your Nose
June, 2009

So its just over a month away until I’m director of photography again on a London Film Academy shoot entitled 'Confessions'. I’m excited. It should turn out great but I’ve been guilty of pilling a lot onto my schedule as usual.

This week I’ve been a spark on a National Film and Television School shoot for a couple of days. We wrapped on Wednesday after which I rushed off to scout some churches for Confessionals (that’s for our film and not cos I’d bludgeoned the 1st AD or anything like that). I then rushed home and off to York so I could be at the unit base nice and early the next day for a days filming of 'A Touch of Frost'.

It was a day's work experience and I got to the unit base in time for the fantastic breakfast. I think I made a bit of a name for myself amongst the crew for a huge appetite. Not quite the name I was hoping for but I guess its better to be known and bring a smile to someone’s favourite than to be forgotten.

The picture above is of the crew just before a take.

I couldn’t take any photos of the cast for obvious reasons but David Jason and the rest of the cast were always very welcoming and supportive.

A big thank you has to go to Robin Vidgeon, BSC, who was the director of photography and sorted me out with the day's work experience. Just 'IMDB' him and you’ll be impressed by the films that he’s done. He was fantastic and very supportive, making sure that I was never squeezed off set, even in cramped locations, so that I could learn from being there and observing.

He also made sure I got to take part as well. I was assisting the camera crew who were brilliant. They totally didn’t need me but they let me help out. I’ve never been so nervous holding the clapper board in front of the camera waiting to announce the next take.

So it was a fabulous experience and the type that I hope to have many more of. They shoot 'Frost' on the same camera that we have at school, which is an Arri SR3 (Super 16mm film camera for those not in the know) so I could make real comparisons about how they did things compared to us.

I’ve taken away so much form that day and one thing I’ll never forget is the family atmosphere on set. Most of the crew have been working together for 12 years. The cohesion they have and the respect they share for each other’s craft and contribution is something that I want to have within my crew when I become a professional director of photography.

Latest post: Geoffrey Sentamu's Race to NFTS Mountain

Race to NFTS Mountain
May, 2009

Why is it that whenever you want something to work it often fails or when you really need something to work it always brakes?

Well that was my experience on Friday, May 15.

The week leading up to it was a demonstration in burning the candle at both ends as I was helping out cinematographer Paul Wheeler (him from “Practical Cinematography” book fame) on a 35mm commercials course in the day and staying up all night to complete my application to the National Film and Television School (NFTS) for the cinematography MA.

Now when I say all night I mean all night! Well mostly. As I did manage to get 50 minutes of sleep on Tuesday at 4.40am and 7 hours sleep on Tuesday night. But it was 3am on Thursday and my second back-to-back sleepless night was becoming an inevitability. I was hunched over an edit suite in the London Film Academy (LFA) putting what I thought were the finishing touches to my show reel when I look on the NFTS website.

Now I didn’t do this as some sort of punishment (you see the application deadline was that Thursday the May, 14) but to get the school’s colour scheme so I could incorporate it into the show reel title sequence I was yet to create.

But to my amazement the deadline had been changed to Friday, May 15. I almost couldn’t believe it. Was this the answer to pray that I’d been hoping for? It felt a bit too good to be true so I kept working as if I had to hop on a train to Beaconsfield later that day to hand in my application.

Come 9am I called up the school and they confirmed that, ‘yes’, the deadline had been pushed back a day. Happy days.

So I went home, got four hours sleep (very generous of me I think) and spent time with my wife before my last sleepless night at school.

So let’s fast-forward to Friday afternoon. I am home sitting in front of my laptop and I really should be on my way out of the door to catch that train. The application is ready. It has been for several hours. I’d wanted to get it printed off at a local printers which is right outside my local tube station (make it look nice) but they weren’t running at full capacity as one of their machines were down and the engineer was in looking at it and basically it wouldn’t be ready in time.

I then turned to my HP printer but the printer said “No”. I couldn’t believe it as I had put a full cartridge in it the week before but that day it just decided that it quite liked printing everything in green -so no joy there.

After almost pulling all of my non-existent hair out I decided I’d just email it to them (which the NFTS quite like anyway. I just wanted to wow them with my presentational skills I guess).

So I’m running to the tube station and manage to get to Marylebone station to get the train to Beaconsfield (nearest station to the NFTS). I look at the board and see that I have about 15 minutes before the train is due to leave. It’s coming up to four in the afternoon and the journey is about half an hour. So I figure I should make it before 5pm. Nice!

Now I’m on the train and I used the time to make a few finishing touches to my DVD show reel (part of the application) and burn out a new one all courtesy of my trusted PowerBook.

Forty minutes have gone by. Now we were a little stop starfish on our journey out of London so I didn’t pay much attention. But when I looked at the clock on my computer and see it say 4.53pm I’m thinking we should’ve gotten there by now. I look at the map on the train and realize that we’ve just gone by the station after Beaconsfield.

Oh No!

Has the driver just decided to miss out the stop? I know I got on the right train. I called up the school and let them know that the train didn’t stop at Beaconsfield and that I was still heading in the wrong direction. The guy at the other end said that they leave reception between 5.30pm and 6.00pm and that I should get there as soon as possible.

Another 10 minutes go by and the train still hasn’t stopped.

It finally does at Bicester North (which is 40 minutes away from Beaconsfield). Can it get any worse? Well the only thing that kept me going is that as soon as I got on the train (about 4.10pm) I emailed the school my application form so I knew they had received something in time. I just had to get there to hand in my DVD.

Now I’ll skip to me arriving at Beaconsfield as all your missing is a lot of me waiting and making telephone calls.

I train pulls in to Beaconsfield station and I hit the ground running. Literally!

With my backpack on I ran all the way. What a nice day for a one-mile run. Not quite up to the pace of Roger banister though as my back started to give way but I made it.

I burst through the door sweating like Bin Laden’s food taster to find that everyone from reception had gone home. Luckily the security guard was fluent in “wheezing” and understood that the brown envelope in my hand was my application materials and not an explosive device. He put it with the other application entrants and I went to the loo to “freshen up” as they say.

I had a quick chat with a friend, Claire, who is currently studying at the NFTS and felt a lot better about things.

As I was leaving none other than Nik Powell, director, NFTS, opened the door for me and asked me if I was going down to the station. I said ‘yes’ and thus commenced a 45-minute chat on life, film, love and Arsenal. So I got to have a one on one with one of the most influential people in British film!

Every cloud, eh..!

London Film Academy student, Geoffrey Sentamu’s blog

Phobics Anonymous – a cinematographer is born
May 26, 2009

Well I've just completed my debut performance as a cinematographer (sorry, forgot to put the student in front of the cinematographer). It was on our Four-Minute films.

For those of you not in the know this is a step up from the Two-Minute exercise that I wrote about in an earlier blog but instead of making a film in one day in a studio setting we have three days to make a film and in any location we can get and with an actual budget.

Now we all think “Yes! Finally! Now we have some cash to make a decent film with” but the reality is that most of it goes on film stock and processing, catering, actors fees, transportation of equipment and in that order.

What we find is that there is little to play with after all these necessities and so the job of each production is to get almost everything else for free.

Five films are being made in our year and we each work on four of them. On one of the four films we work on each of us will carry out a head of department role as either the director, producer, director of photography or first assistant director.

We have a three-four week post-production period in which to get cast, locations, additional equipment as well as doing any tests, rehearsals, recces and the list goes on.

So as I want to be a cinematographer I was DoP for a film called Phobics Anonymous. Its about a multi phobics quest to get to his Phobics Anonymous meeting in order to overcome his greatest fears.

What attracted me to it was the lighter tone and the sense of fun that could be played out in the story. As student writers we often have a tendency (like many short film writers) to write stories that can be sombre and a bit dour in tone. I was drawn to the energy in the script and felt I could bring something to add to that energy visually.

In the post production period I also acted as location manager which meant it was my responsibility to secure locations. This was compounded by the fact that we were the only film to have five locations, which we had to shoot in three days.

Fortunately I had superwoman disguised as my producer for the film, Jennifer, who was a location animal. She almost made a sport of it and put me to shame by securing four of the five locations (although one of them doesn't really count as it was our studio at the LFA - so if you’re reading this Jen its only 3-2 to you).

First day of the shoot

We had two locations to shoot in - a hallway scene to shoot in the morning (which would account for 15 seconds of the film) and a bakery scene in the afternoon, which was more extensive.

I walked over to the first location and I was feeling good about myself. I'd had a last minute brainwave on the way to our green room, which resulted in me buying about 20 sausages and 30 pieces of bacon, which I cooked (with the help of others) for the crew. I forgot about the vegetarians and non pork eaters (DOH!)

The hallway scene we were shooting in the morning was of a postman walking up to a letter box and dropping mail through it. Very simple, very quick but after an hour I still couldn't get the lighting right.

I felt nervous. I had a lot riding on this film. This was my first attempt at being a DoP and this is what I want to be. My whole life in TV and independent video production had led up to this point and this was meant to form the bulk of my application to the NFTS This was meant to be easy.

I had recced the scene with the great Phil Meheux (Cinematographer on Casino Royale who was our tutor for the shoot) and had a simple effective plan for how to light the scene. There was a window opposite the door that would stream in sunlight that I would augment with a 2K Tungsten light (gelled to match the colour temperature) and this would fill the scene. Except I kept putting the light meter at the door and I was not getting enough light. Nowhere near enough. Everyone was looking at me as if to say “Come on this isn't that difficult, it’s only a door”.

Maybe I'm not meant to be cinematographer I thought.

So what happened? Was it that I really was that rubbish? Was it the fact that I only got an hour and forty-five minutes sleep the night before?

Well the recce we did in the afternoon when the sun shines directly through the window filling the hallway with light. It was 9am and the sun was nowhere to be seen.

What I should've done was drawn up a sun plot in pre-production so I knew where it would be. Even better I should've gone to the location at the same time that we were to be shooting and looked at the quality of light I was getting at the hallway.

In the back of my mind I had the feeling that maybe I should use the HMI (Daylight huge light source for an interior). But the one we have is a beast of a light and I was reluctant to ask my team to go and get it and put it up on the stairs after all the faffing I'd made them do already.

Once Phil got to the set I told him what I'd thought and he, seeing my indecisiveness, barked a few orders and it was done (so that’s how you‘re meant to do it).

It then all got a lot easier that day.

The weather was fantastic and that day I decided to light simply using a big key source and minimal fill in the bakery. I could go on for hours about what decisions I made but quite aware that I’ve already been going on for a while now. Safe to say that I think I had a good first day as DoP although I hold off final judgement until I see the rushes back.

The day ended with moving all our gear to our second location and me getting a little more sleep (not much more though, under five hours this time) and me feeling good about myself.

London Film Academy student, Geoffrey Sentamu’s blog

16 March 2009

The BSC show

So this weekend was another chance to brush shoulders with the great and the good at this years BSC show. For those of you who haven’t read the last entry or just don’t have a head for acronyms the BSC stands for the British Society of Cinematographers.

Each year they have a show at Elstree Film and Television Studios., which they dub the “New Equipment Show”. The aim is to reflect the ever-evolving world of film and digital production technology.

They basically invite all the heavy hitters of equipment makers and rental companies to one place and unleash on them hundreds of geeky cinematographers.

So Kodak, Fuji, ARRI, Panalux, Take2 Films and many, many more were there in full force.

The picture you see above was on the ARRI stand and paid homage to Slumdog Millionaire (I mean who doesn’t these days) with the pink ARRI taxi.

It was a bit of a disaster for me on the Friday (The show is a Friday and Saturday thing). Now, all I wanted to do was go to the show but I went into school to get a camera that I was told I could use over the weekend in order for our Saturday Film Club to shoot a short film. But somehow when it came to it it didn’t happen. So I’d wasted all morning hanging about and missed a huge chunk of the show.

By the time I got there most of the people that I went to meet (noted cinematographers, friends) had left. Gutted!

Saturday was much better though. One of our tutors was there (John Ward) and he introduced me to a ton of people. I’ve made some great contacts and I hope many good things will come from them in the future.

London Film Academy student, Geoffrey Sentamu’s blog

27 February 2009
Pinewood Studios

So I’m standing at the bottom of a flight of stairs. Now these stairs were no ordinary stairs, they led up to an open door. And you guessed it, it was no ordinary door! This door had a golden glow emanating from within and this door led onto the Bond stage.

That’s right, I was at Pinewood Studios. Jennifer, Michael and myself (Diploma classmates) took a “guided tour” (we just guided ourselves) around Pinewood Studios after watching the BSC Digital Image Evaluations (more on that later).

Although there was talk between the three of us about looking at underwater stages what we were really after was trying to sneak onto the set of Sherlock Holmes (the Robert Downey picture directed by Guy Ritchie) which were told was shooting there that very same day.

To be honest we failed. I mean we did come across a huge Winnebago, which belonged to “The man with the flowers” so the name on the door said. Now he could play a very important part in the picture for all we know but somehow I doubt it!

So we were on our way back to the bus stop to take the free shuttle bus back to Uxbridge tube station when I spied the open door.

Could this be a chance to see something spectacular at last?

No.

The Bond stage was of course vacant and I could describe it to you but when its empty you’d probably find a description of the merits of watching paint dry more fascinating. We had come across a huge water tank with a massive blue screen and found the cooly named “Goldfinger Avenue” though. Which was nice…

So what was the BSC Digital Image Evaluations I hear you say?

Well first and foremost the BSC for those of you not in the know stands for the British Society of Cinematographers and not “Bachelor of Science” as you may have thought. You have to be nominated to be a full member and basically its members are the best cinematographers in Britain.

So the evaluation was an update of a test they did two years ago. This time round they had 26 different cameras that they individually put through an unbiased repeatable process.

The cameras were film and digital motion picture cameras (as well as a Cannon digital stills camera) and were put through their paces on a range of indoor and exterior scenarios that producers and directors would typically encounter.

The test took a whole week and small pockets of students from the LFA had been attending on different days throughout the week. I attended the penultimate day and felt somewhat cheated because half of the test (a whole set) had been taken down the day before.

I wish I’d been able to attend or had found out what exactly was taking place from day to day. So the lesson learnt is that If you really want something you have to make it happen because nobody is going to hand it to you.

What we actually saw was great. At least it was for me. Being a wannabe camera geek with a little bit of knowledge it was fantastic to see all of these cameras lined up on a table and some of them put through their paces.

My personal favorite, the Sony EX3, was there in attendance and I saw how it compared to cameras that cost over 10 times its value.

So it was fantastic and a big THANK YOU has to go to Robin Vidgeon, BSC, for being instrumental in us LFA students being able to be on set whilst this was taking place.

During lunch break I managed to sweet talk (more like just asked) Sue Gibson, the president of the BSC, to allow us three to go and watch the rushes from the previous days shoot on film at the glistening Technicolor.

That was awesome.

Coming away from the day I was very aware of how little I knew about the specifics of all the cameras within the test, which I’m going to use as a challenge to one day know them all.

London Film Academy student, Geoffrey Sentamu’s blog

London Film Academy student, Geoffrey Sentamu’s blog

London Film Academy student, Geoffrey Sentamu’s blog

London Film Academy student, Geoffrey Sentamu’s blog

London Film Academy student, Geoffrey Sentamu’s blog

London Film Academy student, Geoffrey Sentamu’s blog