Journal

In 2009 Canon quite literally changed the game in filmmaking. With the introduction of the Canon 5D MkII photographers had the tool to make small videos. Or so they thought. Little did they know how the MkII would be lapped up by videographers and even filmmakers. Fast forward to 2019, Canon has been dethroned in […]

So you’ve researched, planned and shot your film project. If you are still in production or pre-production check out my Top 10 Tips for First-time Filmmakers. For those of you who have completed production or nearing there, the footage is now on your drive and safely backed up. Now, how do you drive to completion on

As a Civil Society Organisation or NGO you work to make society better for all. But in order to do more good work and have a greater impact, you need more people to know about your work and support it in some way. How do you spread the word around – let others know? The

I’ve sat at grading sessions and watched with great interest as colourists worked on films that I’d edited. The process fascinated me. I realised how colour could be used more effectively to tell stories. And that led me to explore colour grading tools as part of my editing process. As film editors, we use pacing,

In making Journeys – the documentary film about El Shaddai Trust, a charity working with children in need in India, I had to rely on archival photographs for the sequences dealing with the organisation’s beginnings. This is inevitable when retelling history. I was presented with a huge number of images in JPG format. The question

Techniques for editing a documentary film Long-format documentary film editing is more than just a technical endeavour of putting clips together in an NLE timeline. Of course, you know that already. You’ve shot your documentary film, over several weeks or even years. Now you need to put it all together in a coherent and engaging

“I have another story I’d like to tell,” shouted 14-year old Rahul, his voice full of excitement. Then he added, “two…no… three stories!” Over five days at the beginning of September, I facilitated a workshop on Digital Storytelling with 10 participants from the El Shaddai Charitable Trust, a non-profit in Goa that runs homes and schools

Want to become better film editor? How about practicing the craft of sewing. Seriously. There’s a lot to learn. In the early days of cinema, the craft of film editing (note that at the time, film editors were not considered artists), was the domain of women. Memorable films like The Birth of a Nation, Stagecoach,

To be human is to tell stories. That’s a powerful statement I came across when reading “Telling True Stories” from the Nieman Foundation at the Harvard University. In the opening essay, Pulitzer Prize winner and juror Jacqui Banaszynski quotes from Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried: “Stories are for joining the past to the future.

Back in October 2012 I had picked up the Canon 24-70 USM-II L 2.8 lens. It was/is a great lens – sharp, good in low light and ability to quickly go from wide to medium-tele. Then in Feb 2013 I sold the lens. Now why would that be? Make no mistake, the 24-70 is a