Inhouse Research and Training Materials

We provided video and voiceover facilities to In-house Research and Training this week for use within their renowned training courses for house sales and construction staff. Their new house demonstration and handover training courses take place across the country and are much respected within the construction industry.

The work involved providing our EX1 camera and three-way Dedolight kit to film a training video. Post production on the film included audio editing, sound design and video conform. We also recorded voiceovers from a script prepared by In-house which were then edited into individual .WAV files to enable them to be played at the appropriate points from within a PowerPoint presentation.

School Celebrates St. George's Day!

We filmed 450 children at a local school over a 1 hour period from 40ft crane to create a short film displaying the children make up the coast of GB using the EX1 time-lapse function.

["The film is fab", Terri Menham - Headteacher, Red Oaks Primary School]

Labour Candidate Campaign Film

We were approached by the Labour Party in Swindon to film the North Swindon candidate, Victor Agarwal's campaign. They wanted a professional film with high production values on a tight budget. The film was shot using the Sony EX1 HD camera in 1280 x 720 /25p with boom mic and the 3-way Dedolight Kit with softbox & grid. We managed to turn this around very quickly as time was paramount. We provided the editor with well logged clips, alternative takes and transcoded options for optimum flexibility in the edit as well as offering advice on the technical aspects of the film, including delivery formats.

"This is an awesome result, all I can say is wow! The way the posters have been arranged also have surpassed my expectations, and give it a lot of impact with the lighting." [Ramon Lawson, Producer / Editor]

Click here to watch the film

Special Delivery Sound Mix

We've recently completed a sound mix for the short film Special Delivery, produced by Richard Cambridge and written by David Hawk. The film will premier at the WorldFest Houston International Film Festival, which takes place between 9 and 18 April.

Wootton Bassett Young Chamber

We spent an enjoyable afternoon with the Wootton Bassett School Young Chamber recently discussing how we and the other companies present can offer our help and expert specialist knowledge to pupils at the school. The Young Chamber is an initiative to give students the opportunity to gain confidence and skills to become an effective leader. It also enables them to work alongside business people to develop successful projects and also to develop partnerships with other young people across the UK. As part of their experience the Young Chamber is expected to organize several projects throughout the year such as Christmas markets, 'Dragons Den', company visits and business workshops, amongst others. As a company we will act as an occasional sounding board for the local students as and when they need our help and advice and we hope some exciting projects will come out of the initiative.

Wootton Bassett Repatriation Documentary

We were asked to provide camera and filming services for a Liverpool based film maker, who is developing a documentary about the Wootton Bassett Repatriations. Using a two-camera shoot we obtained footage from the event and conducted interviews with members of the public, many of whom attend the repatriation services on a regular basis. The idea behind the film is to show what it's like to really be there - something that's not often portrayed on the news reports.

The event was extremely moving at times (even though it had been attended before by us) and getting the balance of obtaining film footage and paying the utmost respect to the five repatriated soldiers and their families was a very difficult challenge.

Web Videos for SME's Article

Alex has recently written a brief article dealing with web videos for SMEs and online advertising plus a very brief history of the world wide web so far. It’s aim was to put into some context the enormous rise of the web and the potential to business of video advertising on the web whilst maintaining high quality and engaging content in order stand out from the crowd. The article was published on the Entrepreneurs Club Website but the extract marketing sheet is included here also. Just click in the image below to enlarge.

Wootton Bassett Arts Festival Support

Running from the 10th to the 14th June, the 2010 Wootton Bassett Arts Festival (WBAF) brings art, creative writing, music, speech and drama right into the community, giving the opportunity for all to exhibit and compete for prizes in a variety of classes. Following a highly successful 2009, this years WBAF is being looked forward to with great anticipation. The WBAF is affiliated to the British and International Federation of Festivals for Music, Dance and Speech (BIFF) of which Her Majesty the Queen is Patron. This year the festival brings a new range of art and photography classes, including a 3-D artwork section. The creative writing section includes categories for poetry, monologue and journalism, to name a few. The speech and drama section includes solo acting, prose reading, public speaking and debating, amongst others. Lastly the music section covers choirs, vocal, and instrumentals, including ensemble and piano sections.

Please visit the WBAF website for more information and to enter a piece of work into the festival.

Dreambase Studios is proud to be supporting the festival this year and we're offering the winners in the Adult Choir category a chance to record their show piece in our own studios or on location.

16 June: UPDATE: The Lingmara Community Choir won the Adult Choir category, a sample of their music can be found here:

BVE: The Production Show

Our first year attending the Broadcast Video Expo, Earls Court and what an event. Coupled with the new sister event, the production show kept us busy all day giving us free access to leading companies and experts providing the latest production technology, lighting, training, equipment hire, post production and studios for the content creation industries of Film and TV.

The buzz words of the show included DSLR, RED, MicroBudget and of course 3D. We kicked off with the seminar "Production on a Budget" followed shortly after by a fantastic insight to "Financing & Budget Models for Films" by Christine Hartland (Producer of David Holroyd's wmd nominated Best Debut UK Feature at the East End Film Festival 2009.) with the following links being suggested by Christine as essential for any filmmaker:

www.fundyourfilm.info
www.powertothepixel.com
www.scottkirsner.com
www.peterbroderick.com
www.filmpop.tv.

We talked with the guys from Glidecam, VFX Bluescreen Solutions, various lighting companies and some of the 3D technologies for broadcast. Our afternoon was very informative indeed with Jonathan Harrison's "Lighting on the Run" seminar sponsored by Arri. Within 60 minutes, Jonathan demonstrated the art of lighting and there was no doubt, this is the key if you want to stand out from the crowd. Our final seminar of the day was a panel discussion with industry experts on the "Future of Digital Video". In summary, video is playing a huge part in the shake up of content creation for all mediums. The future incorporates many new platforms and is gravitating towards industries such as mobile, gaming and the internet with social networking sites being key in advertising and marketing content. Our last call (but by no means least) was at the Vision Research stand and we were blown away by their Phantom 65 camera. With the capability to record at 34,188fps (ok, this was at a very low resolution) the camera is capable of shooting 320fps at full HD 1920 x 1080. Watching their showreel was absolutely stunning and we're now looking for an excuse to hire one!

In these rapidly changing times, we feel that we are perfectly situated to offer services, facilities and knowledge to create great quality content, understanding and respecting traditional methods of content creation using an engineering approach to innovate new efficient ways to create this content on a budget.

We would love to hear from anyone with a creative project at any stage of the production and feel we could offer our facilities, knowledge, feedback, ideas, contacts or simply, advice. Please email info@dreambasestudios.com, visit our website for more details or follow us on twitter / Facebook for the latest news.

Blood Pagan Films visit the Studio

Scriptwiter and producer, Angus Brown of Blood Pagan Films visited the studios today. (Blood Pagan is a supernatural horror, feature film: Forced to help defend his Pagan Community against a ruthless sect intent on their demise a man must reconnect with the forces of nature or both he and his people will die.) We'd previously met up with Angus Brown at the UK Film Council Public Consultation networking event and again at the Bristol Media Tuesday event. Angus is passionate about filmmaking and is currently in his 7th iteration of scriptwriting. We are looking forward to collaboration with Angus in the future.

RED ONE Workflow

Lighting cameraman David Read provides a comprehensive Red Camera package plus the services of a talented and experienced cinematographer with over twenty years in the business.

“The idea behind the RED camera system is simple. Design and build a high performance digital cine camera with the quality of 35mm film and convenience of pure digital. RED delivers unmatched image quality with no recording system limitations.” - taken from www.red.com

David visited our studios for the day to test the RED ONE workflow with Final Cut Pro 7 in our HD edit suite. After setting up a few shots, making full use of David's knowledge and lighting, we then ingested the footage via firewire 800 using the RED drive RAID and FCS 3 Installer that Provides native REDCODE media (R3D) support for Final Cut Pro and Color. Includes: RED QuickTime Codec (v3.8.0), Log and Transfer (v20.0.0), REDCODE plugin for Color (v2.9), and Final Cut Studio RED workflow whitepaper. Note: Supports RED ONE cameras up through Build 20.

The results were stunning, working in ProRes 4:4:4:4 was not an issue for FCP7, we could easily edit multiple HD streams using our G|RAID's and had no issues streaming HD direct from our RAID5 server to HD Plasma for client screenings. The 2k stills were impressive and the detail when grading in colour and zoom in motion was impressive to say the least.

A Young Film Student With Ideas

Alex Neville approached our studios for a weeks work experience in post production. He's in his second year of studying BA(Hons) Digital Film Production at the University of Gloucestershire and has worked on around 10 short student films over the last few years. His most recent documentaries are: "King Cone" and "Laundrette" which were well received.

We have many innovative project ideas and decided that we would complete one of our projects within the week Alex was at the studios (as well as completing the wiring of the ADR/foley booth.) Shooting all the scenes with the EX1, we completed a rough edit and bounced a ProRes version across the network to the 5.1 audio suite where Alex really got stuck into the sound design, recording ADR/Foley and mix. After colour correcting, he rendered out the short film which was demonstrated to a local special needs school and received some fantastic feedback.

"I just wanted to thank you again for having me down last week. On reflection I think I learned a lot and had a great time in the process. I will defiantly keep in touch and I would love to come and visit again in the future." [Alex Neville - Student, Digital Film Production, Gloucester University]

Magic Mathworks Travelling Circus

The Magic Mathworks is a travelling hands-on maths exhibition for schools, museums and discovery centres. This touring maths lab demonstrates and explores a multisensory approach to the learning of mathematics based on the Multiple Embodiment Principle of Z P Dienes.

As part of an on-going project with a local school, we are filmng a series of events that will be used to promote and highlight the ethos of the school for the interest of new parents and governing bodies.

A Snow Film

We are working with local schools and are in the process of filming a series of events that will be used to promote and highlight the ethos of the school for the interest of new parents and governing bodies. We are providing the whole production from planning, filming, editing and sound post production for this project over the next few months.

Change Your World

Sustrans is the UK's leading sustainable transport charity. Change Your World is an annual campaign run by Sustrans which invites people across the UK to swap just one car trip during the first week of July and to walk, cycle, take public transport or car-share instead.

Sustainable transport charity Sustrans were delighted with the results of their project with Dreambase Studios:

"Mark and his team came in at very short notice, quickly grasped our concept and worked at breakneck speed to produce a short promotional film. We instantly felt we were in safe hands with people who were happy to work with our ideas and blend with their own creative thoughts and experience to get the finished product. Their enthusiasm and commitment exceeded our expectations and made them a pleasure to work with." [Gill Harrison, Sustrans Press and PR Manager]

Filming is 'The Dogs' at Lucy Pet Carer

Lucy Pet Carer is growing and expanding every year to meet new clients demands and have now relocated to new premises as a more intimate family business set in a 3 half acre estate overlooking the countryside around Wootton Bassett. Providing professional service to clients who want peace of mind when they're away from their pets. They offer free range play and boarding, no kennelling. They also have cat and rabbit hotel facilities!

Dreambase Studios produced a promotional video for the business to add to the website as a follow up to the annual Doggie Christmas Party held at the facility. The content was shot on our EX1 and both operator and equipment got very muddy! And they say never work with children or animals...

BBC Digital Revolution (working title)

Digital revolution (working title) is a four part series for BBC Two about how the web is changing the world. Starting 30/01/10, it's in production now, and the BBC are offering a range of ways to interact with the programme team and the content they produce. A competition was run to produce a trailer or short film for the series using the set of rushes under a BBC permissive license. This is a trailer that was created by Dreambase Studios' Director, Alex Hudd and was chosen as one of the shortlisted entries in the competition. Alex's editing can be seen in full on Dreambase Studios' Vimeo and YouTube channels.

The Fire Service College

The Fire Gateway is a web portal which has been developed to allow businesses and the general public to access, and interact with, an array of fire-related services on-line. The Fire Service College are the responsible body for the Fire Gateway. Nomos Media were responsible for providing a full-time 1st line support function for the Gateway, for providing an interface between the public and all 44 Fire and Rescue Services in England, for managing all 3rd party suppliers and contracts and for designing and managing all developments across the Portal.

We provided Nomos with a short testimonial for use at trade shows and events. Nomos, being a web technologies organisation specialising in the production of provision of internet based services filmed the content on the Canon 7D and provided the footage on hard drive. We ingested, transcoded and creatively edited the footage to a 3 minute video and delivered on both HD and SD.

Picture courtesy of Fire Service College

Greek TV Commercial

WIND Hellas is today one of Greece’s largest telecommunications operators with an annual turnover of €1,26 billion for 2008 and more than 6 million customers in mobile and fixed telephony as well as in broadband services.

We were asked to provide recordings for this Greek TV commercial by our friends at DNA Labs which aired in Greece throughout the month of December. They approached us in the final hour, requesting a recording of English children singing the traditional "1-2 Buckle My Shoe" rhyme. We managed to turn the recording around the same day and deliver via our FTP account, an edited recording the next day. The guys at DNA Labs did a wonderful job with sound on the final commercial.

"The client was super happy with the latest version, thanks a lot" [George Lowtronik Ramantanis, Mixer/Sound Designer DNA Labs, Greece]

Lab Consultancy for Dolby and Technicolor

At the end of November we were asked to provide consultancy services to Technicolor on behalf of Dolby Laboratories to check and ensure the operation of the optical sound camera installed at the Technicolor Pinewood Site. The visit was part of Technicolor's ongoing program with Dolby to maintain the highest quality of soundtrack photographic processing on motion picture film and is carried out as part of Dolby Laboratories' Lab and Camera Certification program.

We provided a full check and test of the optical sound camera along with process control training for Dolby personnel resulting in an improvement to the already high quality soundtrack reproduction. A full report was provided for the certification records and future reference.

Business of the Month Award

Today, Dreambase Studios was presented with the Business of the Month Award, sponsored by Marriott Hotels. We were very happy to receive this award after only 3 months of trading. It was a pleasant surprise and we were delighted for the recognition. We were treated to a wonderful 3-course meal and champagne reception.

Wootton Bassett Repatriation

A grey mist hung over the market town of Wootton Bassett and seemed to match the mood of the people who lined the High Street. Click here to read the full article:

Filming this particular repatriation, the plan was to turn around a newscast edit in the same day using Sony's EX1 tapeless workflow. We were able to work quickly and efficiently ingesting the XDCAM clips into the workstation and edit seamlessly. We also discovered a neat little add-on for the firefox browser that allows you to capture flash content from websites such as YouTube. We used the Flash Video Resources add-on to capture some stock footage for the newscast. We then up-scaled the footage to HD using MPEG Streamclip which worked well.

Installation of Plasma

We have been very busy juggling clients and the completion of the studio installation. Today was the arrival of our 50" HD Plasma. It really does look great and will be a huge improvement for the clients, offering a fantastic HD picture whilst mixing 5.1 soundtrack.

Anyone Can Play the Guitar

Oxford born Jon Spira was introduced to the medium of film by his dad and one of his earliest childhood memories is assisting his father in the creation of short animations using Super 8mm film. Since returning to Oxford Jon has been engaged in an ongoing documentary project which seeks to trace the history of Oxford's music scene over the last 30 years. To read the full article, click here:

Jon Spira and editor Ben Lavington Martin visited the studio with a rough cut of the feature music documentary "Anyone Can Play the Guitar". We offered advice on the sound post production and Jon was happy with the consultation. He is currently in the process of trying to secure funding to complete post-production for sound mixing and legal and licensing fees for the feature-length documentary and we look forward to working with Jon in the near future.

Our Time Alone

Our Time Alone is short film by Gurchetan Singh (dir) / Hank Starrs (prod) for Blank Slate, part of the UK Film Council's New Cinema Fund Digital Shorts Scheme. Blank Slate is a UK-wide digital short film scheme supporting the next generation of cutting-edge black, Asian and minority ethnic filmmaking talent. Blank Slate is produced by B3 Media in partnership with the UK Film Council and Arts Council England.

Dreambase Studios provided complete sound post-production for this short film involving foley recording, ADR, sound design and mix as well as creating a DVD working copy for the B3 Media tour.

"We really love what you guys have done with the film. I look forward to working with you again very soon" [Hank Starrs - Producer]

To view the trailer, click here.



B3 Media Blank Slate Showcase @Encounters Short Film Festival
Bristol Watershed 2009

November Press Release

Today was our first press release for Dreambase Studios Limited. Since starting the company in September 2009 we have completed the sound post production on a UK Film Council / B3 Media funded short film, sound post production work for Dolby Laboratories, editing webfilm for a number of companies as well as providing sound consultancy for the National Film and Television School.

Dolby 5.1 Mix for IBC

IBC is the leading annual event for professionals involved in the creation, management and delivery of entertainment content. IBC prides itself on the highest technical standards in its demonstrations and conference facilities. It could not do this without the active support of many companies who provide equipment and expertise including Dolby.

Dreambase Studios was commissioned to re-mix a total of eighteen, 5.1 soundtracks from various broadcast and film sources to provide a 5.1 showreel piece for Dolby to demo at the IBC event.

"Great job, easy to work with. Delivered on time and on budget" [Mick Dwyer - Senior Engineer, Broadcast Systems, Dolby Laboratories Inc]

Ubisoft: Assassin's Creed II

Ubisoft is a leading international developer, publisher and distributor of interactive entertainment products.

Dolby approached Dreambase Studios for the editing of elements and HD title overlays of Ubisoft's 'Assassin's Creed' demo pod at the IFA consumer electronics show. (A showcase for innovation and the technology of tomorrow.)

Picture courtesy of Ubisoft Entertainment.

Radio In Schools

Radio In Schools is an independent, not for profit organisation. It offers a safe podcasting platform to allow schools, children and a new generation of listeners to get their voice heard in their own communities.

Dreambase Studios provided 100% post production creating a promotional video for the nationwide launch of Radio In Schools. A high definition version was used at trade shows and a standard definition version for the Radio In Schools website. We provided video capture, ingest, upscaling, transcoding and editing as well as sound design, mix and music composition delivered to a very tight schedule. The promo can be viewed in full on Dreambase Studios' Vimeo and YouTube channels.

"I love the ident, sounding fantastic and really like the direction of it." [Melissa Thom - Director, Radio In Schools]

Picture courtesy of Radio In Schools.

Welcome To Dreambase Studios

Today was the first day of trading for Dreambase Studios Limited. We work in what was the birthplace of Wiltshire Radio. The studios were designed and built by Grimshaw Architects in 1982 [see pics below] and were home to the radio station as it re-branded to GWR FM in 1985, after a merger with Radio West.

The studio construction offers well isolated rooms, minimising cross talk with good acoustic performance for reference mixing and with the aid of sand filled pods in the exterior of the building, the noise floor is very low indeed. This makes it perfect for ADR and Foley recordings allowing maximum dynamics to the source audio.

For us these are exciting times indeed and as the studios (as we!) evolve we hope to provide production, post-production, engineering and innovative solutions to a variety of digital media content creation.