Website

[ambanja-blog]

ESSENCE OF LEFKADA Each year we do our best to work on a passion project intended to try out some new styles and put our equipment through their paces. This year in April we headed out to Lefkada, Greece to film a short promo video about the island. We put together a rough schedule for the week cramming the days to capture a huge array of footage in 4K & high speed to create a fast paced, stylised edit.

With over 25K hits and counting we’re really pleased with the results - take a look at the film here.

[ambanja-blog]

JUICE PLUS BIRMINGHAM The Juice PLUS+ National Leadership Convention is the biggest JP+ event in the UK with over 3000 attendees over 3 days. We were asked to produce a event video to match the energy and excitement of the event. We captured the event shooting with 4 x cameras including a DJI Ronin and A7S and 3 x Sony a7sII. We also created graphical animations for the 2 day event that played across the ICC adding atmosphere and entertainment to the inspiring presentations. Watch the film here

[ambanja-blog]

RELEASE THE KRAKEN Stickman Productions asked us to create a tense experiential film using footage from the gothic and memorable Kraken TV commercial to scare the bejesus out of the unsuspecting passers by. We worked in After Effects and Premiere adding in a dramatic soundscape and suspenseful effects to lure the viewers into a false sense of calm. A fun project to work on - BOO! coming soon!

[ambanja-blog]

INSPIRE DRONE TESTS We took our new DJI Inspire drone for some testing of it’s various features in particular the intelligent flight modes. We headed south to a favourite filming spot on an icy cold February morning. We were lucky to have a crystal clear blue sky and beautiful sunrise to shoot in as we began capturing a variety of sequences with this incredible piece of tech. We were rather pleased with our testing results and  keen to do more (although without the 4am start) take a look here.

[ambanja-blog]

GO BIG OR GO HOME As we have been so pleased with it's little brother the z27x, we are now checking out the new HP DreamColor z32x with it's whopping 31.5” 4K 10bit display and pixel count which is up to eight million we are looking forward to finally editing our footage at it's native 4K resolution. The z32x is geared for professional work, that supports professional instruments and comes colour calibrated with a range of profiles making grading a pleasure.

[ambanja-blog]

AKT | LIVE 360° RECON AKT created a fully live 360° experiential day for senior leaders to gain awareness of real life disaster management. We supported AKT throughout 2 days of action packed real life dramatic scenarios within an abandoned Police Station and Town Hall in Wakefield. We created a mock up TV studio environment in which the leaders underwent a series of live press style interviews. It was an exciting experience for everyone involved and certainly different from a typical day on set.

[ambanja-blog]

GARNIER | ULTIMATE BLENDS Telling the story of 7 women's sensitive sides. Our brief was to capture genuine emotional responses about their feelings. Teasing the interviews out of the group required the use of the Eye Direct - a beam splitter prism box enabling the interviewer first person engagement to maintain a "down the barrel" intimate eye line. We captured some revealing and emotional sequences in 4K for an HD delivery. This allowed us to be flexible in the edit giving us more options for punching in and creating another angle. Take a look at our case study page for more info on this shoot.

[ambanja-blog]

ADIDAS EYEWEAR Filming with Dreamtek and Adidas in London’s Hampstead Heath we battled against the elements of a typical grey and wet British summer's day. Filming with 2 cameras; one Sony A7s, DJI Ronin, Atomos Ninja along with a Sony FS700, Odessey 7Q+ and Alphatron. We shot SLog2 on both cameras at a variety of frames rates from 25fps - 240fps at ProResHQ capturing a range of muddy, wet, slow-motion sequences of our models sporting the latest Adidas eye wear whilst running across the heath. Video coming soon....

[ambanja-blog]

KENCO | COFFEE VS GANGS Kenco’s “Coffee Vs Gangs” campaign has been helping to provide training and prospects to the young people of Honduras and kept people out of gangs. To raise awareness of this mission, Kenco toured the UK bringing their campaign to the public. We filmed them around the country capturing footage for their case study film to feature how the campaign has helped Honduran youths.

[ambanja-blog]

AKT NIMROD AKT Productions wanted to film the last moments of Flight AK100 of the Nimrod plane used by the RAF during the Afghanistan campaign. We were given free reign of a grounded Nimrod plane at Manchester Runway Museum. The cockpit was a tight environment to film in so we shot on the FS700 with Odyssey at 4K giving ourselves options in the edit. Shooting into a 20ft green screen mounted on towers in front of the plane gave us scope to comp in Afghan terrain into the windows.

[ambanja-blog]

4K STUDIO TESTS This month we did some further testing with our 4K options. Filming with model and fashion designer Lois Gaskin Barber, we put the Odyessey7Q+ through its paces. Shooting both SLog2 and Rec709, we had a bit of fun compositing some overlay graphics to further test the processing performance, rendering 4K footage in After Effects CC. Whilst the performance was certainly pushed to it's limits we created a short promo that you can check out here.

[ambanja-blog]

HENLEY REGATTA We filmed with the Henley Rowing Club at sunrise in mid July and wanted to capture some slow-motion 4K sequences at first light. Filming with the South African Rowing team during their sunrise practice we filmed a number of test shots on the Fs700 / Odyssey7Q+ to test the work-flow of SLog2, 4K RAW & Cinema DNG files. Debayering and grading the footage using DaVinci Resolve we saw some interesting and exciting results. More information on these test to come.

[ambanja-blog]

MAYBELLINE NUDE We produced a film to show the infinite looks that could be created with their new ‘Nude’ eye shadow make up palette. We worked on an idea focussing purely on the eyes and the make up being applied. We wanted the make up to appear as if it were being applied by itself. To do this we had to create a head bracket that ensured our models eyes didn’t move. Take a look at the results.

[ambanja-blog]

JUICE + MARBELLA We headed out to Marbella along with an arsenal of kit including a Sony FS700, Panasonic GH4, DJI Ronin, Phantom 2, Odyssey 7Q+ and GoPro.  We had a number of short promotional films to make in very little time so we hit the ground running. Shooting with the team from JuicePlus+ was a breeze and lots of fun was had by all. The first of the films received 73k hits in its first day online so a great result!  Watch the film here.

[ambanja-blog]

4K DATA WRANGLING Apple have released a new video codec into the film making & post production world, called ProRes 4444 XQ and it’s a beast. At 4K (4096 x 2160) it registers 1697 Mbps which equals 764 GB/hour of 4K video footage. The arguments for and against 4K and beyond are endless, but regardless, we love it - so we choose to shoot 4K and manage and the post production madness... best stock up on your storage!

[ambanja-blog]

SGW | CELEBRATE 150 YEARS This summer we went back to school - St George’s Weybridge school. They are coming up to their 150 year anniversary and commissioned us to create a celebratory film for the school’s past, present and future students. In collaboration with Pistachio Design we put together a collective narrative with a cross section of the school’s characters. Filming with Canon CinePrimes we created a filmic concept film that stayed as far away from a typical online school video as possible. The responses from the school’s commissioning board were very positive and the next stage of production are underway for the next stage of the video campaign. Take a look at the film here.