We produced this film to support the launch of a new Masterplan for Business Solent and Southampton City Council on the 16th March, fronted by the BBC’s Dragon, Theo Paphitis.

The event showcased multi-billion pound business opportunities in the city, crating 24 000 new jobs and attracting £3bn of new investment in the city over the next 20 years. Rostand was chosen to film and pull together material from a wide variety of sources and produce a coherent, captivating and dynamic profile of Southampton. This is a  major milestone in the regeneration of a city seeking to position itself as one of Britain’s foremost destinations for business and leisure.

For us, it was a huge challenge, sourcing material from Clipper Ventures, Carnival, Southampton University, Southampton Solent University, the Boat show, Illika, Southampton University Science Park, Crest Homes, IKEA, Southampton FC, National Oceanography Centre, Business Solent and many others. The stunning archive material was sourced from the Wessex Film and Sound Archives.

The film promotes the remarkable achievements of the City over the centuries, and its current status as a world leader in science and technology – The MIT of the UK – according to Britain’s leading academics. Until this film few were aware of Southampton as a place to live and do business. For decades it has been widely agreed Southampton has punched under it’s weight. All hope that with this new Masterplan for development the corner has finally been turned.

One of our crew, Leonard Lee, took the new toy to Lithuania and filmed some stunning sequences to show off the Panasonic Af101. Full 35mm chip, prime lenses – it duffs up the Canon 5D &D etc..check out the footage:

Why is it better than DSLRs?

Because of the ‘line-skipping’ down-converting methods of cameras like Canon’s EOS 5D MK2, where the method of downscaling to get an HD video picture size of 1920×1080 is achieved by simply deleting (skipping) lines on the large sensor. This, and other limitations, such as a lack of decent low-pass video filtering, mean that DSLRs like the 5D MK2 suffer from chronic aliasing, compression artifacts, bayer-type patterning, stepping and other retarded picture degrading phenomena. Also don’t need Heath Robinson-like contraptions to hold the damn thing steady.

The world has gone shallow depth-of-field mad; everyone wants to throw that background right out of focus. In fact, people want to throw it so far out of focus that it positively knocks it back in time a few hundred years to an era before that background was even there! We all know that throwing the background out of focus will make the main subject stand out as there is more definition between subject and background. Using a shallow depth-of-field can also yield some very artsy shots. More importantly, however, controlling the depth-of-field allows you to work cinematically by directing the viewer’s eye with clever use of depth-of-field. A camcorder with a large sensor also makes pull-focus shots more obvious and easier to achieve.

The big deal (and this is a very big deal) is that the AG-AF101 uses a full size 35mm MOS sensor – well, almost 35mm size. It is in fact a 4/3″ sensor, which is virtually the same size as a 35mm Hollywood film camera. Unlike Digital SLRs, Panasonic have put all the right technology into the AG-AF101 camcorder to utilize this large sensor and the amazing shallow depth-of-field that can be achieved from it by using correct optical low-pass video filtering and proper downscaling technology, eliminating any aliasing and other nasty gremlins that DSLRs are riddled with.

This Panasonic AF101 is one of the best HD camcorders you can find.

We recently filmed an entire training series of dramas for Mott Macdonald with it. Boring offices look stunning….

Mott Macdonald

Well worth a look. This is a historic film capturing for future generations what it was like to be alive on 24th July

These are all individual stories covering aspects of each person’s life – things we couldn’t even begin to imagine.There’s a very raw emotional honesty about them. Some are purely inventive, all are creative and often highly emotive. They’re short, so dip in and dip out. They’ll take your breath away and make you marvel at the wonders of the world – other people…

Discussions about certain media’s lack of scruples and their engaging in illegal phone hacking indicated the lengths to which journalists can go to get a story. All the more reason for the need for top executives to be crisis management trained.

Excellent reviews from the Executive Management team at Delifrance UK for our one day Crisis Management Course. Designed bespoke for the company, with former BBC news reporter Freddie Rostand, and former Health Editor of The Sun, Jaqui Thornton, five executives were put through their paces and taught how to handle a breaking storm. How not to dig yourself into a hole and how to get out of one! Ultimately it’s about controlling the situation, managing the information flow and controling the interviews to ensure your core message gets across.

The workshop involved live TV and radio interviews with scenarios designed with Delifrance to reflect potential real life situations that have happened in other companies – eg glass in croissants, loss of major accounts with supermarkets, death of workers on factory floor.

Our course is tough and not a comfortable ride. However, each delegate comes away brimming with confidence and ready to mix with the media.

It takes years to build a reputation, and just seconds to destroy it. One bad interview in a  pressured situation and whoomph!  - your reputation goes up in smoke. So what to do?

We’ve added a new page to our website for training courses on how to deal with the media and how people can more effectively  deal with each other. With the News of the World scandal exploding like a string of military grade stun grenades, no one should ever be in any doubt about the lengths to which journalists go to get that headline. And if you say the wrong thing to a journalist….well, media training should be seen as insurance against bad headlines.

Demand has been steadily growing for our expertise. We do regular training with Delifrance, Ricoh, Janssen Cilag among others. With years of BBC journalism behind us, our team of national newspaper (both tabloid and broadsheet) journalists, TV journalists and Communication and Training specialists devise each course bespoke for the client’s industry sector and their specific needs. We go from ‘Paxmanesque ‘ interrogation sessions to softer Beginners Level confidence building, personal communication skills and confidence building.

One thing HR people should consider is the use of bespoke training DVDs. We use actors and devise scenarios to support training programmes, be it for customer service, management upskilling or just trying to improve internal communications.

An illegal goldmine in the Grand Savannah

Back from Venezuela, filming HD documentary of The Lost World. Giant Tepuis, upon whose summits you find prehistoric life. We’re exploring the damage being caused by unregulated tourism. Access to the mountain had to be negotiated through the Director of the Canaima National Park Ingrid Martinez who demanded we pay her $10 000 US. That the film was being made to raise financial support for sustainable tourism initiatives in the Park cuts no ice. After each conversation the price went up by another $1000 US. Told her to f*** off. Key interviewee botanist Stewart Macpherson has already been arrested at gunpoint, imprisonned and interrogated for refusing to pay Ingrid Martinez bribes. Venezuela a basket case of a country. All over big hoardings with pictures of El Preidente Hugo Chavez stating “Socialismo o Muerte!” Socialism or Death.

Climbed alternative mountain, refusing to pay money that should go to the native Pemon Indians that Ingrid prefers to have herself. Leave National Park and climb Chrikiyen. A remote Tepui. Tourism impacting here already with structures being built at stop over points on the 2 day trek to the mountain.

These Tepuis lie in the Grand Savannah. An area of ancient grassland the size of England. 2000 000 sq miles. It has 1 road. A population  of 40 000, nearly entirely Pemon Indians. Most live in the only town Santa Elena. To get anywhere you have to walk through savannah and rain forest, usually a 3 – 4 day trek.Main source of protein in this barren area is insects. Author enjoyed an ant pizza.

Chicken and Termites. Lunch.

Documentary production by Rostand Productions for Ibex Earth and Royal Geographical Society. Several formats Sony EX3, 35mm film from Adrian Warren, Sony Z5 which produced surprisingly stunning HDV footage. 3CMOS chip far better than expected.

Should be fun.

Serious delays though out means a manic edit for this film production. David Attenborough is said to be keen to play a role, as the film is examining the need for a sustainable tourism programme to be developed there. These unique pre-dinosaur habitats are being rapidly eroded and destroyed by growing numbers of tourists.

Rostand Productions very much in a firefighting role  - producing and editing this documentary.  It’s a salvage job from 100′s of hours of footage already obtained, but without professional producer or director so just 100′s of hours of random shots. A 50 minute treatise on the need for a sustainable approach to tourism in this wilderness cannot be told by wallpaper. No interviews etc….flying out with main interviewee Stewart Mcpherson, a botanist and expert on the area. Wham bam thank you Maam shoot. Need a structure to the film and a narrative spine which he can provide. Back 5th June. premier of film 30th June. Interviews to do in London on return. Nightmare.

Watch this space. Major deadline to hit.

It’s taken us a while to learn how to manage effectively and edit .mxf, .bpav, .mov, RED, HDCAM, HDCAM-SR, DVCPRO HD, D5HD, AVC-Intra, XD-CAM HD, HDV and AVCHD to name but some. These format files all have different qualities, but the one thing they all have in common is that they are all  huge files and will really gum up your processors and take up massive amounts of space in your storage. We can cut that in half and speed up your workflow significantly.

How you manage your material is crucial for your workflow;  time is money and you need to be clear about what you’re doing and why. We’ve been around the houses and spoken with, and taken advice from, top post-production companies to learn how to work across the range of formats for our clients.

We’re working on a major 1hr TV documentary – The Lost World –  about Mount Roraima in Venezuela for Ibex Earth with multiple formats. Shot mostly on EX3 by the renowned wildlife photographer Adrian Warren, We also have D5, HDV, and some SD. We have an initial agreement with Sir David Attenborough to narrate the film, and the Naturalist and explorer Stewart Mcpherson. We need to get it right. It’s a very fast turnaround. We’re in Venezuela for 2 weeks until mid-May, delivery is end June.

The Lost World

Fortunately, the HD workflow answer is delightfully simple.

The first step is no matter the file format of your rushes, you need to compress them for offline editing. You need a good CODEC (Compression/Decompression) software. The best is Apple’s ProRes Codecs. These are becoming industry standard for offline and online. Most HD projects are exported in H.264 format, however you can also export it in the best ProRes, the 12-bit ProRes 444. For example, 1 hour of full HD uncompressed will take up 120GB. using ProRes 444 that comes down to 80GB and doesn’t struggle though your processors. If you use ProRes 422 (HQ) it will be slightly lower. Thing is you can’t tell the difference. For offline, we find ProRes 422 (proxy) to edit with before exporting in ProRes 444. The ProRes (proxy) is about 30% of the original file size and saves hours in rendering time. For example, we’ve just converted a 764 MB Sony EX3 .mxf file into proxy for offline editing which came in at under 200 MB. When you have a few hundred such files it makes a big difference.

So whatever format rushes you have, convert them into ProRes 444 or ProRes 422 with a good converter. A really good one is MPEG Streamclip. And it’s free. Won’t do everything. The other one is Aunsoft video converter for Mac or for Windows, and costs $35. Both recommended.

Edit in ProRes and export in Prores 444 or H.264.

Job done.

You’ll save massive amounts of space, massive amounts of time and still have a full HD film at the end.