Michelle Tofi

Work, Work, Work

Thought’d I’d post a little update about the projects I’m currently working on/starting, as it’s shaping up to be a busy couple of months for me so I’m not sure how many posts I’ll be writing in the next few weeks. 

Firstly, after next friday I hand in my final research paper as a graduate student at London Met to hopefully never return to adult education again. This is no discredit to higher learning, but more to the fact that we only get so many years on this earth to genuinely create and I’m anxious to get on with it!  After that as some visitors may know I’ll be involved with the creation and production of an original series for Iranian television. It’s a long story, but the company behind it it also has a whole host of equipment for wet and dry hire if anyone’s looking for a brilliant young DOP or a load of camera equipment :)

on the 28th of May I begin principle photography on just the trailer for a new and very exciting feature called ‘The Fifth Horseman’, from Sirius Pictures, and two days later have the first production meeting for a short about infamous exotic dancer/spy Mata Hari called ‘Birth of a Spy’. In July/August I’ll be shooting a short for promising young director Claudiu Pavel called ‘Above The Board’. It’s a film that’s being crowd-funded with some really excellent incentives for investors and I’ll be releasing more info about that as soon as I have it.  

Finally I’m hoping to be directing a short of my own that I’m co-producing with the excellent writer and actor Robert Feldman, who co-starred in my debut as a director, Sacrifice, which we’ve just submitted to Raindance and the Cornish International Film Festival. Fingers crossed!  I had hoped this short would be shot and wrapped by the 30th of June but with my schedule as it currently is we’ll have to see.  The film should be a fairly easy shoot, as it mostly centers around one character and will be told through a blend of photography/stop motion and video. I’m psyched for it. 

As always, if you have a project you’re looking to crew feel free to get in touch. In the mean time, wish me luck! I can’t wait to be able to post from these sets and let you know how the shoots go.

I shot the first half of a fairly complicated music video  with camera assistance from the talented Luke Ibbetson last thursday, with the second half to come in June. I need that month in the middle off - currently my short film Sacrifice is in the final stages of its edit - all of the colour grading was done in-house at Bubble TV in Soho by the extraordinary Steve Gibbs and our score, by Tristram Oaten, was just added to the edit today. Tomorrow we’ll be authoring out our master DVD’s and that’s it - my first completed drama, finished. We got confirmation today that we’ll be in not one but two film festivals in Rio this year, so this is pretty big news for us. I’ve also got an exciting corporate shoot over three days at the end of this week in (hopefully sunny) Cornwall and I’m working on writing a brand new television series that has major interest from a channel with 35 million viewers - exciting times indeed!

So back to the music video. We’re shooting the visuals to Skitzo’s grime track ‘For You’, a narrative about two friends who grow up together and stick together when times get really rough for one of them. It’s a great narrative concept and the young actors we worked with on Thursday playing the two friends as teens were fantastic. One of them, Adam Adebiyi aka Triple A turned out to be one half of the up and coming grime act HGM - seriously skilful guys who spit lightening fast lyrics off the cuff.  With HGM member Krisis along for the shoot it was too good an opportunity to miss and I grabbed my camera at the end of the shooting day to record this impromptu freestyle. Shot in one take and coloured in Looks for Final Cut, I hope you enjoy watching it as much as I enjoyed filming it!

I’m going to be looking for lots more projects over the next few months so if you have a music video you’d like me to work on or a short film in need of a director/DOP or script polish please get in touch! 

New Toys/New Skills

Last week I was finally able to take a short break from working on the post for my film, Sacrifice and concentrate on other projects. Our film is currently being graded in two different countries; we have managed to get a studio in Soho, London, to grade us their version of the film (for free!) and a freelance colourist in Barcelona is working on his own take for the look of the period.

Of course, free time in this industry is always both a blessing and a curse - I’ve got a busy month next month with two corporate shoots and a music video scheduled within a week of each-other but right now I’d be glad of something to fill my time (and boost my bank balance) a little. 

I love gadgets and anyone who reads this blog regularly will know I can’t go too long without acquiring a new bit of kit for my shooting set-up. Last week that new bit of kit was the ‘Shoot RS-60E3 Remote Cord’ - a shutter release remote for my DSLR that means a) I can finally be in family/group photos and b) I can finally do some sweet timelapses using controlled shutter photography. 

Now timelapse and HDSLR is admittedly becoming something of a cliche but it is still a useful skill to have under your belt and makes a nice addition to various projects - long establishing shots that introduce both a location and scene change in a fiction film, a quick fly-through of the creation of something in a documentary, a stylish effect in a music video that seems to isolate your artist from the fast paced world around them. Me, I just sat my camera on my windowsill and shot the street below it, but that’s guerilla filmmaking for you! So here’s my ‘Bethnal Green Timelapse’. Anyone in the know will recognise that this is the corner of Approach Road - next time you’re down The Approach for a swift pint you can ruefully smile to yourself at the art that might be happening incongruously around you. 

Of course, there’s a lot still to be learned about timelapse from my position, but for something put together a few minutes after I ripped open the remote’s packaging it’s not too bad. There is, however, more to this story than just a tale of new toys. As I mentioned in the title of this post, I’ve also been honing a few new skills this week and as a freelance editor my focus has been on colour grading. As I’ve said, my current film is being graded professionally right now but that doesn’t mean grading isn’t something I enjoy and am able to offer my clients. Here’s a little side by side comparison to show you what I managed to achieve with the colouring on my timelapse stills:

There’s room for improvement, clearly - the reds I think I pushed a little too far into magenta in some cases, but I’m really pleased with the colour and shine I brought back to the car that sits stationary throughout the timelapse footage, and how much the flower bed ‘pops’ off the screen. I clearly also should have set up my camera to take better pictures in the first place! That washed out grey looking ‘before’ picture is frankly terrible, but it’s a great indication of what a talented colourist can do to a film. 

As always, if you’re looking for a freelance camera operator/DOP/Director or Editor/Colourist please do get in touch. Until we meet again, I’ll be refining my colouring skills and finishing the screenplay for my latest short. 

Here’s the teaser for my directorial debut, ‘Sacrifice’. I’m pretty pleased with it, though obviously I’m looking forward to having a more thorough cut available as an official ‘trailer’. Sit back, crank up your headphones to enjoy the soundtrack scored for us by the fantastic Dave Connolly and enjoy! 

Film Directing 101.1

Well it’s 3:10am on a Friday morning and I really should be asleep. Shooting begins on my ‘proper’ directorial debut Sacrifice in 5 and a bit days, which is pretty scary as I’m still breaking down the scenes into shots. Here’s a tip, would-be-filmmakers: do this earlier! 

My excuse for such tardiness? Exhaustion, mostly. Myself, our DOP Bruno Loureiro and writer/co-producer Adam Grundy really worked incredibly hard in the months before Christmas to get this labour of love off the ground. We’ve been doing the jobs some other indie films would have spread across a team of twenty and I couldn’t be more thrilled to begin to see our work pay off. We’ve also been blessed with some wonderful contributions from our art director/costumier Emma Witter and on-set artist Michelle Sabev. So Christmas we allowed ourselves a rest. It was much needed, but if I had the chance to do it all again I’d have postponed Christmas till some time after next week!

In the last couple of days production has really stepped up a gear. We’ve had our first full rehearsal/read-through, first cast visit to the set, booked all of our studio lighting, dolly, glide-track etc, shot some sound tests with the radio mics and Zoom H4N, practiced synching sound in FCP (thank you, PluralEyes!), steadily received a stream of costumes, props, set dressing etc through the mail and held our first costume fitting. This coming Sunday we have our first full dress rehearsal and then it’s no looking back as shooting begins just a couple of days after, ready or not.

So far is it worth it? Of course, I wouldn’t be trying to get into this career if it wasn’t. It’s been magical. The costumes, the period details, seeing our art director begin building a confession booth (!), the little idea I began with that Adam developed into a whole complete story is really starting to come to life. I can’t wait to share it with you. 

So here’s what you’ve all been waiting for! The Betasaurus Exclusive look at Nintendo’s 3DS!

In this episode, Adam and Michelle deliver an exclusive scoop on the brand new Nintendo 3DS. We talk you through the expected features, the kind of games you might play, and when you can get your hands on one! In a feat of engineering bravado, Adam makes his own makeshift 3DS and get’s down with his bad self in a geddan tribute (ゲッダン for the win!). Featuring original music from Dave Connolly, this is one episode of TerrorByte you do not want to miss!