Michelle Tofi

Here’s the latest video from my recent collaboration with UK grime artist Jelluzz.  I’m particularly pleased with the split screen footage in this music video; look out for the scene where the girl lights a cigarette by a phone booth - I’d say the two shots almost match up perfectly.  The concept of the video is to demonstrate what life is currently like on West Green road, and what it could be like in a fantasy world. As always, please comment/share. 

Cold Inside is the first of a series of music videos I’m producing for Jelluzz’s new mixtape ‘Navy Blue Days’. Featuring Nathan Hector and Tessa Hart, Cold Inside was shot on 5D MK II in and around Acton and Ealing. I edited the video in FCPX.

To get the whole mixtape you can download for FREE here http://hulkshare.com/wl4zq8obgubm and here http://www.downloadamixtape.com

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I’ve been collaborating with Jelluzz on a series of videos for his upcoming mixtape Catch Me if I Fall. It’s been a great opportunity to get more familiar with FCPX, which has become my go-to edit suite for music videos (I’m still using FCP7 for narrative film & corporate work, and probably will for the foreseeable future). Here’s a screenshot of the edit suite in action, cutting a split-screen based video that I hope you’ll all enjoy. Watch out for it soon…

The Jude - ‘Les Filles Francaises’

I hope you guys will enjoy this black and white music video for today’s single release of The Jude’s ‘Les Filles Francaises’. I directed the photography of this video under the supervision of incredibly creative director/editor Jon Walton last weekend and any French cinema fans amongst my readership will hopefully appreciate the nods to certain classic films of the Nouvelle Vague period. Look out for homages to A Bout de Souffle, Les Mistons, Bande à Part, Jules et Jim, Amelie and (500) Days of Summer!  The band were great fun to work with and the single is available from today on iTunes here: Download Les Filles Francaises

Bucket Head - on Virgin Media Shorts. One of my first post-graduation DOP jobs was this cool little project for a Virgin Media Shorts competition entry. It’s a fun film and it’s only 2 minutes, so take a break and enjoy it. 

Above is the poster for the official UK premiere of my short film, ‘Sacrifice’, written by myself and Adam Grundy and which I directed in early 2011 with the fantastic Bruno Loureiro as DOP, supported by gaffer Sabrina Rivolta and the amazing camera work of operator Marcela Goldberg. It was a real pleasure to work with this team of dedicated and creative professionals, and I would be delighted if any readers joined me at the open screening on the 19th of June.  We will be premiering alongside some truly amazing pieces of graduate filmmaking, including one film that even got Lady Gaga’s seal of approval at this years Cannes! It should be a fantastic afternoon of film, so if anyone wants to come along drop me an email at michelle.tofi@gmail.com

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! 

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!