Michelle Tofi

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

If you like jazz or Annie Lennox you might like this, which is not really jazz and definitely not Annie Lennox.  It’s a clip of a live event I filmed for The Evening Standard newspaper, in which British jazz singer Clare Teal performs ‘Why’, quite brilliantly I might add.  I co-ordinated this shoot on 2 5D MK II’s (one of them mine) and my 550D, using a 50mm lens, a 24-70 Sigma and a 24-70 Canon L lens (a beast, which belongs to my good friend Mahdi from http://mtnproductions.co.uk/.  There’s plenty more footage from the night that I’m slowly uploading to Vimeo.  But if you’re after a live event camera op/director or editor, let me know! I’m getting pretty adept at all this :)

- Michelle (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! 

4 Piece Close-Up Lens Kit Review

New toy time! This past weekend over at Vimeo there was a Macro video project. The challenge was to create a video of no more than 3 minutes using only macro shots, with a complete narrative told through the images. A great project and one which inspired me, but unfortunately my only macro-capable lens is a Sigma telephoto that really doesn’t get close enough to anything to be true macro. So, I bought myself a set of 52mm Close-up lenses - including shipping these set me back about £20, a total bargain for what I got. 

The set includes four glass lenses in various strengths (+1,+2+4 & Macro) which screw onto the front of a standard 52mm filter size prime, such as Canon’s EF 50 mm f/1.8 II Lens.  Below is a test of three of the lenses, compared with the standard shot achieved using the Canon 50mm.

As you can tell, the Macro Lens alone is incredible - as soon as this kit arrived (the day after I ordered it!) I’ve been playing with the macro lens all day - my Flickr has a whole new album dedicated to shots taken with this filter, and you can see more examples running along the bottom of this page.  I highly recommend checking them out - For a cheap glass filter you can really achieve some incredibly detailed work, and I can’t wait to put these lens filters to good use at the weekend, taking advantage of the great sunshine we’ve been having to make my macro film. Ok, it’ll be a week to late to get it entered in Vimeo’s project, but it should still be something pretty special! Pick your set up today! If you’re not yet convinced, here’s another snap shot I took using the filter this afternoon:

Pre-review: Prestigio E157 HD LCD monitor

Before I get a chance to properly use it and shoot a little video review I thought I’d drop some first impressions of my new ‘E157’ full HD DSLR monitor. As an advisory caution, I’ve labelled this ‘prestigio’ as that’s the only brand name I could find in any of the packaging, and even that was just in a small picture in the manual. You’ll find it on EBay though, here: HD DSLR Monitor 1080p on EBay

First impressions are pretty basic: I’m thrilled. This beauty normally goes for around £150 on EBay but I managed to bargain mine down to £118 including free express shipping from these guys in Hong Kong - yup, it arrived in the UK two days after I ordered it, and I was able to pay a tiny (£6) customs charge and pick it up the next day. For just over a hundred squid I’ve got a full 1080 HD monitor with a remote control and a ball-rotating hotshoe mount. The thing even came with a sun shade to protect the image from glare!

My only niggle so far is that it came with a non-uk plug. Still, a couple of quid for an adapter from your local Market and you’re sorted. I actually happened to have a 12v adapter that fitted anyway so it’s charging up nicely as I type.

So there you have it- a real bargain full HD monitor for your DSLR. So far, it’s really awesome!

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! 

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The Ten O’Clock Live studio! (Taken with Instagram at BBC Broadcasting House)

Yes, we went to see the taping of Ten O’Clock Live (a channel 4 show shot in a studio at the BBC). As any filmmaker will tell you, sitting in the audience for the taping of a show is a pretty itchy experience. This show in particular is sent out live, so you’re really expected to be looking at the presenters, clapping along etc, but I couldn’t help but watch the crew interact instead. For example, watching the stage director orchestrate the multiple cameras was really interesting, especially observing the silent tension when one operator dropped his focus for a moment, forcing a cut to a different POV. Anyone wanting to get into TV work will have to get used to this kind of high tension environment, and the ability to anticipate the moves of the other camera operators around you. It’s something I’d relish. Anyone out there looking to crew a new TV show? I’m your girl!