Some shots I did in Iran a few years back for "The History of Football" a 13 part 1 hour TV series.
While we were filming the "large mural of soldiers with traffic in the foreground" a secret police vehicle spotted us and we were arrested and held for six hours while they made sure we weren't spies! It wasn't a pleasant experience, but that didn't change my feelings for the country and its people, some of the friendliest and hospitable on this planet.
Someone on the street in Yamassoukro, Ivory Coast
Market in Kano, Nigeria
Street cleaner, Tunis, Tunisia
Army and police watching the African Champions League Final, Cairo, Egypt
Drive-by picture of an afternoon prayer in a slum in Kano, Nigeria
Market lady in Yamassoukro, Ivory Coast
Mummified skeletons at the genocide memorial
in Kitale, Rwanda
World Cup Final 2002. Final whistle, the Brazilian bench steam onto the pitch
The Iraqi footbal team after their victory of a Middle East tournament.
They were ordered to put T-shirts of Saddam on as they paraded the cup.
As the team were celebrating in the changing room, Uday, Saddam's son and head of the Iraq FA, called on the phone congratulating the team.
There was talk that Uday would go berserk when the national team put in a poor performance and would make examples on certain players, put them in jail, hang them upside down and have their feet whipped...A lot of these stories were hear say, but when we asked the players if this was true they didn't deny it.
Team photo with the Palestinian National Football Team
Marc @ Red Earth Studio came across Luke Gamble back in 2007 while browsing on the internet one lazy day. Luke is a Somerset based Vet, who's charity Worldwide Veterinary Services (WVS) provides medication and veterinary help to those in need in all four corners of the globe.
We went down to meet him, took a little camera to screen test him and instantly we knew we had found a gem of a wildlife/animal presenter.
He had already done a cheap little video with a local production company which had been touted around broadcasters to no avail and that was a bit of a stumbling block as it took a lot of convincing from us to prove to him that we were the right company to make something with and this really tested his loyalties, but after much deliberating he decided to sign up with Red Earth Studio.
We knew that the video that we had wasn't good enough, despite the content being incredible, so it was decided that we go and shoot another promo.
In April 2008, Luke was asked by the Kenyan government to help out with the farmers who were now living in displacement camps set up after the political unrest in Feb 2008.
Thousands of people had lost their homes, farms and livelihoods as warring tribes fought each other over land and power around the Rift Valley region in Central West of Kenya.
It was a no brainer. We knew it would be a great backdrop to film a pilot programme about Luke's work. At the time we owned a Sony DSR 570 but we took the view that to make it have more impact we should film it on HD, but we had to keep the costs down as we were paying this out of our own pocket. We did a deal with hammerhead.tv and they gave us a Sony 750 for the 10 days; so myself and Marc headed out to Nairobi with Luke and his good friend and assistant Clive for a bit of a kenyan adventure.
10 x one hour episodes of Luke Gamble - Vet Adventures will TX on SKY 1 in 2010
Luke vaccinating a dog
Marc and Clive vaccinating some cows
Marc happy in his new role
I love this pic. Myself, left, Luke and Marc, walking down the street discussing a piece to camera that we have just done, oblivious to how much we stood out and everyone staring at us.
Reality soon hit home once we set foot inside the camps. The conditions people were living in were dreadful.
Funny, looking at these pictures, everything looks so clean. It doesn't look as bad as it was.
I haven't captured the grittiness of it. Shame there isn't a smell-a-camera.
Little boy collecting water
Interviewing one of the councillors of the camp who told us some pretty horrifying stories of violence and rapes, especially on children!!
Despite their suffering, everyone was welcoming and happy to see us and talk to us.
Take 87!!! We shot this scene so many times and we never used it!
Luke introducing the camp to camera with 20 kids in tow.
Beauty salon in an IDP camp
Marc filming the kids on a little camera.
A house destroyed in the troubles. 2 people were killed in it.
This woman threatened to spit at Luke, then told him she had HIV and cracked up laughing! Weird!!
Awful conditions in a camp near Mount Elgon, on the border with Uganda.
The surrounding hills and land were some of the most fertile and beautiful I have ever seen.
The crew, minus me, who is taking the picture.
Our trusty vehicle "Willie". That was its nickname.
Unfortunately, Willie had a tendency to break down a lot!
At least Willie wasn't as bad as this 3 wheel tractor!
Crossing the equator. Yes, we tested pouring water through a funnel to see if what they say was true about it going one way in the northern hemisphere and the opposite way on the south and on the equator it just pours straight out.
Its called the Coriolis effect
We had a morning off and decided to visit Nakuru National Park. An amazing experience.
We turned up at 6am, just before sunrise. We were the only vehicle entering the park which made it even more special, it felt like we had the whole place to ourselves.
The flamingo's were disappointing, we were expecting millions of them, instead there were hardly any. We were told afterwards they the park had had a bit of a eco disaster from the surrounding factories pouring all their waste into the lake, thus killing all the birds!!
This promo was shot over ten days in and around Sao Paolo, Brazil. Filmed on a HD Sony 900, it was co-production between Red Earth Studio (my company) and a Brazilian production company called Canal Azul, who are part of the TRAFFIC Group.
Myself and Marc, one the our producers at RES who had developed the idea, flew out to Brazil to direct the promo, while Canal Azul helped out with production, crew, kit and post, which they had in-house.
We landed in pretty drab weather, actually Sao Paolo is always drab. It is when I'm there anyway, I always end up getting colds, flus or some sort of reaction to the pollution. Its not the greatest looking of cities, its skyline a jungle of tall buildings as far as the eye can see, covered in a strange gothic graffiti.
The production crew at Canal Azul were amazing and had organized some amazing locations and actors, so from the first day of the shoot to the end, apart from the post, but that story comes further down(!), everything went smoothly; I think they even had a hand in the weather, as the clouds dispersed and out came the sun tan lotion for the remainder of the time we were there.
Our first location was the beach in Guaruja, 100km south of SP, near Santos.
It was a stunning morning with a beautiful pink sky as the sun rose above the waves of the atlantic ocean. We filmed a young girl performing Tai Chi with a sword. The sunrise and water in the background made for an amazing picture and a promising start to the shoot.
We have so much beautiful footage, I'm gagging to make a second edit. Hopefully sooner rather than later.
Later on that afternoon, a local capoeira club agreed to show off some of their skills, a mixture of dance and martial arts that came over to Brazil during the slave trade from Africa.
The scariest part of the shoot had to be filming the scene of the Tai Chi guy on the rooftop of the Copan building, one of the tallest in Sao Paolo.
I don't know if you can see it in the photo, but there is a two foot wall around the edge, beyond that is a sheer drop to the traffic below.
It was harrowing and I had been worried about filming there for days. I kept having these nightmares of tripping over the edge.
I never did trip over the edge and after a while I got used to it; kind of!
This is where I forget the names of everyone and I am going to have to ask Marc who a couple of these people are. I'm crap with names!
Bottom right to left: Me, Marc, Grip (forgot his name)
Top right to left: Joao (camera assistant-amazing, brilliant and a great guy), production assistant, Joana Fava, Lygia, producer and asst director (also brilliant and helped immensely) and the runner and general assistant (forgot his name)
Marc and Joao discussing things during a break in shooting
These two guys were pretty good. Especially the guy in red, he really thought he was a film star in the way that he carried himself.
The setting was amazing.
Brazil has the largest japanese population outside of Japan as well as a large chinese and asian community, which made filming in Brazil a hell of a lot cheaper than going to China and Japan.
With a great location like this temple, situated in the middle of a bush about 150km north of Sao Paolo, we couldn't go wrong.
We had two days to film a corporate video for the P1 Motorsport Team while they tested their new cars at the Valencia race track in Spain. We had carte blanche to do what we wanted and decided to spend the money on a Varicam with a Pro35 adaptor and prime lenses to create a slick film look.
Varicam camera with a 70-200 mm lens
On the first day at the circuit, strong winds blew a media centre tent, cleverly placed on top of a stand, on to all the trucks and race cars causing a lot of damage. A morning of havoc ensued with some serious clearing up and one hell of an insurance form for some poor sod. Luckily no one was hurt!!
The Renault World Series is a launch pad for aspiring pilots to become Formula 1 heroes.
All the cars are supplied by Renault and are all the same. No team is allowed to tamper with the engine or its design. Each team consists of two pilots and the two at the helm for P1 Motorsport were Giedo Van Der Garde from Holland and British girl Pippa Mann who also happens to be the only female driver in the series.
Due to delays in production, only one car was delivered to the team for testing, so both pilots had to share the one car. They weren't too happy about that and to top it all off they only had one day of testing left before the championship started so performing for the camera was the last thing on their minds.
The next day we woke to a glorious sunrise; the winds had died down and when we arrived at the track both Pippa and Giedo were in surprisingly excellent moods, getting on with the job at hand as well as giving us time to film some set up shots.
Pippa's interview was filmed in her hotel room in Valencia, Giedo wasn't in the mood so we had to go and film him in Amsterdam a week later, while Roly the team manger and close-ups of the car were filmed at the team's headquarters in Norwich.
I'm a Director of Photography with 15 years of filming in nearly every corner of the globe, shooting pretty much everything from docos, sport, corporates, commercials to music videos.
I have used all formats of cameras, both in HD and SD.
I'm also a Director of London-based Red Earth Studio, a TV production company that specializes in Docos and Factual. We have three HD edit suites with Digi Beta and DVCAM decks. We also have our own cameras, a Sony HDXDCAM 700, a Sony EX3 and a Sony DVCAM570.
