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2013 Showreel

An example of my work as a Cinematographer, Editor, Producer and Director filming observational factual documentaries, close up sports action, wildlife, commercials and music videos. I have filmed in 80 countries around the world from the depths of the jungle and rainforsts in Africa and South America, directing aerials on water or in the air to filming undercover in Tibet and China.

Japan

View from my hotel window of Kamaishi

In February 2011 Marc Rowedder (Producer at RES) and Myself headed off on a three week shoot to Japan to film the third of four films for National Geographic following the Environmental Investigation Agency uncover the trade in Fin Whale meat between Iceland and Japan.

Marc Rowedder and Adam Docker

It was a grueling schedule which took in thousands of miles on road and rail from the north of Japan and all the way to the southern tip. Lot's of very early mornings filming fishermen at the crack of dawn, followed and harassed by local police and literally living out of a suitcase, hardly a day off as we stayed in eleven hotels in the twenty one days. It was an absolutely extraordinary journey.

Early morning filming the dolphin hunt

It began in the south in the coastal town of Taiji, made famous in the award winning documentary "The Cove" for their slaughter of dolphins.

Taiji

As the sun rises, a flotilla of fishermen wait out in the high sea, while in the bay of Taiji other boats set the nets ready for the catch. Against the backdrop of a red sun you can hear the faint sound of the fishermen banging against metal poles in the water. There isn't long to wait as three hundred or so dolphins, distressed by what could be considered CIA style white noise, try to escape. Unfortunately they head directly towards the bay and to the awaiting nets of the fishermen.

On this morning most of them out-manouvre the fishermen and only a handful are caught. With not much of a catch on their hands, we are spared the gory and bloody slaughter and instead witness the beginnings of a sad life for these captured dolphins as they are put in holding pens in the port of Taiji and then sold off to aquariums around the world.



Marc Rowedder and myself walking along the seafront in Kamaishi.

The investigation took us north, past Fukushima, to a small town called Kamaishi. We stayed here for a few days as the EIA investigated the hunting of Dall's Porpoise's, (a member of the dolphin family), in a nearby town called Otsuchi.

I remember stopping for lunch in a roadside cafe and watching breaking news of the earthquake that hit Christchurch in New Zealand. When we left I became aware of all the Tsunami warning signs along the coastal roads.

The investigation uncovered a lot of interesting finds and the EIA were laden with lot's of factual  information on the murky side of whaling and its operations in Japan, a dying industry that is heavily subsidised by the Japanese government and by a powerful whaling lobby.

Tired, we returned back to England and a few days later the tsunami struck. Watching it destroy all the very same towns we had been staying in on the northern coast of Japan was terrifying  To say we all felt dumbstruck was an understatement.

During pre-production we were all at odds on filming dates and the preferred schedule clashed with my son's birthday which I was adamant I couldn't miss; so with a tweak here and a tweak there, the shoot was moved forward so I could return home in time for his special day. Little did we know at the time how important that decision turned out to be.

So many people and places wiped off the face of the planet. This video shows the destruction of Kamaishi, the town in the photograph at the very top of this post.

The first thing I think about are all the little children I saw running to school in their floppy yellow hats every morning, the little restaurants we ate in, all the people who touched our lives and this lovely sweet lady who worked at the petrol station in Otsuchi. I always wonder if they survived.

Sky Rainforest Rescue 3D - Behind the scenes

When Sky asked my company Red Earth Studio to produce a short five to twelve minute 3D film in the Amazon for their Rainforest Rescue campaign, I could see we were in for a challenge.
Sky had an interactive pod travelling around the UK in an attempt to raise £2 million to help save one billion trees in the Brazilian rainforest, promoting awareness of environmental issues and sustainability.
It made this a creative, worthwhile cause that I felt privileged to be involved with.



The general consensus is that 3D is limited to controlled, set-up environments due to the size of the equipment and the complex workflow. But Sky, keen to push these limits, wanted a hand-held feel for this film and therefore approached us as a production company as we specialise in observational documentaries.

We were undoubtedly excited as this would be our first foray into 3D filming and, as commissions go, this had to be one of the most demanding. Having spent the previous few months noticing the buzz and excitement around 3D in the TV industry, it was great to be able finally to get to find out what all the fuss was about. And the best part? We had just one week to organise it!



Originally it was planned that we film in the western most region of the Amazon in Acre, which is the forest sponsored by the Sky Rainforest Rescue programme. However, situated on the border with Peru, the logistics and costs of this location made it impossible to get to, so we relocated the shoot to the district around Manaus.

We had just five days to film everything and we really couldn’t afford any serious delays.
The location promised us plenty of forest, a rich variety of animals, indigenous tribes and should anything go wrong we were close enough to civilization.

Nevertheless, it was going to throw up plenty of challenges for both crew and equipment.
It was intensely humid and we were smack bang in the middle of the rainy season which meant a bout of torrential rain every afternoon and I don't mean like normal rain, I mean a waterfall's worth of rain. Fill up a bucket of warm water and then pour it over yourself. That kind of rain – a testing environment indeed for the array of electronics we would be relying on. Oh and let's not forget it's a yellow fever and malaria area.



On a previous shoot in Los Angeles, I had met Bruce Austin (3D stereographer) and Sean Coles (cinematographer) from BAP and 3Rive Productions, respectively. They had built a clever little prototype Si2k beam-splitter 3D rig that was small and light and worked with Schneider 8mm wide angle Cinegon lenses.

The feed from both cameras was perfectly synced and they were able to output into one single QuickTime file onto a Cinedeck unit mounted on the back of the rig.
We had evaluated all the options prior to the shoot, from REDs to EX3s, but all were too big, heavy and/or clunky. The Si2K ticked all the boxes; it was slimline, very easy to handle and operate, and made ENG style filming in 3D a reality.

Bruce and Sean decided to throw in a second Si2k side-by-side camera with XA4x7.5DA-1 (7.5 to 30) Fujinon C-mount lenses for the close-up shots. This recorded onto a 1 Beyond hard drive unit, just in case the Cinedeck failed in the notorious Amazon humidity.



The flamboyant Richard Rasmussen is one of Brazil’s top wildlife TV presenters whom we had worked with on previous projects. He spends most of his time travelling around the wildlands of Brazil and was an ideal candidate for this production. His English was a little rusty, but it was good enough and his engaging style of presenting more than made up for any slightly odd grammar.

The idea was to film Richard guiding us through the forest, showing us the amazing creatures that live in it – monkeys, snakes, tarantulas, lizards, parrots, insects, all the while informing us about the importance of the trees and the balance of the eco system in this amazing rainforest.

We had time to also film him dance to the strains of panpipes with local tribespeople, feed pink river dolphins and climb high above the forest canopy on a huge tower. Richard’s walkabout was to offer visitors to the pod a rich and varied experience of this part of the Amazonian rainforest.



L to R Sean Coles, Pedro Guimaraes (steadicam op & 3D DiT), Tiago Bittencourt (soundman)

First day of the shoot and it pours with rain. Due to extreme the humidity, one of the recording units shuts down and filming comes to a worrying halt.




Every shot had to be meticulously studied after every take. We had to check for any raindrops or humidity on the lenses, insects and lens flare.

It is definitely a slow process and it felt like working with a complicated film camera, probably a little more slower because there are so many factors to take into consideration that don't exist in 2D.


Freeman White, 2nd asst. camera.


Filming a scene with Richard Rasmussen dancing with the Dessana tribe



The Cinedeck is an incredible piece of kit. As well as serving as our recording unit, it allowed us to replay footage back and to check the images coming from both lenses.

We were also able to view both live pictures, as well as rushes, in anaglyph mode. This is not a perfect image, but it did allow us to check whether the I/O (interocular), or 3D effect, was too much or too little.

Bruce, the stereographer, was very rigorous in looking after this. Because there were lots of trees and branches appearing in the foreground, we kept the I/O – or the distance between the two cameras – to a minimum (between 1/4 and 1/2 inch), so that it wasn’t too disturbing on the eye.
http://www.cinedeck.com/


Viewing the rushes on the Cinedeck with my anaglyph glasses.




Filming the Chief of the Dessana tribe playing his drum




Despite the dark interior the Si2K handled really well and we were able to push the picture in post without it breaking up. The Off line edit was done at Red Earth Studio and all post was done at Prime Focus, London.



I thought I would take my director's hat off and give filming a go. Here I am filming some monkeys up in a tree.



The style of the film is ob-doc, handheld and we predominantly used the beam splitter camera using Schneider 8mm Cinegons, wide angle fixed lenses. When we needed to film close up shots we would use the side by side camera with XA4x7.5DA-1 (7.5 to 30) Fujinons as well as the Linos 30mm lenses.

All of the lenses were c-mounts.

As the lenses were independent from one eye to the other, it meant every time we changed frame on the Fujinons they required calibration, thus slowing down the shoot. We resolved this by shooting as much as we could on the wide and then repeating the scene again on the tighter lenses.



A Bald Ukari monkey, also nicknamed "english monkey" by the locals because of their red face, gives Sean a hard time and like everything else in the forest, demanded some form of payment before being filmed.

Tiago getting friendly with a monkey


Looking for tarantulas.



Filming in the forest is dark! And there is only a short window to do it in, between 10am to 3pm, which doesn't leave much time to get everything done.


Richard doing a piece to camera while walking through a stream.



We happened upon this enormous Bird Eating Tarantula by chance, unfortunately it never made the edit.

The massive Bird Eating Tarantula.



Filming pink river dolphins in the Amazon river

One of the challenges we faced filming on water were polarisation issues, meaning one eye would see reflection on the water, whereas the other eye would see through the water. In a more controlled environment we would have played around with polariser filters, so we positioned the camera where it had the least amount of reflection.


Richard feeding the dolphins

The dolphins would bump into you, nuzzle on your legs, jump out of the water and splash you. It made  filming fun, but perilous, hoping the expensive camera wouldn't get wet.


Sean playing back the footage on the Cinedeck



Together With Richard Rasmussen and some dastardly snake!





The Crew. From L to R: Adam Docker (Director), Carlos Campos (Richard's asst.), Tiago Bittencourt (Soundman), Pedro Guimaraes (steadicam-op & 3D DiT), Sean Coles (Cinematographer), Freeman White (2nd asst camera), Bruce Austin (Stereographer), Pedro Neto (Fixer) and Richard Rasmussen (Wildlife TV presenter).

Up and down the Amazon

Tribe

During shooting of "Rainforest Rescue 3D", not to far from the city of Manaus, we filmed a scene in a village belonging to the Desana Tribe.
They are so friendly, lovely to work with and incredibly photogenic.