Irregular Activity » Broadcast

Banned Festival Trailer… Brilliant (Raindance)

Darren Cornwell — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 09:08:39 +0000

Sent to me this morning by a very good friend, I love this sort of thought provoking stuff, made me think and to be honest – smile. You have to just love the creative genius behind some people’s way of thinking, maybe some more to follow when I have the time – enjoy.

Glastonbury film UK Premiere

Darren Cornwell — Mon, 10 Apr 2006 15:23:54 +0000

So there I was last night at the Strode Theatre in Street (That’s near Glastonbury). I went down to watch the UK Premiere of ‘Glastonbury’ the Julien Temple film about the last 35 years of the Glastonbury festival – what can I say, it was emotional.

From the opening blackness with the sound of squelching mud and the crowds undulating like a sea of exasperated revelers all contained in the 1000 acre site with the same aim, to live as one entity for those 3 days of the year. I think Billy Brag said it best when he said “Your not just buying a ticket to the festival, your buying a piece of the festival, an event which rises from nothing, you experience it, 3 days later it’s lost forever”.

Both festival goers and film addicts alike will embrace this film with equal enthusiasm, for the first time in a long time an accurate portrayal of a moving and unforgettable experience. I feel lucky to have played a part in what can only be described as a masterpiece.

The Observers take on the film: here
And here for the Guardians take on the film – “The Fun, the Filth and the Fury”.

Rain, Sun, Music and Mayhem

Darren Cornwell — Wed, 22 Jun 2005 13:26:33 +0000

It’s over – Glastonbury 2005 has come to an end and what a festival it was. I arrived on site at 10:30am on friday morning, what greeted me was to worst weather in 35 years. A completly rain drenched festival. Me, always at work took off around the site with my trusty camera and captured some fantastic images of the devestation. As usual, I gained my pit access, we shot The White Stripes, The Killers, BabyShambles (Pete Doherty is a pillock), and interviewed Coldplay, as well as shooting them from the side of the Pyramid. Interviewed Emily Eavis and Then Michael on Sunday. Joe the Sculpter, Rob the owner of ‘Lost Vaugeness’, the freshest nicest coffee from ‘StrummerVille’, Kate Moss, Keira Knightley, Mrs Martin (Gwyneth), Keith Allen, the Greatest Satay Chicken from the backstage compound and the most burnt forearms ever. What a weekend, all I have to do now is wait for 07!

Sony HVR-Z1E, My Thoughts – Part 2

Darren Cornwell — Mon, 20 Jun 2005 12:20:06 +0000

One of the beautiful things about this camera is the six assign buttons added, to these buttons you can ‘assign’ any menu function – so for example I have A1 set to WB + and A2 set to WB -, changing my white balance on the fly. Battery usage is quite simply great, on the larger batteries 367Mins is the max that I have had, this translates to around about 145Mins of usage if you consider all the time that your not using the camera. Tape format is a bit of a misnomer really, MiniDV | DVCam | HDV. You can record in any format from those above but the recommendation is a tape per type eg. DVCam on DVCam tapes, but I don’t see any reason why you can’t capture HDV on to MiniDV, the tape format is the same. Obviously focusing is important in any film, but more so in HiDef, get it wrong and you’ve got a piece of garbage. The HVR now has an ‘expanded focus’ button, when pressed it temporarily enlarges the view to 2x, enabling perfect focus. For the price this is a fantastic piece of kit, good weight, excellent image quality, good price and overall usability. 8/10. posted by irregular activity

Sony HVR-Z1E, My Thoughts – Part 1

Darren Cornwell — Mon, 20 Jun 2005 12:19:51 +0000

I’ve been toying with this camera all weekend trying to get prepped for the shoot next weekend – what do I think? I think that in comparison to many camera’s I’ve tried this is an amazing piece of kit. The first thing that hit me was the weight balance, heavier than a PD150 or PDX, but balanced in such a way that it feels comfortable to shoot both high and low level. Shooting in 1080i the quality is eyepoppingly good, and with the ability to down convert to SD on the fly (via iLink), shoot in 50i / 60i, we finally have no need for separate cameras on our edits abroad. Of course I wanted to try out the ‘filmesque’ picture effect – CineFrame and Cinematone are the two options. Cineframe can drop the frame rate to 24 / 25 to simulate that filmic speed, couple this with Cinematone which is two distinct Gamma curves, on playback you get a piece of footage which is remarkably like film!

The New Toy!

Darren Cornwell — Fri, 17 Jun 2005 12:19:30 +0000

I know this is a bit of a ‘geeky’ post, but I love technology, especially technology that looks great and does the most fantastic job. My new toy a Sony HVR-Z1E. I will be playing with this at Glastonbury on the Shoot. It’s Black, Expensive + advanced – what more could you want in a HiDef Camera?

Glastonbury – Oh Yes!

Darren Cornwell — Thu, 16 Jun 2005 12:18:18 +0000

Well news just in, I’m off to the festival as a Hi-Def Cameraman, my second outing on HiDef for quite a while. Julien Temple is directing the ‘epic’ Glastonbury Feature Film and this is the forth year I’ve been down there. Roll on next weekend!

Home Cinema Setup?

Darren Cornwell — Thu, 26 May 2005 10:48:05 +0000

A G4 Mac Cube, 100″ projection screen, DVD, 5.1, wireless streaming and to cap it all a VCR. How will it all work – truth is we don’t know yet! We have hatched a cunning plan to set up a ‘complete’ home entertainment system using nothing but the latest technology – watch this space.