Friday 20 September 2013

Bluntnose Sixgill Washed up near Ibiza

The Shark was washed up near Formentera

More Mediterranean shark news.

This 3m Bluntnose Sixgill shark was washed up on shore at Calo de S'Oli near Formentera off Ibiza yesterday. This is I think, the second species washed ashore in the region this year and many of the shark captures recorded in the Med, seem to include this particular species, hinting that it is one of the few species with relative abundance in the area.

With all that said, I much prefer the videos and photos of live sharks.

Story here.


Friday 13 September 2013

Great White Shark Video from Morocco!

H/T Shark Year Magazine

Regular readers of the blog know I love my sharks and they know that when those sharks are Great Whites, they should also know by now that my favourite Great White Sharks, are Mediterranean ones!

Check out the video taken in Al Hoceima in Morocco earlier this month. It's not the first time I've blogged about GWS in Morocco either...

Love seeing these! :)

Friday 6 September 2013

Sorry it's been a while! "Of Shark and Man" update and a very short film...

Animation - Coming along nicely!

Hello, it's me again, sorry it's been a while since I last updated you all and spewed forth my varying brain farts on to this blog, I've been kinda swamped with editing, work, moving, a pretty huge life change (more on that soon) and generally trying to keep afloat amongst the chaos of my day to day life.

With regards to "Of Shark and Man," things are going great, I am just waiting on a few clips of stock footage for the section about mangroves and that part will be done and then it's on to the final, epic dive sequence and the climax of the film and that's it, first timeline, cut and ready to go into post and audio!

On the subject of stock footage, I purposefully set out from the start to avoid it and use only what was shot during the month I was in Fiji, mainly to stand apart from almost everything else being made about sharks, even by the big studios, go organic and go real. However, much to the benefit of the film, I am including a maximum of around ninety seconds of stock purely because it is footage I simply couldn't shoot myself and which aids the film's narrative, not only that, the footage is being provided by professional cinematographers I both respect and like as people so that's a bonus!

The animation is coming along really well, Lian, Emma and Faeez have been brilliant and all possess some serious talent. I got a look at the almost complete first draft and it looks, not to put too fine a point on it, shit hot! A special shout to Lian who has been a real help through the whole process.

There is also a little more UK stuff to shoot but after that, it's on to the recording studio for the narrative voice over and to start work on the soundtrack and sound design, a huge element in telling this story. The film has evolved over the last two years to become something bigger and better than I had in mind when I first set foot on Fijian soil, don't get me wrong, that was ambitious and big, but it is now more ambitious and bigger and I like big and ambitious, go hard or go home right?

 Seals. Brill.

In amongst the film work, the commercial paid work and life stuff, I managed to sneak in some diving with the seals in the Farne Islands in Northumberland, naturally, I took my camera and I've edited a short little film with some of the footage, nothing fancy, just a quick job with the footage set to some nice music but you might dig it if you have three minutes spare.

Check it out below.



Finally, if you have been looking for updates on the "From the Office..." site and/or the Scarlet View Media page, I'm afraid with regards to the former, I haven't had any time to do updates recently and with the latter, thanks to the Wordpress update and the updates to some of the plugins, the site has been killed and due to Wordpress' sucky support (or lack thereof) I now have to start that again from scratch, new theme, new build, the works, so you can imagine how overjoyed I am at that prospect.

Fear not however, I will prevail.

More to come soon...

Edit: Emma Shepherd, on of the animators working on the film has just launched her new website, please check it out, she's very talented and deserves a break!