Phill Mason

Song writing video about tips and techniques for laying down individual tracks to build up the parts of a standard rock band. Drums, bass and two guitars. This is a funk rock style guitar riff I’ve had in my head for a while and I was recently asked if I would make a video showing how I put songs together, so here it is. Please ask any questions you have and please leave your comments. Let me know if you would like to see something else in the next Studio Session. I hope to do several of these as the rock is released.

Don’t forget to wheel your big speakers in and crank it up to number 11 – it is Rock after all!

media.phillmason.com/102bpm%20Heavy%20Funk%20Rock%20in%20A.flv

After a couple of hours filming at the local Kung Fu Club, it was time to offload the P2 card into the PC. I thought I’d stick up a couple of screen grabs whilst I get stuck into the editing. I wanted to take some footage as my kids are learning Kung Fu here and it seemed like a good opportunity to add some interesting shapes for my showreel. I managed to grab some great slow motion combat footage right at the end which I’m looking forward to going through.

I’ll be doing a complete production on this video, whilst its most likely a bit rough in places, I only want to edit it down to something in region of 2 minutes. I’ll be writing an original  music score and maybe applying some sound effects, I have to play around to see what works well, but I’ll stick a clip up as soon as I have something I like.

For now, here’s a couple of sized down screen grabs from this evenings filming.

I just caught a glimpse of the garden from the back of the house and wondered if my faithful old Canon 350D SLR would let in enough light to capture the beautiful postcard image I was seeing. There was a wonderful warm glow of orange from a nearby wall light which cast some lovely rich shadows over the ferns, so I attempted to savor the moment. This is what I managed to grab.

I hope you enjoyed the photographs? Please leave any questions or comments below – thanks.

Screen Grabs & Colour Correction With The Panasonic HVX200 P2 Camcorder

I had the pleasure recently of spending a freezing cold afternoon at the local park with the kids and although my ears were about to drop off because I’d forgotten to take neither a hat, scarf or gloves with me, I still had the urge to get the Panasonic HVX200 camcorder away from the studio and into the brisk wilderness. It was a fairly overcast day which is generally good for filming and apart from not being able to stop shivering, I’ve taken a couple of screen grabs from the footage of my son to show you how much difference varying amounts of colour correction can make to a final cut. A screen grab is a great way to show this as it allows you to compare the exact same shot whilst deciding the amount of colour correction to apply to get your desired look.

Sometimes the raw footage direct from the Panasonic HVX200 with the SGPro 35mm adapter is spot on and no colour correction is required. It really does depend on what you’re after. It’s only when you see an image like the ones below with and without colour correction, that you begin to see that the original raw screen grab is washed out, lacking in colour depth and contrast. Like I said before, sometimes this is the right look for the right film!

I’d love to get your feedback as to which is your favourite screen grab below and why you chose it – thanks.

Equipment Used: Panasonic HVX200 – P2 Media – SGPro 35mm Adapter – SGPro Flip Module – SGPro Follow Focus – Canon FD lenses

I’d finally come to the decision that there was only so much skin I was prepared to loose on my fingers from playing my Cramer baby grand piano with its decomposing keys. It was time to recover the entire keyboard in order to give it both an aesthetic makeover and make the feel and touch much more practical and enjoyable. I thought I’d take a few snap’s along the way so those of you who are interested in giving an old instrument a new life can see what’s involved.

Like a complete gooner I didn’t take a picture of the keyboard before I began, but a handful of keys had become unstuck and the bare wood and the remains of double sided sticky tape and glue was all that was on display. So, my first step was to remove all the naff old creamy coloured two-part keys that some numpty had fitted (badly). The key consisted of  a top piece and a small square for the front of the key.

I used a Stanley knife to remove all the glue and any other residue left on each key. The main aim here was to remove everything so the key was nice and flat and ready for sanding.

I used a standard sanding block, nothing too heavy as I didn’t want to remove too much of the wooden surface from the key. I sanded each key until all rough edges were removed and a smooth surface remained. I applied a good amount of Bostik All Purpose glue to both the wooden key and the new white plastic key cover. After leaving for approx 5 mins, the glue was extremely tacky and ready for the two surfaces to bond. I simply held the plastic key cover onto the wooden key until both the front and top of the key cover was straight. I then placed the key back onto the key bed (not sure if thats the technical term) to make sure it looked okay. Next I removed the key and sanded down any sharp corners of the white plastic edges.

After cleaning the felts beneath the keys it was time to place each key back into its rightful place. The keyboard was beginning to shape up. I removed the black keys whilst placing the newly glued white keys into place in order to ensure I didn’t get any glue on the black keys. The black keys are in really good shape and didn’t need replacing. I left the glue to harden overnight and gave a final sanding to each key to remove and final sharp edges on the plastic and any glue that had squeezed from beneath the key. I used a small metal file to take a small amount off one of the lower C keys in order for it to miss the C# key above, all the other C keys were just fine. The end results are amazing and for just a few hours over 3 nights, the feel and touch of the recovered keyboard is just superb and much, much nicer to play.