Mimic Octopus

Plan B "The Recluse"

I worked on this video last month. It was a crazy shoot involving helicopters, mansions, and alligators!

Im currently doing Plan B's new feature film iLL Manors at the moment too, which is a scream. More on that when I can make the time to post :)

NSPCC advert "Everyday Choices"

I worked on this in July. It has already been selected as a contender for shot of the week in Shot magazine. Way to go Luke (the director)

Simons Cat in "The Box"

I've been crap at posting lately

No excuses, but I've just been so, damn busy!

Which is good on the one hand. I've genuinely had only 2 days off since 5th May. Some days are easier than others, but since 5th May I have only not worked twice, and you can believe I was thinking about work the whole time! lol

And it doesnt look set to end anytime soon either. After this currrent job, I think I go straight onto another job that will take me into December.

I cant complain. For a self-emplyed person, it is something I have to do, but damn! I just wish I had more a life sometimes! lol

If my scheming goes ahead though, I intend not to work in Dec/Jan very much. Lets see if I earn enough cash my the end of the next job to make that a reality!

LZ7 - This little light

I worked on this video in April. Note yet another starring role for my car! lol

Newport State of Mind

This fantastic video has been doing the rounds around Youtube. Spoofing Jay Z and alicia Keys music video Empire State of Mind.

Shear brilliance!

NSPCC advert

I went from Bulla straight onto an advert for the NSPCC.

It was again a very fun shoot, although dealing with the clients expectations along with the director, producer, and production designer added a new level of complicatedness to the whole thing.

The advert was filmed in First Person Style, and had the poor actress having to wear a crash helmet with a camera on her head for the whole shoot.

All good fun though, and got to work with Nicola and Terry who I hadn't worked with in ages. Both of them were friends I made doing The Rapture when I first came down to London.

Bulla went well

I've been a bit crap at posting lately. I just seem to be very busy all the time, which I suppose is good really! lol

Bulla went very well. Such a fun shoot with alsorts of interesting people and things going on.

The teaser poster is already out and its a beauty (although if you knew how bloody long we had to hunt for the location that the picture was taken in!! )

Can't wait to see what it looks like when its done!

The Half Million Pound Bathtub

Oh god, how beautiful is that? Seems a little flash, but I'd love to have a soak (on my own or with company) in that bad boy! lol. Best get saving now :s


Britain may have escaped sinking into a bathtub-shaped recession but most consumers would still think twice before splashing out half a million pounds for a good wash.
That's how much upmarket department store Harrods is asking for a rock crystal tub by Florentine luxury furnishings group Baldi.

The item, on display at the Knightsbridge store during July and carrying a £530,000 price tag, is carved from a single block of the purest white rock crystal.

It is 2m long, 55cm high and weighs about 2.5 tons when filled.

The tub was cut from a 10-ton block discovered in the Amazon region of Brazil.

Paolo Baldi, father of current chief executive Luca, purchased the rock and had it extracted and transported intact to Italy.

The block was cut into two; the first half was cut into a tub and sold to a Russian magnate for £567,502 in 2008.

Each tub, fashioned by Luca Bojola, is unique in its design.

Both were sculpted with diamond cuts and left partly in the rough to show off all the natural beauty of the original block.

Luca Baldi told Sky News the tub's creators had been entranced by the rock's "precious transparency" and "overpowered by the untamed energy" of the part left in its natural state.

"What was our rationale? To create the wildest, craziest, most beautiful and luxurious object ever imagined for a bathroom," he said.

Caricature

A caricature can refer to a portrait that exaggerates or distorts the essence of a person or thing to create an easily identifiable visual likeness. Wiki

Someone did a caricature of me not so long ago. Hmmmm. I may have to start moisturising! lol

How big?

I know I've covered this subject with a series of pics a while ago, but someone has put an animation together showing the relative sizes of planets and stars.

A-Mazing! How bloody big? lol

Hubbles 20 Greatest Discoveries: 12 - 9

#9 - Hubble Finds Mysterious Ring Structure around Supernova 1987a

MAY 19, 1994: The Hubble telescope has obtained the best images yet of a mysterious mirror-imaged pair of rings of glowing gas encircling the site of the stellar explosion called supernova 1987A.

One possibility for these "hula hoops" of gas is that the two rings might be caused by a high-energy beam of radiation that is sweeping across the gas, like a searchlight sweeping across clouds. Though all of the rings appear inclined to our view (so that they appear to intersect), they are probably in three different planes. The small, bright ring lies in a plane containing the supernova; one larger ring lies in front of and the other behind the smallest one.


#10 - Color Image of Multiple P/Shoemaker-Levy 9 Comet Impacts on Jupiter

Nothing else to add! lol


#11 - Hubble Makes First Direct Measurements of Atmosphere on World Around another Star

NOVEMBER 27, 2001: Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have made the first direct detection of the atmosphere of a planet orbiting a star outside our solar system. Their unique observations demonstrate that it is possible with Hubble and other telescopes to measure the chemical makeup of alien planet atmospheres and to potentially search for the chemical markers of life beyond Earth. The planet orbits a yellow, Sun-like star called HD 209458, located 150 light-years away in the constellation Pegasus.


#12 - Hubble Directly Observes Planet Orbiting Fomalhaut

NOVEMBER 13, 2008: Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have taken the first visible-light snapshot of a planet orbiting another star. The images show the planet, named Fomalhaut b, as a tiny point source of light orbiting the nearby, bright southern star Fomalhaut, located 25 light-years away in the constellation Piscis Australis. An immense debris disk about 21.5 billion miles across surrounds the star. Fomalhaut b is orbiting 1.8 billion miles inside the disk's sharp inner edge.

Captains Blog - Episode 2 (Control)

Don't park there!

I finally got my revenge on all those bastards who park or leave their cars in the parking bays/areas we have paid for and cordened off for filming purposes.

It is the bain of my life when I have paid for a road closed, or 10 parking bays to find that some bastard the night before has dumped their car and buggered off for the day.

Today, down by the docks in the beautiful Trinity Buoy Wharf; the site manager had a toy (which I wish I had in my kit! lol) which solved the problem of the car parked in our area. He just fork-lift trucked it out of the way.

Take that errant parker! When I say don't park there, then DON'T PARK THERE! lol

Got Crabs?

COCONUT CRABS
The coconut crab is a large edible land crab related to the hermit crab, and are found in the tropical Indian and Pacific Oceans .. They eat coconuts for a living! How would you like to be on an island and come across a crab that is more than 3 feet from head to tail and weighs up to 40 pounds, with a pair of large pincers strong enough to open coconuts! They can climb trees too, but they only eat coconuts that have already fallen to the ground. Coconut crab meat has been considered a local delicacy.

I'll save you, Mr President!

Maybe its the kid in me, but I get a small kick everytime I put my covert earpiece on my walkie-talky in. I feel like I'm a member of the American Secret Service.

Only problem is, after many years of loud clubs, I think I'm a bit deaf. And when I've got the covert in I can hardly hear a bloody thing! I have to cup my hand around my good ear and say something like "Speak up, Sonny!". Not a good look lol

And god help if I get an urgent phonecall to the other ear! My brain certainly can't handle too many (most likely) urgent or important phonecalls in different ears at the same time. My brains shuts down and I usually go Errrrrrrrrrr!

Still, looks good though lol

Fireball on Jupiter

A huge fireball has been spotted on Jupiter in yet another collision from space caught on camera and video by amateur astronomers.

The new Jupiter crash occurred on June 3 at 20:31 UT (4:31 p.m. Eastern Time) and was spotted by skywatcher Anthony Wesley in Australia and fellow amateur astronomer Christopher Go in the Philippines.

Wesley's photos show the Jupiter fireball blazing in the atmosphere of the gas giant planet. So far, no visible scar in the clouds has been reported from the event.

Wesley described the event as a "large fireball" on his website, where he posted the photos taken from Broken Hill, Australia.

This new impact on Jupiter comes less than a year after a spectacular crash on July 19, 2009, when what scientist now think was an asteroid about 1,600 feet (500 meters) wide slammed into the planet. That collision created a massive bruise the size of the Pacific Ocean. [Gallery: Jupiter gets smacked.]

It was Wesley, too, who first spotted the July 2009 collision. His observations kicked off an international observation campaign to study the impact site.

Astronomers initially suspected a comet in last year's impact, but announced this week that a rogue asteroid was the most likely culprit.

And Jupiter has been smacked before.

In 1994, the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 broke into more than 20 pieces and pelted Jupiter repeatedly. At the time, astronomers estimated such impacts could occur on Jupiter every 50 to 250 years. So they were surprised by the July 2009 impact.

Sydney Opera house gone to the dogs

The glittering sails of the Sydney Opera House went to the dogs on Saturday as hundreds of pugs, poodles and pooches converged on the iconic landmark for a world-first concert for canines.

The 20-minute concert kicked off with a mellow set featuring whale calls and soothing white noise, before moving through a rhythm and beat section to a discordant crescendo almost drowned out by hundreds of barks and howls.

"We've got some singing dogs down here in the mosh pit!" joked Anderson, who led the four-piece band with a variety of instruments including a whistle, violin and synthesiser.

Almost 1,000 dog-lovers packed onto the Opera House steps and forecourt to treat their pets to the free outdoor event, part of the Vivid LIVE arts festival curated by Anderson and rock legend partner Lou Reed.

Anderson and her band used the high-frequency sounds to appeal to the dogs' super-sensitive ears, eliciting excited leaping from some creatures and a cacophony of yelps and yowls.

A sea of ears pricked up and tails wagged uncertainly when a burst of whale song rang out from the speakers, the sense of which Anderson said she thought the dogs could decode.

"I know that a lot of animals' calls are about distance and location so I think they might pick up some of that," she said.

They yelped, yowled and circled one another excitedly during the beat section, as Anderson encouraged owners to scratch their pets behind the ears and dance along.

She credited the exuberant canines for the dazzling sunshine that bathed Sydney for the morning's festivities -- the first reprieve in almost three weeks from torrential rain.

"I think the dogs brought on this weather. They don't want to sit freezing in the rain, they want to have a little sun on their fur," she laughed.

"It was good dog vibes."

There were plenty of water bowls and dog waste bags on hand in case of overenthused pooches needing a drink or toilet break, and Opera House staff circulated with spare leashes in case of a rogue escape.

Anderson said she laid some human-friendly strings and horns over the high-frequency sounds so that the dogs' owners also had something to enjoy.

"We brought the octaves down into our hearing range so we could all have the experience," she said.

One sheepdog nipped enthusiastically at the heels of a nervous poodle and there were a few robust exchanges of barking, but Anderson praised the doggy decorum overall, describing the event as the "highlight of my life".

"The dogs were really wonderful audience members, they were grooving, a lot of them were singing and dancing, they were uninhibited," she said after the recital.

"And you know what? There were no dog fights. We were very relieved about that, everyone was very well behaved."

Hubbles 20 Greatest Discoveries: 16 - 13

What is dark energy?

Dark energy is an unknown form of energy that radiates from deep space. It behaves in the opposite manner from gravity. Rather than pulling galaxies together it pushes them apart.

2. Did anyone predict dark energy?

Dark energy is a complete surprise. However, Albert Einstein theorized the existence of a repulsive form of gravity in space that would balance the universe against normal gravity and keep it from imploding. Einstein called it the cosmological constant.

3. How does dark energy affect the universe?

Dark energy makes up the bulk of the universe's mass/energy budget. If dark energy is stable the universe will continue expanding and accelerating forever. If dark energy is unstable the universe could ultimately come unglued to the point where stars, planets and even atoms come apart, a doomsday scenario called the "big rip." Dark energy might also flip such that is becomes an attractive force and causes the universe to implode in a "big crunch."

4. How can Hubble "see" dark energy?

Hubble can measure the faint glow of distant supernovae, stars that exploded billions of years ago. Supernovae trace the expansion history of the universe, hence, how dark energy "pushed" on space over the past epochs. Every second a star explodes somewhere in the universe, so it's a matter of Hubble looking in the right place at the right time.

5. Does Hubble prove how dark energy really behaves?

These latest Hubble observations show that dark energy is not changing its behavior over time, and so may be the "constant" Einstein predicted. However, more observations are needed over the coming decade.

6. What happens to this research after Hubble stops working?

There will be a hiatus of at least several years in this type of research until some future space telescope with a wide field of view picks up where Hubble left off. This type of research cannot be done with even the largest ground-based telescopes, even those outfitted with adaptive optics for improving image quality.



The Crab Nebula is a supernova remnant, all that remains of a tremendous stellar explosion. Observers in China and Japan recorded the supernova nearly 1,000 years ago, in 1054.


Quasars reside in a variety of galaxies, from normal to highly disturbed. When seen through ground-based telescopes, these compact, enigmatic light sources resemble stars, yet they are billions of light-years away and several hundred billion times brighter than normal stars. The following Hubble Space Telescope images show examples of different home sites of all quasars. But all the sites must provide the fuel to power these unique light beacons. Astronomers believe that a quasar turns on when a massive black hole at the nucleus of a galaxy feeds on gas and stars. As the matter falls into the black hole, intense radiation is emitted. Eventually, the black hole will stop emitting radiation once it consumes all nearby matter. Then it needs debris from a collision of galaxies or another process to provide more fuel. The column of images on the left represents normal galaxies; the center, colliding galaxies; and the right, peculiar galaxies.

Top left: This image shows quasar PG 0052+251, which is 1.4 billion light-years from Earth, at the core of a normal spiral galaxy. Astronomers are surprised to find host galaxies, such as this one, that appear undisturbed by the strong quasar radiation.

Bottom left: Quasar PHL 909 is 1.5 billion light-years from Earth and lies at the core of an apparently normal elliptical galaxy.

Top center: The photo reveals evidence of a catastrophic collision between two galaxies traveling at about 1 million mph. The debris from this collision may be fueling quasar IRAS04505-2958, which is 3 billion light-years from Earth. Astronomers believe that a galaxy plunged vertically through the plane of a spiral galaxy, ripping out its core and leaving the spiral ring (at the bottom of the picture). The core lies in front of the quasar, the bright object in the center of the image. Surrounding the core are star-forming regions. The distance between the quasar and spiral ring is 15,000 light-years, which is one-seventh the diameter of our Milky Way. A foreground star lies just above the quasar.

Bottom center: Hubble has captured quasar PG 1012+008, located 1.6 billion light-years from Earth, merging with a bright galaxy (the object just below the quasar). The two objects are 31,000 light-years apart. The swirling wisps of dust and gas surrounding the quasar and galaxy provide strong evidence for an interaction between them. The compact galaxy on the left of the quasar also may be beginning to merge with the quasar.

Top right: Hubble has captured a tidal tail of dust and gas beneath quasar 0316-346, located 2.2 billion light-years from Earth. The peculiar-shaped tail suggests that the host galaxy has interacted with a passing galaxy that is not in the image.

Bottom right: Hubble has captured evidence of a dance between two merging galaxies. The galaxies may have orbited each other several times before merging, leaving distinct loops of glowing gas around quasar IRAS13218+0552. The quasar is 2 billion light-years from Earth. The elongated core in the center of the image may comprise the two nuclei of the merging galaxies.


Deepest View of Space Yields Young Stars in Andromeda Halo

MAY 7, 2003: Relying on the deepest visible-light images ever taken in space, astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope (HST) have reliably measured the age of the spherical halo of stars surrounding the neighboring Andromeda galaxy (M31). To their surprise, they have discovered that approximately one-third of the stars in Andromeda's halo formed only 6 to 8 billion years ago. That's a far cry from the 11-to-13 billion-year age of the stars in the Milky Way's halo.

Why is there a difference in the age range of the stars in the Andromeda and Milky Way halos?

Astronomers think that the collision with another large galaxy or the ravaging of several smaller galaxies scattered the young stars into Andromeda's halo. The newly discovered younger stars in Andromeda's halo are richer in heavier elements than those in our Milky Way's halo, or in most of the small dwarf galaxies that surround the Milky Way. The stars' age spread and chemical make-up suggests three possibilities: (1) Collisions destroyed the young disk of Andromeda and dispersed many of its stars into the halo; (2) a single collision destroyed a relatively massive invading galaxy and dispersed its stars and some of Andromeda's disk stars into the halo; and/or (3) many stars formed during the collision itself. Astronomers say it will take more detailed observations to unravel the evidence of these early cataclysmic events.

2. Why do astronomers call these observations the "deepest visible-light images ever taken in space"?

Astronomers needed to make several hundred exposures to survey the bright and the faint stars in Andromeda's halo. The image shown here was made from 250 separate exposures. The observations were taken from Dec. 2, 2002 to Jan. 11, 2003 with the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), but the total exposure time was 3.5 days. Astronomers needed the lengthy observations because the halo's ordinary Sun-like stars are very faint. In fact, before using the ACS to tackle the halo stars, astronomers had observed only the brightest ones. The sharp eyes of the ACS, however, uncovered about 300,000 stars that astronomers had never seen before.