Winter Shadows: A Timelapse Film

21st January 2011

Over the festive season we decided to have some fun and put a timelapse film together of Stafford in the Winter. The main reason being that we were excited to test out a new piece of kit, the Kessler Crane "Bloom" Pocket Dolly and the Oracle controller, which creates a wonderful camera tracking motion throughout the timelapse.

The aim of the piece was to capture the beauty of the season, while showcasing some of Staffords most attractive areas. Now we've been shooting timelapse for several years but usually it's within promotional films or shorts with a narrative structure, so putting together an exclusively timelapse oriented film was tough put an extremely enjoyable experience none the less. So have a watch of our timelapse film: Winter Shadows and leave us a comment on facebook or twitter with your thoughts.

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HDMI Cable Scam

10th January 2011

As it's the New Year I thought I'd try and get down to some of the sales, so being into all the technical stuff I stopped by one of the techy shops to see if they had any interesting gadgets in. Wandering through the TV section, I come across the TV leads and remember that I need to pick up another HDMI cable for one of my monitors. On the basis that previous cables purchased online and elsewhere have been in the single digits I'm curious as to why a high street shop would be selling them for between £50 - £250?

So here's the deal for those of you that have just picked up a new HDTV. The £3.00 leads you get from Asda will give you the exact same image quality as a £250.00 lead from one of the so called "leading brand" companies. What intrigued me even more was when asking the staff about why the £250.00 lead was priced higher I was told: "it offers a significant increase in the image quality, there's no lag etc etc etc".

The truth of the matter is HDMI is a completely digital system based on binary code so if the signal is incomplete you won't get less quality, it simply won't work. While it's true that there are different ratings of HDMI cable and if you tried sending a much larger image than your 1080 resolution such as 4K, through one of the Asda price cables then it most likely would not work, but as we've barely moved onto High Definition that's way down the road. As for Gold Plated vs. Silver cables - silver conducts slightly better than gold and tarnishes quicker, where as gold is a lesser conductor but will last longer.

So, if you find yourself in need of a HDMI cable for that new PS3 or Xbox, just get yourself a cheap cable off eBay for a fiver and save yourself a small fortune. Don't get caught up in the HDMI cable scam as there is no quality difference between them.

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Night Lights

22nd December 2010

Over the summer, myself and Nathan from NK Williams filmed a short to break up the ongoing promotional and corporate work and to give ourselves a chance to be creative within our own right. Nathan had a short script ready which revolved around a love scene and I wanted a chance to try out my new Canon 7D and lenses in a creative and professional environment. So to see what we came up with please visit our creative page and have a watch of our short vanity project.

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Clothes Show 2010

8th December 2010

December is looking like it's going to not only be a festive but also an exciting month here at Lilac starting off with the Clothes Show Live at the NEC in Birmingham. We've been documenting the Frost and Snow cupcake bakery with Howell Consultancy for sometime now and it was great to see their cakes flying off the shelves on the Saturday. The premise behind Frost and Snow is to support homelessness in Birmingham by creating employment opportunities within the bakery and all profit the bakery make goes straight back in to Midland Heart who are the supporting homeless charity that fund the enterprise.

Anyway back to the clothes show! Some highlights throughout the event. We met Gok Wan at his book signing and got him to try some of the Frost and Snow cupcakes! Miss England and Mr England took a particular interest in the stand and took it upon themselves to go out and try their hand at selling the cakes to passers by. Mr England did a fantastic testimony to the work Frost and Snow and Midland Heart are doing, due to coming from a previously homeless background himself.

Filming wise the 2 days couldn't have gone much better, we collected some great footage and interviews of the event. We shot a lot on our new Steadicam and got some great results with it. We should have a sharp 2 - 3 minute edit ready before Christmas and if we get anywhere near the sort of success as we had with the Frost and Snow story earlier in the year perhaps we'll see it broadcast in the new year.

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New Website 2.0

1st December 2010

Well it's Tuesday afternoon and about 2 years since I've been involved with anything to do with the Lilac website, to long! We've been extremely busy as of late and I've got lots of exciting news to share - features on the channel 4 news, international commercial series, new clients... but with trying to get this site completed for today deadline I'm going to have to cut this first post short as we're shooting interviews with Urban Livings MD and Cllr. Simon Hackett to complete the Urban Living promotional film. More updates will come soon!