'A Stately Suicide' poster

And here is the poster for our latest short A Stately Suicide which will also be screening at the Flyboy showcase.

'Feet for Hands' poster

Just made this poster for my 2010 short Feet for Hands.  It's going to be screening at the Flyboy Films showcase in January!

Falling Out - Trailer

I am holding off putting my 2011 short Falling Out online while I submit to festivals but in the mean time I am proud to show off this trailer cut by myself and Rose Hendry.

ADO - The Ultra - OFFICIAL VIDEO

I recently AD'd and colour graded the music video The Ultra by Ado for co-directors Ian Forbes and Rose Hendry. It was a great experience and the first time I'd worked 'on set' rather than on location.  Big thanks to Tin Roof Arts Collective for letting us use the space as well!!

Falling Out - Looking Back

Hanna Stanbridge as Carrie

In November I posted a blog entry discussing the development of a script for my short film Falling Out. In it I mention that it was five months prior that I had first introduced the idea to writer Tom K McCarthy, which would make it now 14 months since we began the project!
As the final film is now complete I am taking a moment to trace the project from inception to completion.

Falling Out - VFX Breakdowns

Some more quick visual effects breakdowns from Falling Out.

Nuclear Explosion - VFX Breakdown

Here is a VFX breakdown hilighting the main elements that were used to create the nuclear explosion in the opening shot of my upcoming short Falling Out.  In addition I created a background plate composed footage of moving cars composited into an HDRI still image.  Other work includes plenty of animated colour operations, glows, motion blurs, procedural noise and liberal use of camera shake!

Thanks to Dylan Gauld for his great cgi work in Maya Fluids.

Monsters Under the Bed - VFX Breakdown

Here is a quick breakdown of the VFX shot that I composited for John Fairfield's film Monsters Under the Bed.  You can check out the film on the Virgin Media Shorts website.

Nuclear Explosion

Dylan Gauld's work on the CGI dynamics for the nuclear explosion from my short Falling Out is coming to a close.  I've been experementing with a single frame render that he's given me to see what I need to do to sell the shot.  Because we haven't had much time to refine it in Maya I'm doing the colouring in Nuke using an R, G & B ID pass and generally distroying the image as much as possible to hide the seams.

CG ID passes coloured and merged over plate.

Early pass on reducing detail with over exposure effects.

Monsters Under the Bed

This is John Fairfield's submission to Virgin Media Shorts.  Please check it out and 'like' it on Facebook if you find it deserving.


I was assistant director on the shoot and did the colour grade and the monster VFX, concept artist Ross Burt created the monster asset in Photoshop for me to composite and animate in Nuke. The DP was Ian Forbes.

A Stately Suicide - Wrapped

Last week we wrapped principal photography on a short film I am directing called A Stately Suicide.  It was my most enjoyable directing experience so far and I was so grateful to be working with such a talented cast and crew.  The cast are;

Melody Grove as Hannah

Kern Falconer as Spencer

Ryan Fletcher as Tony 

and

Annie Louise Ross as Nurse

360° Panorama

I recently purchased the 8mm f/3.5 fisheye from Samyang in order to do create 360°  panoramic HDRI's for my VFX work and take sweet hip-hop style images;

Falling Out - FX01 Previz

Previs for the opening shot of my upcoming short Falling Out. Ian Forbes and I shot the plate last week, now I am looking to have concept design work done on it before meeting with some Maya heads to talk about how to proceed.

'Feet for Hands'

"Everyday tasks can be a challenge when you have feet for hands, but there are some advantages."

Written by and starring Dean Fairbairn. My undergraduate comedy short from Time Based Art and Digital Film at DJCAD, Dundee.

Credits:

Starring Dean Fairbairn 

with Lewis den Hertog and Eric 'Mugsy' Boyd

Director, Matt Cameron

Director of Photography, Ian Forbes

Story, Dean Fairbairn for Madink Publishing

Camera Assistant, Rose Hendry

Gaffer, Robbie Gray

Lighting Assistant, Matthew Reid

Sound, Duncan Craig

Production Design, Katie Mason

Edit & VFX, Matt Cameron

'Feet for Hands' won best comedy at the Screentest festival in London 18th - 20th March 2011.

Please check out the Facebook fan page.

Good news for 'Meta' and 'Feet for Hands'

Meta 2010

My undergrad short 'Meta' has been nominated for two awards at the Bafta Scotland New Talent Awards 2011;  'Producer: Short Form' for John Fairfield and 'Technical Achievement' for myself.  The awards take place on the 24th of March so I'm keeping my fingers crossed until then.

'Meta' and my other undergrad short 'Feet for Hands' are also to be featured at Screentest Festival in London which takes place 18th - 20th March with 'Feet for Hands' nominated for best comedy!

You can read the Dundee University press article on the nominations here.

Red Camera Workflow at the VERL

Last week I gave a short presentation on behalf of the Visual Effects Research Lab to our North Sea Screen partners from Denmark and Norway.  As well as offering visual effects we wanted to make clear that we could offer a comprehensive digital post production workflow.  This particular Red Camera workflow was designed for artist / photographer Wendy McMurdo, allowing her the ability to request changes and see them made quickly during any part of the production process.

HDRI light probe environment light test in Nuke

LDR still at eV 0

I shot an oversized christmas bauble from each side of my room using Magic Lantern on my 550d to bracket the exposures at -5, -2.5, 0, +2.5 and +5eV. The large exposure steps did introduce some banding when converted to HDRI.  Also, taking the stills with no tripod and not measuring distances resulted in shallow focus and the need to adjust the input rotation in the spherical transform when matching one lightprobe angle to the other in Nuke.  I also realise now that if I took the second set of exposures at a 90° angle form the first rather than 180° then I could have removed myself from the final image.

Field of View Calculator

This is the best online field of view calculator I have come across yet.  It is simple, gives you all the info you need and has all the sensor sizes you are likely to need.

Field of View Comparator from AbelCineTech