How Our Team’s New Skills Enhance Our Video Projects

At Block Art Media, we believe in continuous growth and improvement to provide our clients with the best possible service. Recently, two of our talented team members, Peter Sladen and Peter Marsh, completed advanced courses to further hone their skills. These new qualifications not only benefit their professional development but also significantly enhance the quality and creativity of our video production services.

Mastering Colour Grading: Peter Sladen and DaVinci Resolve 18

Peter Sladen, one of our founders and part of the BAM production team, recently completed "The Colourist Guide to DaVinci Resolve 18" course and earned a certification. This intensive course gave Peter an in-depth understanding of colour grading, a crucial aspect of video production that dramatically influences the mood, atmosphere, and visual appeal of a project.

Peter S On set

Peter is now an officially certified colour grader with Davinci Resolve!

Why is Colour Grading Important?

Colour grading is the process of enhancing the colour, saturation, and contrast of a video. It’s not just about making the footage look good; it’s about creating a specific look and feel that aligns with the story and the video’s message. For instance, a warm, saturated colour palette can evoke feelings of nostalgia and warmth, while cooler tones can create a sense of calm or detachment.

Benefits for Your Project:

  • Enhanced Visual Appeal: With Peter’s advanced skills in DaVinci Resolve, our videos will have a more polished and professional look, ensuring your video stands out.

  • Consistent Brand Identity: Colour grading helps maintain a consistent visual style across all your content, reinforcing brand recognition and identity.

  • Improved Storytelling: The right colour scheme can enhance the narrative, making your videos more engaging and impactful.

Elevating Storytelling: Peter Marsh’s Training at the National Film and Television School (NFTS)

Our creative lead and video director, Peter Marsh, recently completed two short courses on directing and storytelling at the prestigious National Film and Television School in London. These courses focused on advanced techniques in narrative construction and directorial practices, equipping Peter with even more skills to tell compelling stories through video.

Mr Marsh. Shooting and Directing!

The Art of Storytelling:

Storytelling is at the heart of every great video. It’s about creating a connection with the audience, drawing them into the narrative, and leaving a lasting impression. Effective storytelling involves understanding the audience, crafting a compelling plot, and directing the action to convey the desired message.

Benefits for Videos:

  • Stronger Narratives: With Peter Marsh’s enhanced storytelling abilities, our videos will captivate audiences with engaging and well-structured narratives.

  • Creative Direction: Peter’s training in directing ensures that every scene is thoughtfully crafted and executed, resulting in high-quality, cinematic videos.

  • Brand Alignment: Effective storytelling helps align your video with your core values, vision, and messages, making it more relatable and memorable for your audience.

Conclusion

At Block Art Media, we’re always looking to up our game in video production. The recent courses Peter Sladen and Peter Marsh completed are proof of our dedication to developing our skills. With these new experiences, we're excited to bring you even more creative, engaging, and visually stunning videos. We can’t wait to bring these enhanced capabilities to your projects!

We are excited to bring these enhanced capabilities to your projects!

THROUGH MY LENS: MIT MILCH MAY 2021

Through my lens - As well as taking photos, one of our photographers, Kamila, is a coffee aficionado. Previously working as a barista she now loves to share her new and exciting coffee discoveries from all over the world, and captures them in stunning 35mm film. Coffee also plays a huge role in Block Art Media, we all met in a coffee shop and all love good coffee. This series marries Kamila’s love of both coffee and photography and we hope that you enjoy discovering these hidden gem coffee spots.

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Behind The Shots: Fella and the All Star Challenge 2020

We couldn’t believe a year had passed already. We packed up all our gear into the car and began our evening drive over to Folkestone. 

It was our shoot day for the All Star competition; an annual hairstyling and portraiture competition hosted by men’s hair and skin care brand American Crew. The founder of American Crew, David Raccuglia, is not just a talented barber, he is also a highly skilled, self-taught photographer with a love for classic black and white images; reminiscent of classic 1940-60 Hollywood portraiture. From this combination of photography and mens hair styling skills, American Crew was born and a competition celebrating both of these passions was created. 

Last year we came very close to reaching the finals, with our photographs of model Soren Paillou and our good friends at Fella Hair were eager to enter again. This time they had organised two models each with distinctive looks, styled by barbers Alex Wakefield and Jayson Black.

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Portrait photography canterbury

Last years images which made it to the top 20.

The Models and the looks

This year, both barbers had come up with a back story and personality for their look. Jayson styled model George Blake into a Harley Davidson-riding rocker with a glorious beard and a love for rock bars and neat bourbon. Alex had gone for a Mod culture inspired look, a sharp looking young man with a chip on his shoulder portrayed by fashion model Soren Palliou.

The Final images

Here they are! Our final front and side profile shots for the competition:

portrait photographer canterbury
Barber photography

Soren rocking the Mod look with some amazing textured hair as styled by Alex

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Photographer canterbury

George with his glorious beard and hair styled by Jayson

Closing thoughts

Unfortunately our images didn’t make it to the finals this year, but they were spotted on the judging table in one of the videos American Crew streamed and we received some encouraging comments:

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We were really happy with our shots and were blown away by the efforts made by the barbers and models. A huge thank you to Alex, Jayson, Bobby, George and Soren. We already can’t wait for next year!

Behind The Scenes

Our basic lighting setup for the shoot was a large octabox as the key light, a small softbox as the hair and rim light positioned behind and a lot of reflected and bounced light was played around with to get the look just right.

 
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Our basic lighting setup

 

Editing

We were shooting tethered to keep an eye on the images as we went and everyone was pretty chuffed with the shots straight out the camera. After we got home we cracked on with some high end editing. Our workflow was firstly to get the image looking right in Lightroom by adjusting the tones, clarity, highlights and contrast to give them a bit of punch. Then we took them over to photoshop for our high-end final touches. The 3 stages of the images are shown below:

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Credits and social media links

Models:

Soren Paillou

George Croft

Hair Stylists:

Alex Wakefield

Jayson Black

Fella Barbering:

Fella

Fella Folkestone

Fella Margate

American Crew UK:

IG Page