Rough Cuts Ltd Blog

The word 'stunning' is used far too often in the world of drone photography. Sometimes 'stunning' shots that make it into local newspapers wouldn't make it past a discerning content creator. Likewise, 'stunning video' can often be straight off the camera or poorly produced. In order to get high quality video for your project, before you hire, (once you've established they're licensed and insured), contractors should look for a number of skills that drone operators must have. Use their own previous content from their website or YouTube channel in order to judge their abilities and look out for these issues.... 1) Smooth movement.  When you watch drone footage back, keep your eyes on one moving object. Sheep in fields are great as they stand out. Does the object glide smoothly across the scene, or is it jerky? Smooth panning only happens when a number of things are set up correctly. Whilst some of the problems can be caused by playback devices (iP...

EDIT ** AUGUST 2019 - MS OFFICE ADDED TO THE LIST ** This morning (10/7/2019) I have taken the shrewd advice from Apple's beta program and installed the Beta of Mac OS Catalina on my secondary Mac (an Air), not my main iMac. And I'm really glad I did. Apple have had subtle warnings that have said 'This program will not work with future updates of Mac OS - The developer needs to update this app to work". THIS IS WORTH MAKING A NOTE OF.  So Why? What's happening?  The new version of Mac OS is going to be for 64 bit programs only. 32 bit programs will no longer work. So what will be affected?  This depends entirely on what you use your Mac for and which programs you use. This list is what has happened on my Mac and what it will mean I will have to do now. 0) ** Microsoft Office 2011 ** At the time of writing I hadn't noticed, as the apps for this are in a folder in the applications folder. But this is the big one. Many people rely on Office ...

I've had the pleasure of dipping my toes into the teaching circle now for three years. Whilst I love what I do, I currently only work 1 and a half days over 2 schools (excluding the time I put into my lesson preparation). I've seen first hand and learnt a lot about the challenges and struggles the education system is fighting. It may not be a surprise to learn that the biggest are Money and Time, but in addition, a big concern is the increasingly rapid progress of technology. Technology depreciates quickly, yesterdays interactive whiteboards will soon become as archaic as chalk, new digital touch screen displays will be the future, with children and teachers able to demonstrate technological workflow at the front of the class. Whether that's art, working with layers, editing video, creating slideshows; 'showing' the how to process is much more powerful than telling or displaying screenshots of what the process looks like. But the screen tech is still in its infanc...

A few people have said to me recently that they'd like to watch Star Wars, but they don't know where to start. I get this, instead of a neat 4,5,6 part trilogy, (as it was last century) it's now grown arms and legs and my attempts to simplify it (I made a spreadsheet) only seem to cause more confusion. But recently, I saw things slightly differently that may help the saga become more understandable to an outsider. So here's a brief summary of the stuff that happens and how you might want to watch it (Rated OK through to EPIC). It's assumed you know what a Jedi is, but a Sith (you may not know) is the Dark Side equivalent. I've tried my best to be ambiguous to avoid spoilers. Before we start - Clones, Stormtroopers and Droid Army's.  This can get complicated. 1) The Droid Army we see in the first films belongs to the Trade federation. They're used to enforce an illegal trade war against a small planet. 2) The original Clone army (the first to l...

The EU just passed legislation aimed at increasing revenue for news sources and decreasing copyright theft. This  effects of this directive (not a law yet anywhere - but it will be) are as yet unknown. But change is inevitable. The main impact of these regulations are two fold. Copyright theft responsibility shifts to the platform (IE Twitter, YouTube, Facebook), not the user who uploaded the material.  (Memes, are exempt). Links to news articles will be liable to a tax.  The upshot of this is as yet unknown, many things could change. But the implications of copyright theft on the scale of operations like the social networks above are impossible for them to ignore. It's possible they may put in place charges to keep their services the same as they are now (to cover news link costs etc). It's possible they may block all links to news articles unless the user pays a fee. It's possible that they may halt all media uploads, or put in place measures to recov...

MOMO, Blue Whale and Slenderman are all quite frankly sick. I've just this morning read a post from a mother who is distraught that her young child has been exposed to Momo and is now struggling to sleep, living in fear and causing distress with other children in school. If you have young children and they mention any of these, you do need to intervene. Having now finished the end of this blog post, I think it's probably best to talk to them about it or at least clue yourself up, before they suffer the same. So what are these new modern urban legends?  In a nutshell, they're all pseudonyms for bullying. Anyone can, in reality, pretend to be the Slenderman, Momo, or the operators behind the Blue Whale challenge. I guess that's the frightening thing is that anybody could chose to be any one of them by changing their Whats App name and profile picture. The Momo character is based on a vulgar sculpture called Mother Bird by Japanese effects company Link Factory. ...

I know how difficult it is to get a good shot at an event, this weekend, I was at an event where we took around 500 images in 2 and a half hours and 2/3 of these were not used. It's easier where there are more photographers 'camped' but this increases costs. Once ISO, Aperture and shutter have been set up, the 'camped' photographer can wait and capture images quickly and efficiently.  Here I was adjusting all of those settings on the fly for different light, poses and action shots (clarity over quick focus/fast shutter) a real challenge, but a rewarding one as the images we got, for the most part, I'm happy with. But there are a number of things I really dislike about current event photography set ups*. Firstly, the all round cost for participants and photographers. (*Ignoring the issue that a number of event photographers look like eyesores in tatty jeans, unkempt beards and old T-Shirts) . The session we ran was a specific photography afternoon, the cos...