(for those of you reading this off site and sans pictures – come here http://shootingpeople.org/bensblog/2009/06/after/ )

OK so for sometime now my geek of a brother has been getting hot under the collar for the new Canon EOS 5D Mark II. Not that it takes much to see why because, as well as being a general upgrade to their top range digital SLR stills camera the 5D Mark II is Canon’s first digital SLR camera that records HD video.

That’s already too many initials for one paragraph so to be clear… we’re talking about the sort of stills camera your Dad used to have but able to shoot videos with.

I have just had a quick trawl through the ‘reviews’ on youtube but they are all ubergeek (though many are worth watching for the pure camp entertainment of watching middle-aged men get excited by the size of it’s sensor chip. No seriously – check out Gordon Lane he’s as terrifying as he is sincere or better still this review from “Mega What” TV in which the director has made a noble effort at spicing up the material, which is basically a man in a suit talking about a camera on a park bench, by getting the questions asked by a woman and pointlessly lunging the camera at the guy as he speaks. The perspective this gives us is a bit like being a drunk intruding on a particularly painful first date.)

Anyway, like I say all the reviews I found were astonishingly dull so instead I’m giving you this to watch which is odder still. This, and I’ll admit I’ve not watched it to the end, seems to be just shots of a pretty girl being photographed holding the new camera. As if that will somehow make it sexy. As if we’re all going to imagine that, perhaps, the Canon production line is staffed entirely by models and she’s just showing off the one she’s just finished. Better still this pointless posing is all done to a piece of music I happen to know comes free with Apple’s Soundtrack editing software…

This film gets odder every time I watch it.

Anyway, the actual point I’m trying to make is that – d’you see that camera she’s holding? That costs £2k and shoots High Def video… better than that, it shoots High Def video through 35mm Prime Lenses… onto memory cards that you download direct into Final Cut Pro.

SO… you can see why Chris was getting excited by it. We recently had an excuse to use one and a friend of ours has just traded in his old Canon XL2 and bought the 5D Mk II instead. For those of you struggling to keep up through the jargon that’s like swapping a skateboard for a BMW.

There was some worry before we shot about the camera always resetting to factory defaults between takes, but thankfully this problem was solved with a firmware upgrade days before we used it.

There was a slight irritation to the fact that it currently doesn’t happily support an external monitor, or at least not without bypassing the screen on the back of the camera. Judging focus was really only possible through the camera screen so any shot that involved a pull had to be done without a monitor. However all this really meant was that I was pushed into the good habit of not hiding behind a monitor, something it’s all too easy to drop into, making it all to easy to neglect the actors.

Focus pulling was a bit of a pain, but this was probably more because we were massively under crewed and the kit we were borrowing didn’t have a follow focus.

Lastly, though the camera has a pretty decent inbuilt microphone the size of the thing means that we tended to get more camera operator noise than you usually do with a bigger machine. It’s only external sound input is mini-jack so we ended up recording separate sound onto a flash drive.

I think it also has a maximum take length which I’ve heard is 10 minutes but online I can only find quoted at 29 minutes. Either way, this never came close to affecting what we were shooting.

If these few limitations remind you of anything then you’ve probably shot on film – and that was one of the biggest revelations about the whole process. Far from feeling like a step down, like a step away from big bodied grown-up filmmaking, working with the Canon Mark II felt like stepping back up. Prime lenses, the positive need for a focus puller, a director not hiding behind technology, a sound recordist free to roam and a piece of kit that encourages you not to simply turn it on shoot endless wasted hours of nothing… not only were the results beautiful but they were surprisingly rigourous for what was meant to be a freebee shoot for a friend.

I don’t want to sound like an advert but when Canon introduced the XL1 back in 2000 they rocked my world. For the first time it was possible for kids like my brother and me to get hold of a piece of kit that was almost as good as bad tv. I am so jealous of anyone making their first films with the Mark II. So small, so portable and yet not cheap and not lazy… Surely this is going to revolutionise what we do?

Why hasn’t everyone bought one?

Just heard this on the radio as part of a discussion of women in the Royal Air Force…

“…well I’m sorry to be so ordinary but I joined as a result of a bet with my Dad…”

What world does she live in? I don’t know anyone who joined the armed forces due to a bet with their parents. That’s not normal behaviour is it?

A mix of encroaching penury and helping a friend led me to spend last night filming a conference on the future of the food industry. It was actually more interesting than you’d have thought, however it did include a fair amount of conference gibberish, including this opening gambit from one speaker…

“We’re here to talk about food futures, the future of food, the future of foodies but in many ways these debates remind me of the Michael J Fox film about ‘Back To The Future’ because when you step back from it and look at the research, as I’m sure you’ll all get a chance to later, consumers haven’t changed that much.”

I must have missed that part of the film because I thought “Back To The Future” was about how it’s good to hit people and play guitar but if you travel back in time, try not to fuck your mother. Quite how this relates to the future of the food industry I’m not sure, though I imagine soon the only way we’ll be able to eat fish is if we first invent a time travelling delorean…

Quick quick, grab the cod!

Keep meaning to mention that we’ve got our first ever unofficial fan site, for our film Hallo Panda.

I know that it only takes about five minutes to set up a page in Facebook so it’s not like they’ve built a pyramid or a henge to honour our creations, but never the less the thought that the bunch of us managed to delight strangers to the point of casual internet use still brings a warm glow.

The other night I snuck along to a preview screening of the new digitally remastered copy of ‘Aria’, which is new out on DVD. For those who missed this first time round, ‘Aria’ is a portmanteau film in which producer Don Boyd gathers a collection of directors and gets them each to visually interpret an operatic aria of their choice. Not the sort of thing you can imagine many financiers going for these days, but since the directors in question include Godard, Altman, Jarman, and Ken Russell you can see why I was keen to tag along with my mate Kate.

Little did I realise that the nature of the screening and the invitation would include a chance to mingle in the BFI Southbank’s sublimely dingy green room and meet some of the people behind the film.

Generally speaking I’m not much of a fan of meeting either my idols or otherwise ‘famous’ people. It is rare to meet someone whose work you appreciate in a situation where you can really ask them anything actually interesting, so you tend to end up having a super-powered version of the meaningless conversation I normally save for taxi drivers. In both cases the onus is down to them to make the running and if you’re lucky all you really have to do is nod, and try to sound like you agree with whatever mad or pointless thing they’re getting animated about and hope that it doesn’t turn out to be racist. In both cases your opinion is just an oil to keep things moving until that blissful moment when it’s safely finished and you’re either a. home or b. allowed to leave and start texting people that you’ve just met so and so. Or, in the rare case that you’ve met someone who’s fallen on hard times and is driving a cab to make ends meet, both.

However I have to admit that meeting Ken Russell was an absolute delight. He was sat by the door, a multicoloured walking stick in one hand and his long white hair flowing onto his shoulders. I could have just written “looking like God” but I didn’t want to dive straight in there for fear of getting needlessly embroiled (in your mind) about what you happen to think God looks like if he/she/them/we exist. But, if you leave all that crap aside and just run with the basic cultural concept of what God is supposed to look like then, bang, that’s Ken Russell.

Before being introduced to him it’s pointed out that it’s not so easy for him to stand, so I kneel before him and without hesitation he offers me his hand, and if there’d been a ring on it then the instinctive authority of the gesture would have made it all but impossible for me not to kiss it. Like you would if you actually met God and he turned out to look like Ken Russell.

Don introduces me as a filmmaker which I thought was very kind of him because, with no false modesty at all, out of everyone in the room I’m probably the least entitled to the title. Anyway, Ken smiles at me and asks the usual question that people ask when they’re told that you are a filmmaker – “Oh really, what sort of films do you make?”

My preferred answer to this is “my sort” but the enjoyable arrogance of that statement would ring rather hollow in my present company so I resort instead to my other option which is less satisfying. Then he asks me the best question I’ve ever been asked about my filmmaking.

“Is it fun?”

It’s not a question any taxi driver has ever asked me and it leaves me a little speechless for a moment before I offer something like “usually”. He laughs and gives me the sort of unguarded smile of approval that is, and I promise this is the last time I’m going to use this metaphor, just the sort of smile you’d want from God, where he to turn out to be Ken Russell.

We talk some more, mainly about filmmaking and his segment of “Aria”. He is – quite simply – utterly delightful. I guess it’s easy for him to be such as, after all, in talking to me he has nothing he needs to prove nor nothing to gain but laughter. After what seems like all too soon, I notice his wife casting a protective eye towards us. Not wanting to either tire or bore him, I make my excuses and leave, feeling honoured to have accidentally met such a lovely man.

“You look like Bob Geldof though innit, d’you know that? You look like Bob Geldof.” I nod and trot out my current line of how I recently met Johnny Turnball who, as well as being a Blockhead, also plays with Sir.Bob and he didn’t make the comparison the once and so perhaps it’s not as true as people suggest. This falls on deaf ears, the guy is already in a revere.

“He doesn’t comb his hair. You know? He’s like Tony Blair. He doesn’t comb his hair. It must mean something. You know? It’s like a – what does it mean? It’s an omen. Isn’t it? What does it mean? They don’t comb their hair. Bob Geldof and Einstein – yeah – mad professor hair – it must – like – it’s an OMEN. What does it mean? Bob Geldof, Einstein, Tony Blair – the three of them. Yeah? Why do you think that is?”

Patiently I explain that it probably doesn’t have any outside significance beyond that obvious image that each man is trying to project. Einstein is a good case in point and I’ve actually read (somewhere) someone making the very point that actually the image of Einstein we all know and love, wild hair, tongue out, twinkle in his eyes, was the carefully constructed end point of a man at the end of his professional career and at massively at odds with the hot new thing in his field. When Einstein propounded relativity he was a neatly combed clerk in a smart suit. I even ventured into the dangerous territory of out and out disagreement by pointing out that Tony Blair does comb his hair and generally looks very smart.

He stares at me – for a moment there is that same dangerous spark he always has and that always worries me about our train conversations – then he laughs “Ah man. Tony Blair, Bob Geldof, Einstein. I’m just chatting shit at you. Fuck man, here I am just sat here and Yellow Dog comes out and talks rubbish, I’m sorry blood.”

I don’t know his real name so I’ll call him Yellow Dog because it suits him. I meet him semi-regularly on the train I take between my house and my girlfriend’s. He is younger than me and clearly not all right in the head but I have no natural defence against men like him. I find it almost impossible not to attempt to reason with him. Unlike many he does listen, even if I generally just push his thoughts from one ludicrous conclusion to the next.

The first time I met him he staggered down the train carriage and asked me if I could answer him a question. “Who’s right? The Muslims or the Christians? ‘Cos like, you know brother, they tell me I shouldn’t drink, but I’m not sure.”

He then sat down opposite me and fixed me with a stare that was not openly aggressively but was neither entirely friendly. This is, I realise now, his mode. There is always something on the edge of violence about him. Even the way he laughs at himself, he seems so aware that what he says is unhinged that I keep expecting him to turn out to have been playing some massive practical joke and then hit me for having been taken in.

Eitherway, not wanting to provoke a fight, I did my level best to expound upon him a workable theory of the differing sources of morality, those based on religious conviction and those on cultural values and left him with the thought that it was, perhaps, the task of the individual to decide which source was of most importance.

On one level this worked, I talked so much he couldn’t even get an word in edgeways and was reduced to lolling back in his seat and making dark sucking noises with his cheeks and tongue. However I’d clearly become his friend and so now every time he sees me he slops down onto the seat beside me with “Alright brother -” and then usually something filthy about polish women.

He has too main obsessions. Polish women and how everyone else in the world has got it wrong. Not that he quite goes as far as to say that he’s got it right, he’s often very open about his struggles to get things together… but he is also very keen to point out how ludicrous he finds everyone else.

“These commuters are like monsters,” he grins “they like growl at me, like, get out of my space I’m going to work, and I’m like – you know blood – it’s not worth it. What’s the point of money without happiness? You know? I don’t want that. What’s the point of money without happiness? You know?” he stares at me, this is clearly a big concept and he doesn’t expect me to have grasped it yet “What’s the point of money without happiness?”

Today he told me was going to go to Hollywood. “May be in ten years time. You don’t think that’s leaving it too late do you? I just, I know things have got to be done in the right order. You know? I know that you’ve got to do it right. So I’m like, yeah, ten years, go to Hollywood and marry my Polish Princess.”

He is probably right to leave it ten years, though when you think of the number of films in which a man like him is used to expound heartfelt natural ‘truth’ about the wrongs of modern society I think he may have more success than you’d first imagine.

My brother and I are filming some 30 second drama spots for a new NSPCC website and so a couple of days ago we were off on a recce, looking for a big house that can provide us with most of our locations. This lead us to a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend’s place in Islington.

Admittedly it was a gloriously hot day with a perfect blue sky but the house was a minor paradise. Too small too comfortably shoot in and far too delightful and uniquely decorated it was the sort of tumble down bohemian idyl that makes you want to instantly sink onto the sofa and strike up a pipe and a conversation about Proust. (Sadly this remains true even though I don’t smoke and haven’t actually read any volume of Temps Perdu… perhaps proving that I only feel at home in Islington because I too am a tosser.)

Out in the back garden beautiful people sunbathed with cats whilst downstairs their kitchen was full of chaos and beauty. Every brick in the place was in someway edible. It took us thirty seconds to realise we couldn’t film there and then thirty minutes to prise ourselves away, and even then only as far as the gorgeous pub at the end of the road which was full of old musical instruments and warm oaky shadows.

Chris and I sat in the cosy gloom of the pub and shared a thought in the silence.

Other people really are living a life aren’t they?

What glorious weather. I haven’t felt quite this warm and lazily content since I was in Jersey last year, which is perhaps just a trick of the light because who’s that standing by the lift with her phone to her ear but Xanthe Hamilton, creator and director of the Branchage Film Festival, Jersey’s more civilised answer to Woodstock…

However, whilst there is something of the Dryad about her, stumbling into her in the late sunshine is no piece of early summer magic. Our paths crossed last night because it was the first of a series of monthly Branchage Film Surgeries, appropriately enough held at the Hospital club in Covent Garden.

The idea of the Surgery is simply that filmmakers with unfinished short films screen them and then a panel film doctors try and help them see what works and what doesn’t and where they should go next. The first time we did it was at Branchage last year in the even more baroque setting of the Speigel Tent and now we are back by popular demand to offer advice to filmmakers once a month at the Hospital…

This month we discussed the short documentary “Run, Granpa Run” by Paul Griffiths, “Harmonica Swing” by Amiram Bukowski, “Myth” by Georges Sokol and “One Minute Guide To Planet Earth” by Armen Antranikian. All were flawed, of course, you don’t come to the Surgery if everything is ok, but all were ambitious, thought provoking and fascinating. It is a rare opportunity to see films as a work in progress and a rarer one to get a chance to really discuss what goes wrong in an open and constructive manner.

Also though friendly and small the audience held a surprising number of influential people and the chance to show your work to them as raw potential rather than a finished item is not to be sniffed at – even if Colonel Mullighan’s command that we all dress “with a little Branchage ‘flair’” meant that we ended up looking like the cast of a modern dress “Midsummer’s Night Dream”. Philip Ilson clearly Puckish in his striped blazer (a remarkable item of second hand clothing which apparently has been recognised not only by alumni of the obscure Suffolk school whose uniform it is, but by one who was actually there at the same time as the man whose name tag it still carries…) Hannah Patterson Helena tall, James Mullighan cutting a rakeish shape as a moustached Oberon and with Jenny, Helen and Rosie with her glittery eye make-up as shoe-ins for the fairys.

Which probably leaves me as Bottom, braying my donkey thoughts in the corner… happy days.