Videos for Edinburgh, Scotland - 38minutes

Halloween Bop How to Have Fun with Puppets

2011-10-31T15:10:55.018Z

Halloween Bop is a short video created for fun to celebrate the start of Halloween in 2011. Halloween Bop is a fun little home theatre video me and a few friends put together while we were bored on a Sunday afternoon. It features our trio of pupets performers rock band; witches, guitar rock star Jeff Lynne lookalike and even Frankenstein! We thought it was a good idea for them to play rock music naturally.

The Halloween celebrations take place annually as a holiday in the United States but takes place everywhere on October 31st. The celebrations include trick or treating, attending costume parties, carving jack o' lanterns, bonfires, apple bobbing, visiting haunted attractions, playing pranks, telling scary stories and watching horror films.

Various symbols and artifacts have developed over the years according to a source from wikipedia, for example. Someone states that the carving of jack o'lanterns is a way of remembering the souls held in purgatory. Turnips are a traditional vegetable used in Ireland and Scotland. Inhabitants to North America however use the native pumpkin which are far greater in size making them easier to carve than turnips.

The visual look about Halloween originally derived from multiple sources which included many famous works of literature which include the novels, Frankenstein and Dracula among famous films such as The Mummy. Other imagery includes the themes of death, evil, the occult and mythical monsters.

One of our characters in our puppet show is a witch but what exactly is a witch I hear you ask?

Well a witch is known to be a sorcerer as they do not use physical tools or actions to curse. They are known to be witches where the person may be unaware that they are a witch. Moreover, they are noted for being accused of attempting to cause harm by thought alone.

Those thought to be witches found themselves in the following situations. A person may be caught in the act of positive or negative sorcery. They may be a well-meaning sorcerer or healer who has lost their clients' trust. They also be a person who did nothing more than gain the feeling of hate from their neighbours.

The Itchy Creeps performed the music titled 'In the Hall of the Mountain King', a cover version of Grieg's original classic which is in the public domain.

The small figures featured in this video are from The Munsters, a 1960's American family television sitcom which reveals the home life of a family of monsters. The munsters characters who are odd are typical working class Americans of the era. Featured here are Grandpa, Lil, Herman and Eddie which form our indie bands.

So what to do at Halloween?

You could create jelly for fun. An idea for Halloween games might be for you to pick out the perfect Halloween costumes for yourself. It's worth spending a bit of money on Halloween costume ideas to really stand out from the crowd. It's best to buy yours as early as possible.

An additional idea might be to take part in a Halloween photo contest, you may be able to win a prize. With the use of a pumpkin carving pattern, you could create a really detailed pumpkin. If you wish to go that extra mile, attempt to build a coffin whether you want to host a party, haunt your house, build a graveyard in your backyard or add something to the front porch to scare your visitors away.

Using exciting lighting for your Halloween décor could be a good suggestion. You could create Halloween style graves using mounds of mud scattered around the garden to create effect. Remember to clean up afterwards. You could also add some spider webs to your party. Additional excitement can be achieved through the use of fog machines to add a haunting feel to your parties.

Edinburgh Festivals Opening Cavalcade Parade 2009

2011-10-16T21:43:02.546Z

Since 1947, the Edinburgh Festival Cavalcade has taken place in Edinburgh to signal the start of the Fringe Festival. The cavalcade is a parade made up from the performers of the Fringe in addition to local community groups and marching bands which includes the cast of the world renowned Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo. The event takes place at the beginning of August annually and atracts many thousands of visitors visiting Scotland and local families and groups of friends. Despite occuring every year since it's inception, for the first time in it's history, the cavalcade did not take place in 2011 due to a lack of funding to support the event. Hopefully, the event will return in the future. Rumours have been around stating that the cavalcade may now become a two year event which would be possible with current funding available for staging the event.

I have always been a spectator to the event and so I wanted to try and gain an opportunity to film the event on the ground. To achieve this, I approached cavalcade Director, David Todd firstly in 2008 to seek permission to shoot the event. He gladly accepted and I took along my Hi8 camera to record the event. It wasn't until the following summer that David got in contact with me again to record the event a second time of the parade to take place during August, 2009.

My aim was to create a better video of the event than the one I produced in 2008 so I decided that using multi cameras might cover the event in more detail. I've been a member of the Edinburgh Cine & Video Society since 2006 so I posted an ad at the club to see if anyone would like to help collaborate with me on the project as a Camera Operator. The response was good initially where I managed to get together a team of five to record the event.

To gain the best coverage, I put together a very rough diagram of where I wanted to position cameras. One of the members of the team, Peter Dick wanted to try out his new HDV camera at a height so he ended up filming the parade from the Crags in Holyrood Park which produced some excellent results. I particularly enjoyed the shots of the Scottish Parliament in the background and the marching bands seen from afar.

Two of the Camera Operators were positioned on the ground within the parade route which included me. When I arrived a couple of hours before the event, me and Bob Bell, another ECVS member picked up some orange high visibility vests to alert people that we were filming. I quite liked having this as it made me feel more professional. Getting close to performers during filming was a good idea where between us we managed to gain some interesting, comical shots of the performers. Bob Bell managed to capture some shots of the crowds waving and smiling which added a community feel to the video. I especially liked his sneaky shot of a woman singing Batman where she obvisouly seems oblivious to the fact that she's being filmed, only to realize that she is at the last moment.

I enjoyed one of my shots where I weaved in between the Massed Pipes and Drums which I think adds excitement to the video. Another memorable moment for me was filming the Swiss Army band which were kind enough to march in a circle around a roundabout in order for a badly placed crowd to see some action. They loved the band for giving them a photo opportunity. Being able to follow the bands behind them worked well too for giving the audience an unsual look at the performers in my opinion. Bob managed to get a shot of the pipers by using a monopod lifted high in the air which created an interesting look. I found that when filming the bands, you have to be on your feet, watching out for where they are marching to and you have to make sure you don't get hit by a drum major's mace. Another of my shots which worked well was a pan shot on the ground of Royal Air Force Pipes and Drums which added another different perspective to the video.

Scottish Hogmanay Princes Street Edinburgh 2008/09

2010-09-12T20:08:51.396Z

Hogmanay Edinburgh 2008 is a four day festival with ticketed and unticketed events featuring a viking torchlight procession and winter festival in the gardens.

Lumison Datacentre Services

2010-09-12T20:05:19.639Z

Lumison is a leading UK business ISP, providing a full range of managed network, hosting, datacentre, application, VoIP and security.

Willow Creek Pictures Showreel 2010

2010-09-04T09:36:52.768Z

I'm Alan Andrew Taylor, an independent digital film producer based in Edinburgh, Scotland offering video production services.

Lumierophone Demo

2009-12-03T11:59:42.738Z

This is a video showing a prototype of the Lumièrophone, a screen with embedded sensors that create sound in real time based on what is projected on it. I produced this is partnership with Kristina Johansen, and presented it at the University of Edinburgh for the Sound of the Silents conference.

This demo shows it in action using the Walter Ruttman films Opus I and…

Creative Scotland event at the Lyceum Theatre

2009-07-02T14:24:20.066Z

Creative Scotland event held at the Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh on June 23, 2009.

Hubdub - take a punt on the news

2008-09-05T12:04:35.966Z

Hubdub is a Web site where users bet for fun, not money, on the outcomes of real news stories. Although the site has a heavy US focus, it's based out of Edinburgh, Scotland.