About

Branched Productions offer video at a bespoke service from concept to final product.

We are based in the Lothians of Scotland, are interested and involved with co-productions and also write for various media and the arts sector.

Script Supervisor and Continuity

Back in May, I worked with some ECA students, Ema Culik had written and directed her short ‘The Golden Chain,’ which she is submitting towards her Master in Film Directing.

I felt right at home taking a log of timecodes, generated by a DVC Pro camera, which is what I trained with at Jewel & Esk, way back when. I was surprised to learn that ECA still used DVC Pro, thinking they would be using a DSLR (It takes me a while to switch my head to file numbers) or another format.

They’re sound guy had a proper sound mixer, Sound Devices-heaven. (Audio capture is for another post.) I checked up with him every so often to see if we were all in snyc.

I know what level of professionalism (?) I am working with when people ask for continuity notes and logs. They take their Post Production seriously, not to mention their Editor’s sanity. I’ve had plenty of experiences (and I’m sure you have as well) of editing without timecode, it’s not recommended.  I understand that if your shooting ‘run and gun,’ documentary or news gathering you don’t have time to log timecode, fair enough, but if you can, do so.

What I relearned from this experience was, if you have to reconstruct your set -which we had to do as it was set in a theatre and a comedy show had booked to use the stage that night- note down the exact measurements. Taking photographs of where everything is in relation to everything else, is not enough.

I will discuss video cameras in a new post.

I was a Boom Operator for a short afternoon.

(The 17th of March to be exact) It was a small, circa 1950’s ad for
‘Good Enough Biscuits’ which is to be inserted in the play
‘Gaydonia,’ written by Gary Pedlar and directed by Roger Burroughes.
It will be showing from the 12th to the 14th of April at the St. Bride’s Centre in Edinburgh.

Nice to work with

Media Muppet creator Billy Dowling Reid again. Media Muppet lists vacancies in the Media Sector.
It was once a social networking site, back in the days when we didn’t know who Mr Zuckerberg was.

Billy is directing his final for Queen Margaret University. I was one of the Production Assistants for two days.

Behind the Scenes

The behind the scenes video for ‘The Slide,’ is now online