Jamie Chinnery - Showreel 2013

Finally, here it is, I have complied all the work I have done over the past nine months into a Showreel.

I have made two versions of this showreel, please watch the second one
HERE

Fifteen Dead - Music Video

My band, Fifteen Dead had recently got back from touring America when we decided it was about time that we made a music video. Obviously this would be a good way for me to get one under my belt, as well as get practice doing them in the first place before I was doing one as a paid job.

Jack Peppiette and I met up to discuss concepts and art direction, we decided we should decorate the space we were going to use for performance with flags and candles to create atmosphere.

We had recently started practicing at a practice rooms in the caverns of Edinburgh's Old Town. So we thought this would be an excellent atmospheric place to do the video. I also rented out some strobe powerful strobe lights to give some parts of the video a frightening feel. Unfortunately in practice when using a strobe and a DSLR this creates a black bar across the screen for much of the filming.

We were on a pretty tight time frame, and with all the candles creating a surprising amount of heat, the rain outside leaking into the cavern making it incredibly humid and having to perform over and over for 3 hours, we had to call it quits. Unfortunately I really don't think we got enough takes to make the video as good as it can be. We so hopefully soon, it will make down to the cavern again to get some more takes under our belt and finish off the video.

For the narrative section of the video Jack was going to paint a symbol on a flag that was also used in the video. This all went pretty well.... as far as filming goes. We had to madly scrub the floor and walls to get the red paint off when we were done before anyone noticed.

Jack Peppiette - Artist, Apprentice Tattooist

Jack grew up just down the road from me, he was a few years younger than me but was good friends with my younger brother, they used to spend hours drawing all sorts of horrible evil torturous monsters that I'm sure would give any child psychiatrist a seizure. When he was about 12 his family moved to America and we never really heard from them again.

Jack being all arty with an arty hat and badass tattoos.

Untill one day I went into the tattoo studio where I had got some work done before to book myself a birthday tattoo, the guy behind the counter was skinny and bearded with similar hair to me, but he was covered in totally awesome tattoos. I have a very particular taste in tattoos, normal, unimaginative tattoos really nauseate me so when I saw this guy I was like, NICE. After I booked a session he just said '....Jamie?' I had literally no idea who this dude was so I apologized and asked if I should know him and he just said 'Jack'. Instantly I saw the little boy who used to run about with my wee brother and steal my guitar without asking in this grown mans face. 

traditional style mandala

Anyway, Jack and I talked for a while and I told him I had been doing video stuff and he was very interested to have a big part project he was planning filmed. He was going to make a massive Mandala, which is a Indian type of circular, repeating pattern. But he was going to do it in a Modern Traditionalist' tattooing style. 

Jacks Modern Traditionalist Mandala

Unfortunately Jack made a mistake near the end of filming so he has to get the project back up to the same point again before we can finish filming. Hopefully it will be soon! check jacks website here

http://jackpeppiette.blogspot.fr/

Marcus Houston - Self Defense Expert

After the success of the first videos I did for Marcus of Combat Ready Gym and me spending more and more of my own time there training, Marcus and I talked about the idea of creating an internet presence for himself. We talked about the idea of celebrity and that you only need to convince people that you are famous  to actually become famous. 

 

I started filming Marcus doing instructional videos to not only help raise his profile and internet presence in the self defense field but also the presence of the gym. After a while the idea came about that we could make a proper 'History channel reality TV show' style intro for it, thus creating a high production value for what was really just Marcus doing demonstrations like he would do in a class. 

I wanted to mix footage of Marcus's skills with kinetic type. I needed to give it quite a dramatic feel so I used camera shake as well as my signature quick cuts.

Scottish D.I.Y: Cramond Island

The festival on Cramond Island is something I look forward to all year. I think that it encompasses all the most beautiful parts of the D.I.Y Punk ideology. Cramond Island is a small island off the coast of Edinburgh, only accessible by a causeway that is covered by the tide most of the day. Once you are on the Island, you are trapped. Every year there is a music festival held on the island completely for free, all the equipment is carried over by the bands and spectators alike. I like to think it is an island (metaphorical as well as literal) of beauty and unity, in a sea of chaos and division.

Watch the video here

Krav Maga Edinburgh Promotional Clip

My good friend Lawrie is an excellent personal trainer as well as a kickboxing and self defense instructor at Combat Ready Gym in Edinburgh, I highly recommend him if you are ever thinking about getting a personal trainer or taking up martial arts. Contact him here. The owner of Combat Ready, Marcus Houston told Lawrie he wanted a promotional video made for the gym to help show what was available to potential customers. Of course, Lawrie knew just who to call! 

Lawrie and Kate having a lovely time training, while two men tear eachothers faces off in the background

Combat ready is a 'reality based martial arts gym' that also deals in 'CrossFit' and Kickboxing. I met with the owner to discuss what he wanted. Marcus is a man who definitely knows what he wants, which I like in a client. He wanted the clip to be 'like a badass music video with loads of awesome martial arts'. Right up my street. Filming was surprisingly easy, all I had to do was go along to some of the classes and film what looked most impressive, the guys and girls were under strict instruction to appease me if I asked them to do a particular move again, which helped a lot! haha!

Marcus lovingly caressing a soldiers face. 

I was slightly in dismay when I was told that the soundtrack would be Ed Sheeran but when I actually listened to the song properly I noted that it was very percussive which is always good for getting awesome cuts in time with the music. This coupled with the fact there was obviously going to be loads of people punching stuff made for some sweet snare hit/punching bag hit combos. 

Marcus had me make a fair few changes to the video and I think there was 3 drafts in total but all his input definitely made the video come out much better than if he hadn't said anything. 

SCOTTISH D.I.Y : ShortsFest

This next commission came from young Hashim, who had seen my first installment of Scottish D.I.Y. He was  putting on a two day festival in Glasgow with bands from all over the UK. This made all the more impressive by the fact that, when I say 'young Hashim' I mean it, he wasn't even old enough to legally attend the festival he was putting on. The venue didn't know that though!

Hashim, looking (and being) really young.

This was quite obviously going to be a big undertaking so I once again employed the help of my friend Pawel Kuncewiz and his fancy shamancy Canon Mk2. Pawel and I tried to get as different footage from each other as possible, one of us would be on the band from the stage and the other from the crowd etc. We had a laptop set up in the backstage area with our external hard drives connected so whenever we ran out of space on our SD cards we could ran back and download our stuff onto them and swap for our spare SD. On the whole filming went pretty well. 

Pawel being dreamy.

For the intro of this video I wanted to show just how many bands were playing this festival, but I really tried to make each clip actually fit with the music. I tried to sync up the vocalist of the band with the vocals on the music and the strumming of the guitars etc. 

This film was pretty well received in the hardcore/punk community and has been featured on various blogs.