Gemini Blog

Thoughts and musings on production services

Studio-Director Tim Pope

Well, the studio revamp certainly paid dividends. Michael Holley, producer at Trundle Films, recently booked TNT studio for two weeks, for his short film “Brandy & Pep” with Tim Pope, acclaimed director of Phone, The Crow: City of Angels and numerous pop videos. The set was designed by Russell De Rozario (Mean Machine, Kick Ass 1 and 2). Gemini was chosen to provide technical support on both the set build and lighting. over 350 meters of wood and thirty sheets of ply were turned into two rooms with three doors, window and working sink. The set was backed with scaffolding and a central archway built as a divider between the rooms. The team and I built the set in a week and then I switched hats to design the lighting and act as gaffer for the shoot. Mark Mackenzie sparked for me on what turned out to be a manic five day shoot, demanding almost every bit of grip we own and a lot of our lighting kit. An ambitious script presented it’s fair share of challenges but we were more than able to deliver the results the director was after. Tim was “hugely impressed with the attention to detail”, loved the location and allowing for the compact nature of the studio, thought it “just like working at Pinewood”. He referred to me as “an amazing gaffer” High praise...

Green screen

At the moment I seem to be doing a lot of green screen work, whether on location or in our studio at TNT Films, even to the point of painting our large white stage green so a horse could walk across it, along with a dog or three, chicken, even a cat (although it spent most of its time up a curtain). Just about everything decided to leave a calling card too, the glamour of TV! For those of you that are interested, I shall explain some of the common problems with green screen and how to overcome them. Shadows These are probably the hardest things to see how to cure and normally one of the easiest to cure. Remember that the distance between the foreground and background can be as far as you can make it. The further away the background is from the subject. the easier it is for the shadow to fall away out of the shot. Do remember that the further the green is away from the camera, the less green space your subject has to work in. Anything that crosses off of the green screen will be very difficult to key out, unless you like tracing frame by frame! Don’t make the mistake of trying to light your way out of a problem, you just end up with more shadows and a big headache. For full length green screen there are further complications. the shadow always fall on the screen and the complex shadows between the feet of a stood subject can cause difficulties. Remember to light the subject first and get exposure on them....

24KVA Location Generator

My new 24KVA location generator is finally finished, save a nice shiny coat of paint. Its been two years in the planning and a lot of hard work, many thanks to Neil Jones at Broadcrown generators who has been so helpful and always cheerful when I throw another curve ball at him. A lot of generators need to be run at 75% of load maximum as the cooling or the actual rating of the engine is just to the power of the set rather then over specified, hence the hired gen set that breaks down three hours into the job. There is a big difference between a set for a building site and a TV spec set. The biggest job is to get the set to fit the vehicle that you have decided will carry the generator. there was a spate of Land Rover gen sets falling over, normally on the motorway, due to excessive speed, centre of gravity too high and stability linked to standard suspension set ups. My first job was to make the vehicle ready for the set. This included a more powerful engine and power steering, uprated brakes and extra suspension dampers, anti roll bars and helper springs. this keeps the vehicle upright under cornering and level front to back. It doesn’t compromise the off road ability although I think my bottle would go before the vehicle gave up. Consideration was also given to the electrics of the vehicle, as this could be used to power the 12v charging system of the generator. Putting in an interlink so that the two 12v systems could be...

Who is Gemini Production Services?

My name is David Tozer and I am the owner of Gemini Production Services Ltd. I am a Lighting Director with over 25 years experience , both on location and in studio. In the last ten years I have been working as a broadcast sound recordist. Having moved to the dark side, I am in a unique position to see the world from both the world of lighting and camera, as well as realising the needs of the sound department. As Technical Director of TNT Films, I am responsible for two production studios, with a white infinity cyc and a greenscreen stage. Gemini is also responsible for running and maintaining a super silenced location generator. This has been used on several recent TV shows, such as Embarrassing Bodies and the recent Samsung commercial.   This blog charts my journey in Production...