​For as long as we have known, the process of buying a house is looking at pictures and then deciding whether it’s worth having a visit to the home. But with the property market growing and becoming so competitive you really need to entice them to visit the open home and see it in real life. That’s where video comes into play. 

​A real estate video is more likely to be shared amongst family and friends and will engage the viewer in both a visual and audible way at the same time. Every listing will have a blurb about the home and several photos to go along with it, but with the modern day digital lifestyle, it’s all about the visual attention it gets and the blurb often gets bypassed. With a real estate video, you are essentially telling the potential buyer everything they need to know about the property and showing them those features at the same time.
Don’t get me wrong, photos still play a big part in selling the attention to that property, but videos take it to the next level. The video sells the dream and the lifestyle that could be had in that home.
What’s more, YouTube is now the second largest search engine, behind Google. If your website is properly optimized and includes video, you’re 57% more likely to show up on page 1 of Google search results. Higher search result rankings mean more home buyers find your listings. More listing views means more offers, and more offers makes for happier clients. And to think, it all started with a little video.
Your target market is online. And while the average visitor spends a mere 48 seconds on a website, that time increases to a full 5 minutes, 50 seconds when the website includes relevant video. When you’re marketing a home, it couldn’t be easier to create relevant video – your viewers want video of the home!
The final question is “What is a good real estate video?”. Well, if you want a video that is a slideshow of existing photos with some stock music from YouTube, well ignore everything I just said, because you’ve annoyed your viewer as they’ve realised they are seeing all the same photos they just looked at but in a slideshow video. They don’t want this…
A good real estate video shows something different and gives the prospective buyer the feeling of moving through the home, and is far more descriptive of the space than still images can ever hope to be. It has a calm yet confident voiceover and focuses on the property, not the agent. After all, you’re selling a home, not a personality.

​First things first – a video resume is not a replacement for a well put together print resume, but adding a video resume to the package is sure to make plenty of potential employers think about how to get you on their team ASAP. But if you're going to submit a video resume, you've got to do it right.

Here’s a couple of tips when it comes to creating the best video resume:

1. Keep Production Values High
Look anywhere online these days - video standards are set pretty high, so a badly made video will stand out like a sore thumb. Factors such as stable footage, lighting, editing and composition could either make or break a video, even if the content is top notch. But what is most important is audio. What you say in the video is ultimately what will get you the job, but if you can’t hear it properly, if the music is too loud or it just sounds terrible, you’d might as well hold up posters of what you’re saying instead. The video will grab their attention, and if it’s good they’ll keep watching. If they can’t hear it properly, though, you lose. You need to use a professional microphone, not the microphones that are built into a smartphone or camcorder.
 
2. Keep it Short
The video resume will never be a replacement for a print resume, but it has the capabilities to show some intangibles your paper resume can’t. These aspects include confidence, professionalism, and presentation skills. Let’s say you are going to be dealing with big time business transactions; the hiring manager doesn’t want to see someone who looks insecure and nervous, they want to see confidence from start to finish as well as pride and enthusiasm. Your main goal is to show this in under 90 seconds and make them want to read your paper resume in depth. You can’t expect them to watch a five minute video of you reading out your career hopes and dreams and what you’ve done in the past 10 years of multiple jobs, you need to show them you’re best qualities and prove to them you are the one for the job.
 
3. Keep it personal but professional
Believe it or not, they will probably get hundreds (if not thousands) of applications with many perfect for the job, but don’t just send out the same one to every application you do, it’ll look generic and lazy. If you really want a specific job, you’ll create this video specifically for that job. Drop company names, CEO names, do your research and impress them with the motivation and commitment you have to a project that could ultimately land you the job.
 
Be creative, be adventurous, and most of all, impress! Check out the video below to see a video resume of sorts that we produced for film composer Ric Mills in the style of a blockbuster film trailer - it's flashy, attention grabbing and targeted, and most of all - great quality!

I get asked all the time about how I transport all my gear around Australia for my shoots, and I’ll tell you now, it can be quite hard (and nerve-racking) at times. I’ve always got that thought in the back of my mind, “what if my bag goes missing?” or “will my camera be ok with those baggage handlers?”
Whenever I have to travel on a plane to get to a shoot, I always make sure of these few things;

Pack Smart!

Often, you’ll have a number of cases with all sorts of gear that is worth a pretty penny, so you’ll want to make sure it arrives in one piece. So, for starters, invest in a good quality hard case. Something like a Pelican case is perfect as they are lockable, waterproof, strong and shatterproof. You then need cushioning, and this is where it can get hard. Unless you have bought a pre-designed and cut foam insert for your setup, you’re going to need to protect your case from those thoughtless baggage handlers who couldn’t care less what’s in it. You can get large foam sheets from the hardware store or a foam specialist, trace and cut out the foam with a jigsaw or hot wire cutter and then layer each piece of foam on top of one another with an adhesive. This is a budget option, but it works. You could also get pluc-a-part foam to create your own compartments or get one custom designed, but this’ll cost a fair bit. If you can afford to, separate each item with foam - this just adds that extra layer of protection. You may spend a couple of hundred dollars on just fitting it out, but peace of mind is worth so much more.
 
Batteries

Oh, how airports love batteries (not!). If you’re like me, you have more batteries for cameras and devices than I do fingers and toes. Drones, cameras, lights, external recorders, audio recorders and microphones all have batteries that airport security will want to have a look at. My tip here, is be prepared. You are allowed to have batteries inside devices in checked baggage, as long as the power switch is protected, so you can get rid of some from your carry-on bag on this way. But as for all the spares, I tape all the terminals in bright electrical tape and place them in zip lock bags. Save time as well by knowing what the Watt Hour figure is on them too as they look for this. It’s also worth noting that with the recent increase in airport security, you also now must take them all out to be scanned separately like you would for a laptop so keep them all in the one easily accessible place in your carry-on.
 
Setup

If you have Sony FS5 like me, you can dismantle and reassemble the whole setup pretty easily, but for larger setups, it can take some time. So, if you can afford to, get a case that allows you to have your camera fully setup in the case, so when the time comes to push record, you don’t have to spend hours setting up the camera.
 
Insurance

​Probably the most important thing to have when travelling, or even just on any job. You’ve spent a heap of money on all this new gear and the last thing you want is to try and battle with airlines to replace broken gear; trust me, I’ve had to do it before. Peace of mind to know that you’re financially secure is paramount.
Now what if your bag gets lost on the way to a job? Well then you could end up losing that job. So, I always take my B Camera either in my carry-on, or packed in a separate bag, that way you can at least get some footage, whether it’s b-roll or scenes you can shoot single cam, whilst the airline locates your prized goods.
 
Travelling is a large part of this job, and sometimes you will be restricted to what you can take, which can be frustrating. But just remember, we do this because we love it! And if we get to see some amazing places and meet amazing people along the way, it’s all worth it!

​How many times have you looked up, and thought, “I wonder what this place looks like from up there”, and until the most recent years, you either had to climb a large building or tree, jump in a helicopter or look out of a plane window to find out. But, thanks to modern technology, we can now send up a drone for quite an affordable budget and get video and photos like you would never believe. Drones coming into the video scene have given everyone from a YouTube vlogger to the director of a Hollywood Blockbuster a new way, more affordable way of filming epic vision and provides a new perspective on the world. 

​Now don’t get me wrong, not all drones are made the same and for the same purpose, you can go out a spend your money on an hobby drone like the DJI Spark, get some video and photos and fit the whole thing in your back pocket (kinda), but you’re not going to have the quality that really wows your audiences. They’re perfect for a vlogger or a travel enthusiast, but when you are starting to sell that image, you need to go higher (pun intended).
Drones like the DJI Inspire 2 are much more advanced; they can be operated by 2 people, the image quality is much higher, flight controls and gimbal controls are much more refined and you’re going to see a vast improvement in just about every aspect of the picture you get. But there’s also a $6,000 difference between their price tags.
Now you can pay upwards of $15,000 (and more) for a drone… If you really want to… but these would be cinema drones, where you would put an $80,000 camera on it, so you would want a pretty good drone pilot if you have one of these. But you can also spend $800 on a fun drone, it includes the camera and it’ll give you that option to show your friends and family how good that trip away was, just don’t expect to get hired from the footage you produce out of it.
Personally, at Motion Factory we have two DJI phantom 4 drones that I absolutely love. They do the job for us and they’re affordable to the average filmmaker. They give you 4K imagery, they allow smooth fluid movements, different picture styles, manuals modes and so on. Yeah, they may be a pain to transport and setup, but they’re a far cry from my first drone, an Iris from 3DR; don’t even get me started on the issues I had with that.
Seeing the world from above is truly an amazing part of being a drone pilot. You can set the scene to your whole story with just one flyover shot, you can show a perspective that nobody has ever seen, and you can create a feeling that is experienced by the viewer that just makes them want more. I love flying the drones, and seeing the shots I can pull off, really blows me away sometimes.
Here’s a quick video of a shoot we did recently over in Western Australia. I tried something a bit tricky by flying the drone through a relatively small hole in a rock, and I reckon the footage speaks for itself. Let us know what you think in the comments!

If there’s one thing that can turn a great TV show into something truly special, then it’s performances. Before the HBO induced golden age of television, TV performances tended to be melodramatic and over-acted, which was often a result of the small budgets and tight shooting schedules they were afforded.
Since the late 90’s however, TV has become a medium that some of the industry’s best actors are turning to in order to rejuvenate their careers or to explore new ways and methods of portraying characters. Think people like Kevin Spacey in the Netflix original House of Cards, Anthony Hopkins in Westworld or John Travolta in American Crime Story. Indeed, these days some of the best performances anywhere are coming from TV shows.
So, here’s my pick of the ten best performances in TV. Now I’ve set myself a rule of restricting myself to just one peformance per television show - otherwise the list would probably only comprise of one or two shows!

10. Gillian Anderson as Media (American Gods)
 
Starz/Amazon’s American Gods is one of my favourite shows currently screening, and Gillian Anderson’s guest performance as the new god Media is a large part of that. Whenever this character is on screen, she is shown as taking the appearance of a famous character or personality from pop culture history - Lucy, from I Love Lucy, David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust and Marilyn Monroe to name a few. And Gillian Anderson manages to nail each and every persona she appears as. Indeed, in one episode she appears as both Ziggy Stardust and Marilyn Monroe, and she is flawless.
 
Best Line: “Whatever the old guys are giving you, I can give you so much more. You name it, honey. What do you need? Hey, you ever wanted to see Lucy's tits?”

9. Lauren Ambrose as Claire Fisher (Six Feet Under)
 
Six Feet Under is my number one show of all time, and it features a plethora of incredible performances. One that often flies under the radar and is overshadowed by the bigger-name cast members is that of Lauren Ambrose, who portrays the youngest Fisher sibling, Claire. Over the five seasons of the show, we see Claire progress from a rebellious and an angst-ridden teen who has just lost a parent to a confident woman who pursues her dream of becoming a successful photographer. Throughout this run Ambrose is flawless in the role, and makes the character her own from her very first scene.
 
Best Line: “I know stealing a foot is weird. But, hello, living in a house where a foot is available to be stolen is weird.”

8. David Duchovny as Hank Moody (Californication)
 
Hank Moody is the role that David Duchovny was born to play. While on the surface, Hank can appear shallow, nihilistic and narcissistic, Duchovny’s performance manages to add a depth to the character that a lesser actor may not have been able to portray. Indeed, he manages to show Hank as a vulnerable and flawed man who has lost faith in himself. The character does some pretty horrible things during the run of Californication, but Duchovny plays the role with such charisma that just about every heinous act is forgivable. Throw in the fact that his comic timing is brilliant, and he can turn horrible things into a source of amusement and it’s no wonder Duchovny has a Golden Globe in his trophy cabinet for the role - indeed, it’s surprising he doesn’t have more.
 
Best Line: “I probably won’t go down in history, but I will go down on your sister.”

​7. Michael Chicklis as Vic Mackey (The Shield)
 
As far as anti-heroes go, Vic Mackey is one of the best, and a lot of that comes down to Michael Chicklis’ brilliance in the role. Aggressive, but nuanced, he owns this role in a way that no-one else could. His charisma has you rooting for him, even when you know that he’s a nasty guy, and even when he does something irredeemable you still don’t want to miss the journey. Loutish, boorish and violent, there’s a certain dark enjoyment of watching Mackey continually get away with the terrible things he does.
 
Best Line: “Good cop/bad cop left for the day. I’m a different kind of cop.”

​6. Brian Cranston as Walter White (Breaking Bad)
 
To be honest, there’s probably not much I can say about Cranston’s career defining performance as high school chemistry teacher/drug kingpin Walter White that his four Emmy awards haven’t already said. At times powerful, at times funny and at times chilling, Cranston flawlessly steers the character on his incredible journey from a loser family man and school teacher to the ruthless and unforgiving drug cook and kingpin Heisenberg. His most chilling moment, at the end of the season four finale where it becomes clear just how far his character has fallen is one of the best moments in television, and he does it with very few words.
 
Best line: “I am not in danger, Skyler. I am the danger! A guy opens his door and gets shot and you think that of me? No. I am the one who knocks!”

 5. Toni Collette as Tara Gregson (United States of Tara)
 
Any role that requires an actor to portray a character with dissociative identity disorder - with no less than seven alter egos - is going to require someone with some serious acting chops, and Toni Collette nails the role. Actually, she nails seven roles in reality, because each alter that she portrays is a fully realised individual with their own way of speaking, their own themes and their own nuances - and Collette smashes it out of the park. Indeed, watching her on screen you get the impression that she is in her element in her role. It’s a shame that we only got to see this character for three seasons, because I think there was a lot more story to tell. 
 
Best Line: “Why does this feel like a small victory? I bet everyone thought that I would be the one to off myself. But guess what Oak Avenue? The lady with all the personalities is not the most fucked up person on the block.”

4. Tatiana Maslany as the Project Leda Clones (Orphan Black)
 
In the same vein as the differing personalities that Toni Collette portrays in United States of Tara, Tatiana Maslany is brilliant portraying a whole host of different personalities in Orphan Black - although, instead of being different personas of the same person, they are all different people (albeit clones). I can remember reading that Maslany created a different soundtrack for each of the characters she portrays in this show - and to get into character, she spends time listening to that soundtrack to get in the mindset. It’s a brilliant method of acting, and she nails each and every Clone, all of which are very different people with different accents, different looks and different goals. It’s a credit to Maslany that it’s easy to forget that you’re watching one person rather than five. The video below shows it perfectly - yep, all of those characters on screen are the same person!
 
Best Line: “You're doing police work, but how long can that last, when the real police find me? You are me, I'm you, we're both the victim and the cop.”

3. Ian McShane as Al Swearengen (Deadwood)
 
While it certainly helps that this role has some of the best dialogue ever to grace the pages of a screenplay, it takes a special kind of actor to deliver them - and Ian McShane is sublime in his portrayal as the ruthless Al Swearengen. From his ability to bounce off every other character flawlessly, to his ability to switch from quiet sarcasm to heated aggression at the drop of a hat, McShane’s performance is well deserving for the Golden Globe he picked up for it in 2005, and indeed he can be considered unfortunate for not winning the Emmy and SAG awards he was nominated for in the same year. A brilliant performance in every aspect, I could listen to Swearengen’s cursing all day.
 
Best line: “Every fuckin’ beatin’, I’m grateful for. Every fuckin’ one of them. Get all the trust beat out of you. And you know what the fuckin’ world is.”

2. Elizabeth Moss as June Osbourne/Offred (The Handmaid’s Tale)
 
Riveting, horrifying, enlightening, terrifying: Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale is nothing short of pure brilliance. Central to that brilliance is Elizabeth Moss’ incredible performance as the oppressed June Osbourne (renamed Offred). Moss takes complete ownership of this character from the very first scene of the very first episode, and her emotional engagement in the character is incomparable. Whether it’s playing Offred at her most submissive, June at her most rebellious or as the character as the show’s narrator, her performance is flawless. My money is on Moss to take home the 2017 Outstanding Lead Actress Emmy, indeed in my opinion she will have been robbed if she doesn’t. As good as her competition is, Moss’ performance is on a whole different level.
 
Best line: “It's their fault. They should have never given us uniforms if they didn't want us to be an army.”

1. James Gandolfini as Tony Soprano (The Sopranos)
 
The simple fact is that without James Gandolfini’s genius performance as Tony Soprano, many of the performances I’ve listed in this article wouldn’t exist. The Sorpanos was the show that ushered in the golden age of television we now find ourselves in, and more specifically the character Tony Soprano made the concept of an anti-hero something that was compelling, engaging and exciting. Without him, there’d be no Al Swearengen, no Walter White and no Vic Mackey to name a few.
Gandolfini won three Emmys for his portrayal as the depressed and panic prone mobster, and they were well-deserved. He plays the role with such nuance and understanding, that even when Tony is at his absolute worst as a human being, there’s something about him that you just can’t not like.
 
Best line: “There’s an old Italian saying: you fuck up once, you lose two teeth.”

​Let’s talk all about those buttons and wheels on the camera. Probably one of the most important ones is the levels of audio, but I’ll go into that on a separate post. With regards to the image you’re going to get, (I’m working on the assumption that you know the bare bones basics like how to get your subject in focus already) the thing you need to perfect is exposure. 

Now the two things you need to consider here is your aperture and your shutter speed. Getting a good relationship between the two is critical, but you need to know what effects each one has on your image. Your aperture creates/reduces depth by reducing/increasing the area of focus in relation to distance away from the sensor, and this helps to outline your subject and attract the viewer to the subject in focus. One thing to remember is to make it look real, the human eye can see at about f2.1 when it’s dark and around f8.3 when it’s bright, and up to 1/200 of a second shutter speed. Of course, there are a number of factors here that effect how a human eye sees things like age, ambient light and a whole lot more.
So, what does it all mean? Well if you have a very bright scene and you want to have a shallow depth of field to enhance your subject, the first quick fix is increase your shutter speed, but if you end up going up to 1/2000 shutter speed, your image is not going to look real. You want to stick around 1/50 to 1/200 for best results. That’s where your neutral density filters come in to play. Think of them as sunglasses for your camera, they allow you to preserve shutter speed to create the motion blur and keep that depth of field - so there’s one solution.
Now let’s talk about the other end of the spectrum, you’ve got a dark scene, you opened your iris as far as your lens can go, and you’ve gone as slow as you can with your shutter speed without creating too much motion blur, but your scene is still too dark. Yes, you can use ISO, but think of this as nothing more than an amplifier. A photography friend of mine once explained this to me in my earlier video days; he made me think of it as the volume knob for your stereo. Yeah you can turn the volume up and up, but at some point, you’re going to get distortion, and it’s not going to sound good. ISO is like that for your picture, and that distortion is referred to as noise, and appears as specks and dots and general untidiness predominantly in the darker areas of your picture. So one thing to have at the front of you mind while shooting in low light is that while ISO can be helpful, it can also affect your video for the worse. It is the digital sensitivity level of your sensor, and making your sensor too sensitive, will mean you’ll pick up unwanted noise.
So, what do you do if you start getting too much noise? Light your subjects. Lighting really is one of the key elements to quality videography, and is really important to get right. I’ll dive into this in depth in a future article.
Remember exposure is all about capturing light, and you have 3 variables to play with:

1. Shutter speed. This is how long the sensor is exposed to light. Shooting at 1/100 instead of 1/200 lets in twice as much light.
2. Aperture. This is how big a hole you are opening. Opening 1 stop by doubling the opening (1.414x the diameter), will let in twice as much light.
3. Sensitivity. This is how much light the sensor needs to produce an exposure.

ISO is a measure of no.3. Doubling the ISO means the sensor only needs half as much light to produce the same result.
Nail your exposure, and you’re one step closer to creating a great video.
For the perfect example of correct exposures, check out the following video. It's our 2017 Showreel, but we've selected it because very single shot that we chose to showcase in it features perfect exposure.  

I’ve already talked about my favourite shows that have ended their runs on TV, but we’re lucky enough to live in a golden age of television, so there’s so much that is still on that is brilliant, inspiring and relevant in today’s socio-political climate.
From new shows that have a scary realism to big budget affairs that are global phenomenon’s, there’s a bit of diversity here, but one thing is common between them all - they all tell great, inspiring stories.
So from 5 to 1, here are my top 5 TV shows that are still running. Enjoy!

5. Homeland (Showtime)
 
After its absolutely stellar first season, Homeland stumbled a bit. It had largely exhausted its main premise with one season, so trying to shoehorn in more story off the back of it was always going to be problematic. But there was one thing that the producers had up their sleeve - the incredible lead character Carrie Matheson (portrayed by the equally incredible Clare Danes). Carrie is a flawed human being with an all-too real mental illness that in no way meshes with her chosen profession as a CIA agent, and it makes for some incredibly compelling drama.
As I mentioned, the first season was stellar, but the second and third seasons struggled with direction. But then the producers made a bold narrative choice to kill off a certain character that completely changed what the show was about, and the show has improved out of site ever since. In my opinion, the fourth season which is set predominantly in Islamabad, Pakistan is its strongest - the story is sharp and full of intrigue, it’s action sequences are on point, it’s slew of new characters are relevant and interesting, and the performances from its main cast are brilliant (especially those of Clare Danes and Mandy Patinkin).
A great show that is not without its flaws, but well worth investing in. 

4. Westworld (HBO)
 
From the get go, Westworld was being dubbed as the next “Game of Thrones” which was largely fair - it was clear that HBO were investing the time, marketing and money into it for that reason. And while only one season has been released thus far (with a second already being teased), it is certainly showing the potential to be just that.
Westworld is science fiction that has a Western spin on it, which is kind of fascinating considering that the westerns genre has not been particularly prolific for the last three or four decades. Indeed, HBO are really the only ones who have explored it in any real way, with their stellar show Deadwood being the only other one that comes to mind.
While the western setting offers plenty of interesting parts, it’s the other portion of the story - the whole dawning of machine intelligence thing - that makes this show so compelling. The fact that half (or more) of the main cast is made up of “hosts” (essentially robot characters in a real-life video game) is a fascinating way to present the drama.
It’s a well told story with plenty of twists (some that may be a bit too obvious in retrospect), and it’s absolutely beautifully shot and edited.
But the thing that takes Westworld to the next level is its performances. The show is populated by a cast that you’d expect to see in a film competing for an Academy Award - Ed Harris, Thandie Newton, James Marsden, Jeffery Wright, Evan Rachel Wood and the always incredible Sir Anthony Hopkins. All of them are sublime in Westorld, but Anthony Hopkins is next-level brilliant. There’s one line that I particularly remember from midway through the first season that he delivered in such a chilling way that it has stuck with me. Evan Rachel Wood’s host character Delores is sitting talking to Hopkins’ Ford (essentially, her creator) and she asks him if they are old friends. “No, I wouldn’t say friends, Delores… I wouldn’t say that at all”. The line is in the trailer below, and for me it’s arguably the best delivered line in TV history - a big claim, but I stand by it!

3. Game of Thrones (HBO)
 
I’ve never been a huge fan of high-fantasy… in fact, as far as genres go, I’ve always preferred science fiction by a country mile. But Game of Thrones changed that for me, and I daresay for millions of people around the world. It is, without a doubt, a bona fide phenomenon.
Obviously, being based on an existing best-selling novel series initially meant that the story was always going to be solid. And in the first 5 seasons it certainly was. A brutal, confronting, violent and sometimes horrific (yet always great) adapted story was perfectly supplemented with a great cast and big-budget production values. But then the show ran out of source material. I don’t think that anyone would have been surprised if the show then started to miss the mark – but here’s the thing, the exact opposite happened. The showrunners ramped it up, and it became better than ever. Cinema quality battles and special effects, breakneck pacing and stellar performances.
The overall narrative of Game of Thrones is absolutely fascinating as well. In the early seasons, the show received a lot of criticism for its confronting content, which was often viewed as misogynistic. Many would call that criticism fair – let’s face it, there were few female characters who escaped the horrors of a medieval fantasy world. But slowly, and very deliberately, the show has reached the point where women are essentially in control of the Game of Thrones world. It’s a fascinating narrative, and something that I believe has been a plan from day one. The fact that the showrunners had this long burn plan is just one of the reasons that Game of Thrones has performed so well, and continues to be the most talked about show on television.

2. American Gods (Starz/Amazon)
 
From the moment I first heard of American Gods, I had high hopes for it. And it’s to the show’s credit that it exceeded those hopes.
The best way to describe American Gods is “batsh*t insane”. It is without a doubt one of the craziest shows on television, and that’s what makes it so good. In a nutshell, the show is about a brewing war in America between the “old gods” (taken from all different types of religion and mythology, i.e. Jesus and Odin) and the “new gods” (Media, technology etc). It then throws in characters like leprechauns, Jinns (or ifrits) and zombies, and somehow makes sense.
There’s some great performances in it, especially from Emily Browning (who plays the (un)dead wife of the main character, Shadow Moon) and the always engaging Ian McShane who plays a conman, Mr. Wednesday (but is hiding his real identity). But the standout performance in American Gods goes to Gillian Anderson, who portrays the “new god” Media. Whenever Media appears, she takes the form of a famous TV or media character/personality - we see her as Lucy from I Love Lucy, David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust and Marilyn Monroe to name a few - and each and every time she is on screen, Gillian Anderson absolutely nails it and steals the show.
For a show that features a main character called “Shadow Moon”, a slew of gods and mythical creatures, and personifications of things like Media and Technology, it all comes together beautifully - I can’t wait for the second season to see where the story goes.  

1. The Handmaid’s Tale (Hulu)
 
Straight up, The Handmaid’s Tale is the odd one out on this list. It doesn’t have the fast paced action of Homeland, American Gods, Game of Thones or Westworld, and nor does it have the big budget spectacle of them.
What it does have, is a message, and it’s a message that cannot be ignored.
The Handmaid’s Tale is equal parts horrific, brutal, demeaning and hopeful. Never before have I watched a show and had to spend half an hour recovering from it afterwards (Yep, not even with Game of Thrones).
If I’m making it sound like it’s hard to watch, then good - because it is (especially for a parent of two daughters), and it is especially the case in the current socio-political landscape that has seen the election of Donald Trump as President of the US.
But, as hard as it is to watch, it is absolutely brilliant, compelling and engaging.
I’m not going to talk too much about the story, the setting and the themes - it’s one of those shows where you absolutely need to experience those things for yourself. But I am going to talk about the brilliant and often heartbreaking performances. Elizabeth Moss, who made her name in the ever-popular Mad Men, is breathtaking in her lead role as June/Offred. She has rightfully been nominated for an Emmy Award for it, and if anyone else wins it, it will be a travesty. But as stellar as Elizabeth Moss is, it is the supporting cast that takes The Handmaid’s Tale to the next level. Joseph Fiennes, Yvonne Strahovski, Alexis Bleidel, Samira Wiley and Ann Dowd are all well-known from previous roles in a wide range of films and shows, but, along with Moss, they are all providing career-defining performances in The Handmaid’s Tale.
Story and performances aside, it’s also a beautifully shot show. The cinematography is stunning, and gives the show the feel and atmosphere that it needs. The way it uses colour so sparingly, but so poignantly is brilliant.
Take the time to watch The Handmaid’s Tale - it may be hard to watch, but it is worth it.    

​Well done, you’ve bought all the gear you need to create amazing videos, you can now successfully create an engaging video for any potential client… Wrong. You can have all the gear, look like a pro and find yourself twiddling your thumbs not knowing what to do with your time because nobody will book you, which’ll force you to get a job at Maccas to pay off all that gear that you just bought.

Well done, you’ve bought all the gear you need to create amazing videos, you can now successfully create an engaging video for any potential client… Wrong. You can have all the gear, look like a pro and find yourself twiddling your thumbs not knowing what to do with your time because nobody will book you, which’ll force you to get a job at Maccas to pay off all that gear that you just bought.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t buy all those big ticket items, and I’m not saying that you should; it all depends on what you are filming. If you’re filming small product videos, you don’t need that $15,000 camera, external recorder, boom microphones, jib arms, and so on. But if you’re filming high end corporate and commercial videos, having that gear there at your disposal will make your video production a lot easier and reflect on your work. You need to identify your market and buy the gear appropriate for that.
But let’s take a step back. One of the most important things to know is actually how to use that gear. If you’ve only ever used a DSLR, you’re going to find it quite hard going onto a cinema camera. You’ve got different codecs, new operating systems, and what not. It’s going to feel awkward and if you don’t learn how to use it properly, it will reflect on your work pretty quickly. We have a large amount of gear at Motion Factory and each and every piece that we have, I spent hours upon hours learning the ins and outs of each one. Now I’m not going to lie, we don’t use all this gear all the time, but when we need to do a fully lit multi-camera corporate interview, we know exactly how to light and positon each and every piece of equipment and use the cameras to get the full potential out of that shoot. Likewise, when we’re doing a location shoot in a hand-held run-and-gun style of cinematography, we’re set up for that.
What I’m saying I guess, is don’t use gear you don’t know how to use. Do what you do best, whether it’s:
 
a) Shooting everything on a tripod using just your DSLR; or
b) Shooting using cinema cameras with professional tripods, full lighting kits, steadicams, external recorders, drones, sliders, easyrigs, audio gear and so on. 

If you know how to use your own gear, you know what one will not only look better, but connect with the audience more effectively. You’ll also produce a better end product, and your clients will appreciate the professionalism.

Take a look at Travis video below where he's demonstrating the difference between shooting on a 3-axis gimbal compared to handheld shooting. It really shows just how important the right gear is for the job. 

​As a writer, TV (broadcast, streaming and cable) has always held a certain attraction for me. It’s a medium which allows you to develop characters and stories that are continually evolving and changing. It’s a medium that, perhaps even more than film, requires a writer to have a deep and emotional understanding of the material and the characters.

Television has historically never had the same kind of money that Film has had at its disposal. As a result, storytelling, character development and writing in general is such an important part in the creating of TV shows. Since The Sopranos changed the television landscape and has largely brought us into a golden age of TV, this has changed a bit. There’s  loads more money in TV these days, just look at big budget affairs like Game of Thrones and Westworld. Technology has also reached a point where it’s cheaper and easier to develop realistic special effects, which is also apparent in modern TV.
 In a few posts’ time, I’ll be talking about the TV shows that are still running, but for now these shows are all done and dusted. So without further ado, here’s my Top 5 TV Shows that are still running. 

5. Sense8 (Netflix)

Even though it only lasted two seasons (with a Netflix film in the works to wrap things up), Sense8 is without a doubt in my mind the best Netflix Original Series so far, and with the calibre of shows that Netflix produces, that’s really saying something. It’s also a credit to the show that upon cancellation, Netflix stressed that it was show’s huge production costs that was the only reason it was cancelled, and then when the fans complained, they agreed to fund and produce a feature length film to finish out the story.
Does it surprise me that it got cancelled? Not at all. This show is filmed ON LOCATION all around the world – Iceland, England, Germany, the US, Korea, India, Africa and Mexico to name just some of the locations. It’s no wonder that production costs were massive.
The thing that makes this show so good can be summed up in one word: Diversity. The locations are diverse, the cast is diverse and the story is all about diversity. How many shows have a main cast that include a gay Mexican man, a transgender woman, an Hindi woman, a Korean woman, and a Kenyan man?
It’s a beautifully shot show, with great performances that is trying to impart a hugely important message – but manages to remain entertaining while doing so. 

4. Deadwood (HBO)
 
Inexplicably, Deadwood only lasted 3 seasons. It was never officially cancelled, they just… stopped making it. It’s a shame too, because Deadwood was an absolutely brilliant show with some of the greatest dialogue in television history.
The incredible dialogue attracted a stellar cast, too. Those watching Deadwood today will find that almost every character that gets any amount of screen time is played by a recognisable actor (although the wild-west period nature of the show will render many of them unrecognisable).
Timothy Olyphant and Ian McShane do brilliant jobs leading the cast, and the production values ensure it’s a very pretty show to look at. It’s a testament to the quality of the show that even still there is talk of a continuation in one form or another, over a decade on from when it finished. 

3. The Sopranos (HBO)
 
The Sopranos is the show that turned television on its head. It proved that a television show could have film-like production values and performances, and still to this day is rightfully considered one of the best shows ever made.
It also proved that an anti-hero could be an engaging main character. James Gandolfini is nothing short of sublime in his defining role as Tony Soprano. He’s not the only one, either. The entire cast of The Sopranos is incredible.
The themes the show tackles are confronting, whether it’s drug addiction, mental illness, or the violence of organised crime, and it’s a credit to the writers that it is rarely anything but engaging. It’s the kind of show you could binge watch in an entire week because it keeps you that interested. Perhaps the best part about the writing, is that it is void of unnecessary exposition. There’s a lot that the writers simply refuse to explain, and this forces the audience to fill in the gaps with their own imagination. The series finale is the perfect example of this. There is no other show whose finale could smash cut to black mid-scene and still be considered one of the best finales of all time. The fact that to this very day, the significance of that smash cut to black is debated is a testament to the brilliance of the show. 

2. Breaking Bad (AMC)
 
As soon as I heard the premise of Breaking Bad, I knew I would love it. A high-school chemistry teacher gets diagnosed with terminal cancer, and turns to cooking meth to make money for his family. It’s a brilliant concept supplemented by equally brilliant performances; Bryan Cranston’s intense performance as Walter White scored him Emmy Awards for four out of the show’s five years, while supporting actors Aaron Paul and Anna Gunn scored another three and two Emmys respectively between them. 
But perhaps the thing that makes Breaking Bad so good is the stellar writing. The narrative never once takes a misstep, and while I personally think the series finale was perhaps the weakest part of the show, it was critically acclaimed by so many.
For me, the brilliance of the show is perfectly summed up in a single episode – the season 4 finale “Face Off” (Wait till you see the true meaning behind that title – it’s horrifically brutal), where Walter goes from being a redeemable man who made some bad choices to being revealed as a true anti-hero, and a man who will stop at nothing to win.

1. Six Feet Under (HBO)
 
The key theme of this show is death. After all, the main cast is populated by a family of undertakers. But for a show about death, Six Feet Under has so much life. Every episode features a cold open that shows the death of a one-off (usually) character. And somehow each death weaves in the primary theme to the episode – it’s brilliantly conceptualised and written.
The main characters are all flawed human beings, all very realistically written and portrayed. Standout performances come from Lauren Ambrose and Michael C. Hall (who would later go on to play the titular serial killer in Dexter). In fact, I personally think that Ambrose’s performance as the youngest member of the Fisher clan is perhaps one of the best performances in television, and hugely underrated.
Perhaps the pinnacle of the series is its breathtaking series finale. I’m not going to spoil it for you, but it features a montage at the end that is incredibly fitting, and equal parts beautiful and heartbreaking. It’s no wonder that it’s widely considered to be the best series finale in television history. Do yourself a favour, and check out Six Feet Under… it is nothing short of incredible.

​As the lead writer for Motion Factory, I can’t stress how important a proper script is when it comes to producing a video or film – regardless of whether it’s a 30 second social media marketing video or a two hour feature film.
Without a proper vision from the get go, a video of any kind will descend into a mess pretty quickly. And what a proper script does, is put that initial vision onto paper in a way that makes it easy to envision.

​Many people will write a few lines of dialogue and call it a script – but there’s so much more to it than that. Despite what many people think, a script isn’t just something that helps on-screen or voice over talent say their lines. A proper script will also guide the filmmakers with description, structure and often purpose.
I do a lot of scripting, both commercial and editorial. While the techniques for each are very different, there is one key similarity – the scriptwriter, and by extension the filmmaker, must be able to read the script and envision the entire production.
But it’s the differences between commercial and editorial script writing that are the most interesting. When I write a commercial script, structure is the number one key focus. More often than not with a commercial script, you have a short period of time (usually under 2mins) to get across numerous key selling points of a product or service, as well as contact information, a call to action and any other number of additional things. There’s often a lot of information that needs to be conveyed in a way that’s both engaging and concise.
Editorial script writing is very different. When you’re writing a script for a short film, feature film or television episode, structure remains important, but the story absolutely comes first, and often the structure will adapt to the needs of a story.
But if there’s one thing that remains the same between commercial and editorial scripting, then it’s the need for the script to provide a comprehensive vision of the video or film before it’s shot.
Next time you’re considering spending money on a marketing video, make sure you do your research. It’s important to ask the people you’re getting quotes from what gear they use – weed out those that will swear black and blue that reckon a video shot on a mobile phone with a handheld gimbal is worth charging money for (hint – it’s not, you can do that yourself for next to nothing). And, make sure you ask that they provide a full script for your approval prior to shooting – because I guarantee if they’re not, then the production is going to descend into chaos quickly.