Tom Watts All This About?

04/01/2022

Bi Lighting
Bi Fashion

02/12/2021

Friday Vibes
Music Video I shot for: Mowgli x JDizz - 16 Shots

Credits:

- Choreographers (Millie Duniam & Mackenzie Stretch)
- Director (Polly Duniam)
- Producer (Mackenzie Stretch)
- Executive Producer (James McGrath & OTC Recordings)
- DOP (Tom Watts)
- Gaffer (Orlando Riches)
- Electrician (Rufai Ajala)
- Camera Operator (Tekko Tekdemir)
- Focus Puller (Daniel Deighton)

- Editor (Charlie France)

- Sphynx Films
- Muti Village 101 Studios

Big thank you to our dancers, the OTC girls!

OTC Recordings presents...Download the track for free on our soundcloud:https://soundcloud.com/otcrecordings/mowgli-x-jdizz-16-shots-free-downloadCheck out o...

26/11/2021

New shot from my ongoing photography art project 'Watts Gender'
Subject: Cherry Lundie Hill

In this project I'm aiming to remove the social masks we all wear and show the human underneath. The heart of this project is the documentation of authenticity.

I chose to document gender non conforming people because to me they represent true authenticity. People who go against the grain and society dictated labels to truly be themselves and there is a lot of inspiration in that.

How many of us are too fearful to show our true selves?

22/11/2021

18/11/2021

Safe is the step before irrelevant.

Are you staying current?

Styles and trends shift and if you don't keep up or keep ahead then your work can very quickly look outdated. In our current society of the next new thing after next new thing, looking dated isn't a good look.

09/11/2021

Collaborating beyond the grave with my mother Dr Nicola Donovan.

This is one of the last sculptures she made before dying of cancer last year.

Sculpture by Dr Nicola Donovan
Photography by me

04/11/2021

lighting with colour.

This live session for Ministry of Sound was all based around colour. Each live session had it's own colours and look but for this one we're looking at my favourite of the sessions, Kara Marni - Opposite.

Speaking of opposite, when you’re lighting with colour the lights need to be coming from opposite directions. The key to lighting with colour is that you have to control your lighting, It cant overlap or spill. If it overlaps it will bleach the colour out of it, mix enough colour light and you get white. Same goes for spill, any light spill will bleach the colour.

You also have to be careful about how you place the lights, all the normal lighting rules apply. If it wouldn't look good with white light then it’s not going to look good with colour light but with the added difficulty of having to be much more careful with light spill. Put eggcrates on everything!

It’s also important to think about what colours you are using and how they interact with styling or set design. Learning about colour theory is important too, knowing what colours go with each other is vital. It’s good to have a colour wheel to reference. Contrasting colours often work well, contrast makes images more interesting to look at and more striking.

When lighting with colour I like to go bold and defined with clear separation but you could go a lot softer with it too. It depends on the look you want. Sometimes I blend colours but that requires a ton more fine tuning and has to be very precise.

For this shoot we had some custom goal posts made that were part of the set, designed to create a forced perspective but they were also fully controllable RGB which could have chases programmed into them. These lighting strips are normally used joined together to create large TV screens but they were ideal for what we needed them for and had a super clean construction finish which alternatives like astera tubes lack.

Another aspect of the set was the mirrored monoliths. These were high gloss black plastic, which when viewed from a certain angle become mirrors which then extend the set either side and just look cool.

There was about 6 weeks of work on and off in designing the set. Originally I looked at building a forced perspective cage structure out of astera tubes but the sizes didn't work to create the forced perspective and the finish of the build would be too rough so we came up with the idea of these goal posts which could be built super clean. Detail is key.

22/10/2021

In photography there is a technique called 'slow sync flash’ this is basically using a long exposure of about a second with a photography flash. The result is that you get the effects of a long exposure, long trails, blur and streaks but with a sharp frozen moment captured by the flash double exposed on the image. It looks cool.

I wanted to achieve this effect in video which presented a few challenges, firstly, we shoot 25 frames a second, which makes it difficult to have 1 exposure last for 1 second. We are doing 25 exposures a second, meaning each exposure is 25 times too fast for this to work. Secondly, we don’t use flash lights in film, we use continuous lighting. To freeze the action we would need a flash and we would need it to fire every exposure.

To achieve the slow sync flash look we used a frame rate of 6 frames per second in order to give us enough time for longer exposures, the camera would take 6 exposures every second. Going from 25 to 6 means the exposure is held longer for each frame, giving it time to create the long exposure effect.

We lit the set as you normally would with continuous lighting which along with the slow frame rate would give us the effects associated a long exposure.

Now we had to find a way of using a flash to freeze the action every frame. Photography flashes need time to recharge and cant keep up with firing 6 times a second. I worked closely with my Gaffer Ollie Riches and we came up with the idea to use a club strobe light run through a lighting desk so we can control the frequency of strobes. Ollie built a rig so we could mount the harsh strobe light in a music video friendly octadome. After some trial and error we managed to dial in the frequency so that it fired every time the camera gate was open. Resulting in slow sync flash in video. We used the effect in this Little Mix music video.

18/10/2021

Throwback to a music video I shot for Little Mix - Bounce Back

The lighting design for this video started as a paper cup in a baking tray full of water. I used it as a scale model to figure out some of this very technically complex shoot.

Little Mix – Bounce Back (Vertical Video)Listen here: https://smarturl.it/LMBounceBackGet it on iTunes https://smarturl.it/LMBounceBack/itunesApple: https://...

15/10/2021

Breakdown of a Really striking lighting look.

This is one of my favourite lighting setups. I designed this and shot it on commission from Ministry of Sound.

The concept for the set was to have false perspective. Originally I intended to do this with a structure made from Astera tubes but the finished result wasn’t very clean. I wanted the set to look slick so Asteras weren’t an option. We instead used tubes that are intended to be connected into large LED screens, we could build a structure with these with clean lines and also have a lot of control of the light they were outputting due to their intended TV usage.

Red and Blue is a classic colour combination and really suited the tone of this track. We had full RGB control over all the lights on this set and could also program chase sequences through the goal posts too.

Kara Marni performs her single Opposite, Live at the Ministry. Follow Ministry of Sound:https://www.instagram.com/ministryofsoundhttp://www.facebook.com/mini...

14/10/2021

Short video breakdown of photography concept.
Making an imagine look pretty is easy. Making it interesting is much harder.