Chris was all set to buy the new Sony Z90 but the camcorder became unavailable during ordering (A blessing). As Chris always does he phoned me to ask my opinion on his predicament and I told him about Panasonics new line of 4K 50p camcorders homing in on the HC-X2000.

It was the size that tickled Chris as he admits he is getting older and does not want to lug about a heavy camcorder.

Chris was an ex senior cameraman at Scottish Television and ran a successful video production company called Flashback Video during 1980. The company finished up during the year 2000.

Chris and his wife Jan work as a team, Jan loves the size of the new Panasonic HC-X1500 and looks forward to filming a lot more events on Arran.

The camcorders only arrived on Friday and by the end of Saturday Chris had his first impressions video produced.

The cameras get a glowing report and Chris was very impressed with the steady shot and the autofocus. Here are his first impressions…

Here is a link for the manual for the X1500 and the X2000

https://resource.holdan.co.uk/Panasonic/manuals/Panasonic_HC-X2000.pdf

For all your video production needs in Scotland, get in touch with Small Video Productions

Hamish Wilson 1942 – 2020
From Lorne Boswell of Equity…
“Sorry to hear of Hamish’s death last Thursday.
He led a full life and touched many people. He was one of life’s enthusiasts and succeeded at most everything he turned his hand to. Trained at the RSAMD, his early career as an actor included Greyfriars Bobby (1961), Vital Spark (‘66), Softly Softly (‘67), Dr Who (‘68) The Mind Robber. He worked for Equity for a bit in Glasgow and London. His latter working years were as a Radio Drama Producer for the BBC where he produced hundreds of network dramas for Radio 3 and 4. He returned to acting after retiring from the BBC and appeared in Taggart, Monarch of the Glen and many others. Time in his company was always enjoyable and often informative.
He succumbed to this dreaded virus. We won’t be able to gather for his funeral. Remember that mischievous grin and raise a glass to him. RIP.”

I met Hamish while I was working at Radio Clyde and after I went out on my own during 1988 Hamish did a lot of our early voice overs. It was during 2005 when we produced Type 2 Diabetes the No Nonsense Guide that I am about to preview below. Hamish was a stickler for correctness and if something wasn’t right he would do it again. I got Hamish to read the whole script so we could use it as a guide track.

Unfortunately the last time I spoke to Hamish was about a year ago, I say unfortunately because I wish it had not been so long ago. Hamish used to stay about 5 minutes along the road from me till he and his lovely wife Dianna retired to Newton Stewart near Wigtown which is 95 miles away.

The Mind Robber took place in June 1968, during production of the Mind Robber actor Frazer Hines contracted chickenpox and was hurriedly replaced by Hamish Wilson for episode 2.

His nom de plumb was the “arm chair general” as he was very much into virtual war on his computer and a ton of books on the subject. Its very sad to think I will no longer to be able to pick up the phone to my old friend who had the richest, warmest, chocolatey voice in the world of voice over artists. God bless you Hamish.

Hamish leaves a lovely wife Dianna and three very loving girls Emma, Alice and Abigail.

For all your video production needs in Scotland, get in touch with Small Video Productions

This scheme will allow you to claim a taxable grant worth 80% of your trading profits up to a maximum of £2,500 per month for the next 3 months. This may be extended if needed.

Who can apply

You can apply if you’re a self-employed individual or a member of a partnership and you:

• have submitted your Income Tax Self Assessment tax return for the tax year 2018-19
• traded in the tax year 2019-20
• are trading when you apply, or would be except for COVID-19
• intend to continue to trade in the tax year 2020-21
• have lost trading/partnership trading profits due to COVID-19

Your self-employed trading profits must also be less than £50,000 and more than half of your income come from self-employment. This is determined by at least one of the following conditions being true:

• having trading profits/partnership trading profits in 2018-19 of less than £50,000 and these profits constitute more than half of your total taxable income
• having average trading profits in 2016-17, 2017-18, and 2018-19 of less than £50,000 and these profits constitute more than half of your average taxable income in the same period

If you started trading between 2016-19, HMRC will only use those years for which you filed a Self-Assessment tax return.

If you have not submitted your Income Tax Self-Assessment tax return for the tax year 2018-19, you must do this by 23 April 2020.

HMRC will use data on 2018-19 returns already submitted to identify those eligible and will risk assess any late returns filed before the 23 April 2020 deadline in the usual way.

How much you’ll get

You’ll get a taxable grant which will be 80% of the average profits from the tax years (where applicable):

• 2016 to 2017
• 2017 to 2018
• 2018 to 2019

To work out the average HMRC will add together the total trading profit for the 3 tax years (where applicable) then divide by 3 (where applicable), and use this to calculate a monthly amount.

It will be up to a maximum of £2,500 per month for 3 months.

We’ll pay the grant directly into your bank account, in one instalment.

How to apply

You cannot apply for this scheme yet.

HMRC will contact you if you are eligible for the scheme and invite you to apply online.

Individuals do not need to contact HMRC now and doing so will only delay the urgent work being undertaken to introduce the scheme.

You will access this scheme only through GOV.UK. If someone texts, calls or emails claiming to be from HMRC, saying that you can claim financial help or are owed a tax refund, and asks you to click on a link or to give information such as your name, credit card or bank details, it is a scam.

After you’ve applied

Once HMRC has received your claim and you are eligible for the grant, we will contact you to tell you how much you will get and the payment details.

If you claim tax credits you’ll need to include the grant in your claim as income.

Paul Lewis “UPDATED Nearly two million self-employed people will get no help from the scheme announced last night. It is wrong to say only 5% are left out. It is about a third including people who have started self employment this tax year and those who make too little to pay tax.”

For all your video production needs in Scotland, get in touch with Small Video Productions

Not since 1988 have I been out of work and back then it was my choice. As you may appreciate all my work has either been postponed or cancelled.

Sadly this is the price you pay for being self employed and hopefully Boris will eventually get a package together to help all of us or in my case Nicola.

This is when you realise how every penny counts and I have taken this time to finally clear out my utility room (Was a Mini Studio). I found a box from WEX for a Panasonic 25mm f1.4 Leica DG Summilux Micro Four Thirds lens costing £399.

It brought it home to me how scatter cash you become when work is plenty and how useful that money would be now.

I saw this post from my friend Alister Chapman and as usual Alister puts it in a nutshell.

Alister “So basically if you are an employee on PAYE, you should have little to fear and the majority will at the very least get 80% of your normal salary (no matter what you might have in savings), a big broad wide system to keep people in work. Nice and generous.

If you are self employed you are fecked. Oh and we are going to ensure that many more self employed will lose all their work.

Self employed are NOT second class citizens.

We are going to close theaters, entertainment venues, cinemas, bars, clubs etc so 10’s of thousands more self employed people will lose their jobs with no safety net other than the equivalent of £94 per week from Universal Credit – If you are able to claim it, forget it if your partner still has a job or you have been sensible and saved for a rainy day.

This is creating a two tier system. All sorts of grants, loans, support for employers and employees, regardless of savings, whether you partner has a job but almost nothing for the hard working self employed that do amazing things for this country. Yet it is the self employed that ARE being the hardest hit. 

You don’t want to be near me right now, I am unbelievably angry.

Why the hell can’t businesses that use freelancers get a grant to cover 80% of the fees they normally pay to their freelancers so that they can get the same support as everybody else? We pay the same taxes as everyone else, we deserve the same level of protection as everyone.“

Well said Alister lets hope Boris and Nicola read this and get their heads together and look after well over half the population.

So what am I doing to pass the time, I have been an educator most of my life, writing and producing educational videos on diabetes and health and safety so as I have become older I decided I wanted to pass on some family recipes and started a YouTube channel called “One Roving Cook”.

Only this week I took the bull by the horns to produce lunches for people self isolating, nothing grand, just good tips on feeding a family of four. These will be mini episodes about 5m long with 5 lunches in each episode, I am thinking off my feet ie. last week I went for some pasta at Tesco to use with some left over chicken…none. I had a wee brainwave in Tesco and bought a ready made pasta meal for two to which I added the extra chicken, so that made a £2.50 tasty meal for 4 people.

For all your video production needs in Scotland, get in touch with Small Video Productions

RØDE is pleased to offer a full RØDECaster Pro kit (including a RØDECaster Pro, 2 x microphones, microphone stands, cables and headphones) to any NSW public school with a year 7-12 cohort. This will enable teachers to quickly record lessons as podcasts to distribute to students in the event that schools are closed due to the COVID-19 situation. The system is very easy to use, even for complete beginners, and RØDE will offer help and support to teachers to get the system up and running effectively.

I personally use the RodeCaster kit to record podcasts from my edit suite and can vouch as to how good it is. From its inception almost a year ago this brilliant piece of kit has evolved to a multitrack recorder with pre fade listen on all faders.

Well done RODE for making this cracking piece of kit available to the kids of New South Wales in Australia and may it be a lesson to other companies how to make a bad situation better by offering free kit when its most needed.

For all your video production needs in Scotland, get in touch with Small Video Productions

I have never seen so many self employed camera men and women without work. Some of the biggest DOPs in the game are virtually unemployed due to COVID-19.

Work is drying up everywhere as are trade shows. NAB 2020 due in April has already been cancelled with a possible re schedule later this year.

Interestingly Cinema 5D have just announced a Virtual Trade Show (VTS) in place of NAB, a great idea.

Johnnie Behiri (Cinema 5D) “Hey Philip, as always, good to hear from you again! Well, NAB felt they had to cancel the biggest show in our industry WITHOUT giving the manufacturers and us the audience an alternative, so we’ve decided to “take faith in our hands” and cater for the industry with a proper plan. We will create A LOT of original “virtual show” content (Actual interviews with manufacturers) and some remote ones, plus, have a little studio where we can host people and talk about new (exciting) up coming products and analyse trends. (If things will get even tougher, it will be Nino and I talking, but of course we will be happy to have as many as possible guests). Also, as companies will stream live some announcements, we will share those too. In any case, we didn’t want lo leave the field only for them as it could become a “marketing gig”, so we are trying to put some sense into it all together! Thank you and warm greetings from Tokyo.”

For all your video production needs in Scotland, get in touch with Small Video Productions

I have been busy last week and as you know the blog comes second to paying work.

I saw this on my YouTube subscription feed and thought I would share it with you not many people get to see the Northern Lights let alone film them.

This is from French pilot Guillaume Laffon who films a lot of his flights.

For all your video production needs in Scotland, get in touch with Small Video Productions

I had a brainwave and decided to produce Part one of my video review as so many readers were looking forward to seeing footage from the JVC GY-HC550.

I will go over some issues in part two I had with the 550 and get some fresh 4K 50p 422 ProRes HQ footage in about two weeks from now.

Please get in touch via the comments page if you would like me to include any extra features to be covered in Part two.

For all your video production needs in Scotland, get in touch with Small Video Productions

There are some fantastic HD vision mixers these days and the Roland V-8HD is no exception. At £1,600 this is a snip for an 8 channel HDMI vision mixer with preview built in.

It seems to me HD is at the final gate before 4K and 8K take over.

Years ago SD vision mixers were all the rage and HD was only an expensive pipe dream.

All HDMI workflow

Five-layer effects and keying engine

Up to 1080p50 Resolution Support

Multi-Format, HDCP Support

8-Bit, 4:2:2 Video Processing

Built-in multi-viewer preview monitor

Aux output for a different video feed

Technology-assisted automatic video switching

18-channel digital audio mixer with effects

Start & Stop Atomos recorders

Free iPad remote control app available

Ultra-mobile, lightweight, and efficient

For all your video production needs in Scotland, get in touch with Small Video Productions

After a week and no review…? Whats going on. As you remember I had a major problem with my last iMac and it was replaced. We now have USB3 which is so much quicker than USB2.

After day one filming with 4K 50p 422 HQ and that was only about 5m of footage, not all usable footage, I got a real shock when ingesting the SSD camera footage from the camera. It was taking almost 2-3 minutes for about 1m of footage to ingest. Then I thought I had solved the problem I was using USB 1 C cable instead of USB 2 C cable.

It was better but USB 3 is 10x faster again now 2G of footage takes 10s to ingest.

If you have never produced a video review about video cameras there is a mountain of work from filming, editing, music and voice over not to mention graphics.

I am about half way but need more footage so I have sent an email to JVC hoping to get a camera next week to do a small bit of outdoor filming, weather dependant.

Please bear with me there is no urgency to get this job done after all the camera itself has already been delayed almost a year so what’s a further couple of weeks delay.

For all your video production needs in Scotland, get in touch with Small Video Productions