premiere » Julie Edwards Photography

Gala Screening of All In Good Time

A Gala screening for “All In Good Time” was held at the BFI Southbank on Tuesday 8th May.

Due to the trains running late (a “Bridge Strike”, Broken rail AND Broken down train), I arrived just as the first guests (Actor Reece Ritchie – Prince of Persia: Sands of Time) and Actress Amara Karan (St. Trinians) were being photographed.

Actor Reece Ritchie and Actress Amara Karan

The blurb about the film says:

When their hard saved for honeymoon is cancelled the day after the wedding, the newlyweds have no choice but to return to the Dutt household and set up home there.

As prying family members and gossipy neighbours conspire to keep the couple from consummating their marriage, Atul and Vina start to panic. But if they can just keep their situation private, and if they can just get a bit of time alone, all could be saved for this pair.

So with meddling parents, nosey neighbours and a community that thrives on gossip, can their marriage last?

Well, they look quite good together here, so who knows…..

Photos from the Gala screening of “All in Good Time” can be viewed and licensed from PhotoShot: here.

Salmon fishing with an iPad

Ever since the first iPad was released I knew at some point there would be the possibility of reducing the weight on my back and speeding up the workflow at an event by using one of these lightweight tablets.

I invested in the iPad 1 but it was quite evident that the device just did not have the power to cope with the requirements of live image transmission, the iPad 2 was a definite improvement but still not quite there. All this time I have been playing with the pieces, putting together ideas and workflows and with the 3rd generation of the device the pieces finally fit and the jigsaw has come together. Whilst the reviews and techie sites have been raving over the screen clarity, the real improvement for me has been the doubling of the working memory from the iPad2 (being 4 times that of the original device), making image editing viable.

The premiere of “Salmon fishing in the Yemen”, being a low key event with only 2 or 3 “names” was the ideal event for a test.

The only real issue I found was supporting (holding) the iPad. Images were downloaded, cropped, annotated and sent to distribution all within minutes of shooting, the fastest I have ever delivered images.

Although my aim for this blog is not to be technical, more and more photographers are trying to work out how to make “real” use of these ultra lightweight devices; if there are enough requests, I will detail my workflow in a later post.

In the meantime, here are 2 of my first live event images processed and sent from the iPad (incidentally, this post was also written on the pad),

Ewan Mcgregor

Emily Blunt

Some recent work

Anthony Daniels who played C3PO in all 6 Star Wars Movies with a Lego model of his character at Star Wars Episode 1 3D at The Empire, Leicester Square on 8th February 2011

Daniel Radcliffe signs posters before introducing a screening of The Woman in Black at The Empire, Leicester Square, London on 11th Feb 2011

Kaiser Chiefs play the HMV Apollo Hammersmith on 23rd Feburary 2012.

Athlete Ed Moses attends the Sport Relief Mile 2012 at the Royal Parks

Actress Kate Winslet attends the World Premiere of TITANIC 3D on Tuesday 27th March 2012

Real Steel, with Hugh Jackman

You may have noticed that this blog has been devoid of any Film Premiere entries for quite a while (if you ignore last months FrightFest). 

The reason? Westminster Council have been refurbishing Leicester Square ready for next years Olympics. Most people would assume that this would be done in stages, maybe a section at a time, minimising the impact on the use of the square and the business within it. When you think of the amount of trade the cinemas bring into the square and its surrounds you would have thought the council would have worked with them, ensuring that the square was able to continue hosting premieres. No. For the past approximately 9 months the square has been in such a state of upheaval that hosting a premiere has been almost impossible. There has not been enough room. In fact for much of the time it has been a struggle even for pedestrians a tourists to navigate the area without having to avoid diggers, dumpers and other plant.

Boxer Amir Khan

During this time the film industry had no choice but to seek alternative venues with the prime benefactor being The Vue inside Westfield Shopping Centre.  I'm sorry but a shopping centre just does not cut it. Even Tom Hanks seemed somewhat bemused at the location.

Titan the robot meets the fans

We I'm glad to say that is changing again. Today the barriers were moved back away from the front of The Empire and the square was once again able to host a major premiere - "Real Steel", a Disney film featuring boxing robots and Hugh Jackman.

Hugh Jackman meets fans

It felt good to be back in the square, there was a great atmosphere and Hugh was obviously enjoying himself at what he referred to on stage as his "family screening" with over 30 members of the Jackman clan in the cinema.

Hugh Jackman with robot Titan

Hugh was joined on the carpet not only by the director, Shawn Levy but also a robot called Titan.

Director Shawn Levy

Lets hope the contractors get their fingers out and complete the works so the square can return to its rightful place as the premiere location.

Frightfest 2011

Film 4 Frightfest 2011

August Bank holiday weekend and whilst many of my colleagues were at Reading and Leeds festivals, I was official photographer at another, altogether different festival: Frightfest. It’s my 3rd year photographing this festival and my 2nd year as the official photographer.

Doing PR.

The weekend started on the Thursday evening with a premiere of “Don’t be afraid of the dark” and run through to Monday evening with the time being filled with over 35 films (many of them premieres), Signings, Question and Answer sessions and Media interviews.

Director Robin Hardy signing.

Pollyanna McIntosh signing after the UK Premiere of the controversial film "The Woman"

As the photographer I needed to make sure I was at every media photo-call (media wall) , capture as many introductions and Q&A sessions as well as general atmosphere. This involves long hard (over 12 hour days) but with the clients, guests and attendees all being both fun and interesting, it’s not arduous at all.

Checking the programme (which featured a number of my images form last year)

Pollyanna McIntosh

As I said, many intresting characters. This years “icon” was American producer, writer, director, and actor Larry Fessenden:

Larry Fessenden

As with last year, I am preparing a photo-book which should be ready in a day or two. (Last years available here). You may see a set of photos from this year here…

Today I am preparing for a reportage style wedding shoot on Saturday. More on that next week.

Brighton Rock (from a distance)

There are big problems for premieres in Leicester Square at the moment. Westminster council are re-developing the square ready for the 2012 olympics to provide a more modern public space. The problem is the hoardings they have placed to hide the works leaves only a small public walkway around the edge.

On Tuesday, this left a large number of photographers (it was a large turnout for Dame Helen Mirren) squashed in to an enclosure about 18ft wide. Usually we expect their to be about 3 rows of photographers, this allows the front to be standing, the second on a small step and the rear on a 3 step ladder. For Brighton Rock we were at 5 rows! Not only that, I was in row 5!!

A few did leave but I thought I would wait and see what I could get. Magazines and papers really want a mixture of images but particularly full length shots, especially of the women. From my 5th row, shooting between others (and leaning heavily on a good friend who was stuck next to me), full lengths were not really an option, this is the closest I got..

Dame Helen Mirren attends the European premiere of Brighton Rock

I concentrated on getting some nice portraits…

Dame Helen Mirren attends the European premiere of Brighton Rock

Angelina Jolie

Angelina attended last nights UK premiere of SALT. News images available for licensing here…

For film premieres to be worthwhile, stars from the film are needed. Sometimes it is the director, producer and one or two. Sometimes it is the whole (major) cast.

In this case, as the guy from Sony said.. “When the star is Angelina Jolie, you only need one star…”

She looked great…

2 Premieres, 4 Concerts and Eros….

It’s been a very long week, starting about a week and a half ago.

First though I am going to mention the last of this weeks work and the movie that everybody is talking about; “AVATAR”. I worked the premiere from the press pen and got shots of most of the cast and guests..

The following night (Friday) I was very lucky to attend (with my son) the media showing at The Empire. I was very sceptical about this film before I saw it and could not imagine watching a 3D film for 2 and 3 quarter hours with 3D glasses. It’s interesting to note that everybody that does comment negatively on it has not seen it, I have yet to chat with any of the 4000 or so viewers over the 2 days that did not enjoy it; it got a standing ovation in the premiere and a huge round of applause in the media show. My feeling is Cameron has achieved something phenomenal, it is visually stunning and without doubt the most believable alien environment and aliens.

For me as a photographer, the technical is also interesting, even down to the fact that in The Empire, 4 projectors were used to project the film – it looked amazing (the first time a feature has been shown on 4 projectors).

One of the stars of the film, Zoe Saldana …

The day before this though was the premiere of “St Trinian’s 2 – The Legend of Fritton’s Gold”. For this I was house photographer and grabbed some really nice images. Hopefully some of these should be up on the film’s website shortly. Sarah Harding looked fabulous..

On Tuesday it was James Morrison in Brighton, sounding and looking really good. The lighting was some of the best I have worked with in a concert and I grabbed some great colour and black-and-white images;

Before that, on Monday I was at “Eros” which has been turned into a “Snow Dome” for Christmas and Sunday was Will Young in Brighton. On Saturday it was Alice Cooper in Brighton. Again; great lighting but also great theatre and performance.

Before that; Madness. Suggs the performer…

Now I need a rest..

Jim Sturgess

Frightfest was a really busy 5 day period for me. Another hilight was photographing Jim Sturgess not only during his performance at the World Premiere of Heartless, but also as he rehearsed that morning. I did the shoot in Black and White as it seemed to suit the mood of the music and the look of the band.

I have held on to the photos until now, just to make sure he is happy with me publishing them. He is, so here are a couple;

World Premiere of Duplicity.

Gosh, what a day! I must admit, I was looking forward to this premiere; I had never seen Julia Roberts before and was keen to get some nice images of her. I think she has a classic face – in the 1960′s / 50 vain.

It was not a good day though – one hour before the doors were due to open, my laptop failed giving me no processing and uploading route. It required a kind laptop loan and some frantic software loading; but we got there. Like everybody there, I was disapointed that there was no stunning frock but the suit was very elegant. My modern take on the old black and white portrait;