What services can you access through Creative Media?

The range of media available to you has expanded enormously as information technology and the Internet has developed and grown. But as the choices have expanded, it has become harder to choose how to get your message out there.

This is where Creative Media can help you. Paddy is interested in and works with many forms of media and technologies and can suggest ways of communicating using any or all of them. His contacts with experts and specialists in many fields mean that just about anything is possible…

Examples of work by Paddy/Creative Media

Web

• eShed website (no longer available online) - A film club for young people, created at Watershed. The site had a database back-end which enabled club members to add their own material to the site.
• www.BristolStories.org - Community storytelling site. Web programming and photography. The design was adapted from an original one, and extra features (including the map and search pages) were added.
• www.StVincentsHousing.org.uk - Web site for project working with ex offenders and people with alcohol problems. The site includes an online editor enabling staff to easily add content to the site.
• www.BristolQuakers.org.uk - Web site for Bristol Quaker meeting. The site includes an online editor enabling staff to easily add content and files to the site.
• Diaspora-artists project site (not available to the public at present) - An online catalogue and data-entry back end for artist Eddie Chambers. The site features images and information about hundreds of pieces of archived media about African, Indian and Asian artists, which link together with galleries and exhibitions.

Copy

Copy is there for a purpose, not to fill a space. Make your message clear and quick. Don’t waste your audience’s time or confuse them. When text is on a web site, most people find it harder to read than printed text, so it’s even more important for it to be written well.

Paddy has written reports, posters, slogans, articles, reviews, editorials, poetry, song lyrics… His communication is inspired by Quaker ideas of “plain speech” and the “SMOG” readability test. Copy that is riddled with flowery phrases, long sentences and jargon is not going to get your message across.

Photography/retouching

Paddy has been taking pictures since the early 1980s and his repertoire includes weddings, gigs, portraits, product photography, abstracts, nature and landscape photography. He uses digital SLRs with good lenses, so pictures are of a high quality. He has been using Photoshop for many years, digitally “repairing” scans of damaged pictures and making digital photographs look their best.

Illustration

Paddy’s illustrations tend toward the cartoonish, but he’s always willing to have a go at something different. His abilities in Photoshop and other image software offer a lot of versatility with mixing scanned and photographed images with typography and computer effects.

Print design

• QSheet - Regional quarterly magazine; editorial, articles, design of logos and branding. Printing, duplication and postage.
• Penheale Nurseries flower catalogue
• Posters and brochures for events at Sterts Moorland Theatre
• Design for Marching to a Different Drummer Leaveners theatre tour
• Design of forms/templates etc for various organisations
• Technical drawing for degree disertation
• CV layout
• Cleaning up and conversion of logos for enlargement
• Brochures, invites, posters and menus.
• Casette and CD packaging design
• Business stationery design
• Original cartoons and illustration

Film/editing/DVDs

Paddy has filmed and edited short films, interviews and talks, both with single cameras and 2-camera setups. He works with Final Cut Pro and Premiere Pro to create films for DVD or for online delivery. His extensive experience in audio and recording means that the soundtrack of film is given the importance it deserves: good video with bad sound can be worse than no video at all.

Music/sound

Paddy has been a musician all his life, playing strings, woodwind, guitar and keyboard. He has been working with music technology since the late 1980s and has wide experience of writing music, and recording/editing sound. He can advise on scripting for podcasts, create original electronic and acoustic music and record live/studio music and voice-overs.

Creative Media branding and ideas

Paddy is famous for novel and innovative ideas - a fascination with language and wordplay combined with an obsession for efficiency and preservation of natural resources lead to novel, innovative but effective ideas, rather than following trends.

• “Art and Ride” branding for Art+Power’s “art on the buses” awareness campaign, Bristol.
• Concept and branding for “Trancendal” youth outreach event
• Logo design for Sustainable Bishopston campaign
• Cardboard DVD packaging for BristolStories.org: extra branding and a saving on postage!
• CD demo packaging for band Taradiddle, Plymouth.
• Workshop space redesign - Watershed Media Centre
• Office space redesign - Akousis counselling centre

Training/consultancy

Paddy is experienced in web design, desktop publishing, photography and video, image retouching, sound recording and editing and event planning. He also has experience of a wide range of computer technology and software. He’s happy to share his knowledge in a workshop setting, and can create learning materials and documentation.

• Photoshop workshop - BristolStories.org
• Podcasting workshop - Watershed Media Centre
• Audio soundscape workshop - BristolStories.org

Video

• Videoing and editing talks for the Architecture Centre and Watershed Media Centre
• Live music video and audio
• Ident clip - Watershed Media Centre
• Anti-supermarket campaign video - BristolStories/BOGOFS
• Pop videos
• Promo/documentary material for artist Stanza
• Experience of monetising videos on YouTube.com, and uploading to vimeo, blip, etc

Music

• Soundtrack for Midsummer Night’s Dream - Sterts Moorland Theatre
• Music for contemporary dance tour - Attic Dance
• Looped audio for multimedia CD - Plymouth College of Art and Design
• Trailer music for ElectricDecember.org and incidental/outro music for “The Box”
• Sound effects, available from my samples page and freesound.org, which have been downloaded and used in thousands of projects around the world

PA Hire / live audio mixing

• Watershed Media Centre outdoor poetry reading.
• Live PA and mixing for Jules Olsen jazz performance at Hatters Café, Gloucester Road.
• PA for carol concert in the Unitarian Church
• PA for Electrosonica.org.uk gigs at Café Delight and Café Kino