NEAL PARSONS:
HIS JOURNEY INTO THE FILM INDUSTRY AND HIS THOUGHTS ON USING THE MOVI PRO

Slick Showreels caught up with one of the nicest guys in the business, none other than Neal Parsons. We’ve had the pleasure of his services for over 5 years now. We wanted to find out a bit more about Neal and his approach to his work. We sat down over a flat white and some beautiful looking cheese on toast from Forge & Co in Shoreditch. Great coffee and even better cheese on toast. We couldn’t wait to ask the friendly giant some questions.

Slick Showreels
Who are you? And what do you do?

Neal Parsons
I’m Neal Parsons – I’m a camera operator and aspiring DP. I‘ve worked on independent features, TV shows, short films, commercials, online branded content… the whole gamut.

Slick Showreels
And why the film industry? How did you end up in this world?

Neal Parsons
I did a journalism masters and after realising I wasn’t a writer I moved towards radio and podcasts. As such I learnt audio editing and from that I learnt some basic video editing. I got a job doing digital media work for charities and started doing camera work for the videos I was now editing and I increasingly realised that the only part of my job that I enjoyed was when I had a camera in my hands and started permanently suggesting: “Why don’t we film this, why don’t we make a video of this”. After a while, I got a couple of freelance jobs and thought, “I’m gonna do this for a living.” So I quit my job. Bought a 5d Mark iii. And that was it. 

Slick Showreels
The rest was history?

Neal Parsons
Well the real key was doing some camera assisting for DoPs like Anna Valdez-Hanks and Tim Knight – working on TV dramas, documentaries, feature films. That’s where I learnt about what the job entails, how a set runs, all the different roles, all the kit, seeing how the industry works. 

Slick Showreels
Was there any other avenue that you might have taken?

Neal Parsons
Journalism was the only other career that I looked at. Nothing else really… I didn’t know what I wanted to do until I got a camera.

Slick Showreels  
So when you’re shooting (obviously you do a lot of different types of content), are there any particular go-to bits of kit that you like to use?

Neal Parsons
So the thing that I love most about what I do, particularly video and film, as opposed to stills, is movement. That is the thing that really gets me excited. I don’t get excited taking photos, I’ve never really been into it, I can appreciate a good photo but I never get an impulse to go out and take a shot. Because what I like is movement and increasingly, camera movement, being part of the movement.
Since I first had the Movi M5 in my hands about four or five years ago I’ve kind of tried to find more excuses to use the Movi kit ever since. Then when the Movi Pro came out. It was like, “okay, let’s use this for everything now”, let’s find a reason to put this on every job somewhere.

Slick Showreels
Why that? Why not any other gimbal because there’s a lot of them, there’s loads of other gimbals? Why the Movi Pro?

Neal Parsons
I think because it was what I was trained on first. So one of the agencies I work for has a Movi hire group, and they trained me up as one of their freelancers. They trained me up on the Movi. So It’s just what I knew, really, and then increasingly, I’d be out on a job and someone would say “I haven’t got a Movi but I’ve got a Ronin or whatever”. And they’re good, they’re not bad pieces of kit but I was constantly saying: “Can’t it do this, or why can’t I do this with it. Or that doesn’t feel as nice as when I’ve been doing it on the Movi”. It just always feels better with the Movi.

Slick Showreels  
Do you remember when one of their early BTS videos came out. The Movi operator was on rollerblades, he pulls up to a Yellow Taxi and I think that kind of made every DP want to learn how to rollerskate. Do you remember seeing that clip? Was that your intro to it? 

 

Neal Parsons
Because I’ve taken a slightly roundabout way into the industry, it wasn’t until I held it. I was a bit of a passive observer of film. I could see the cameras moving, but I wasn’t questioning how it was moving. Then suddenly someone gave me a Movi and I could see what I could do with it, what could be achieved with it and I was like,”Oh that explains all the shots that I’m seeing on TV and film”. So yeah, my intro to it was literally… here you go play with it.

Slick Showreels 
Have you got one shot in your head that you are most proud of whilst using the Movi?

Neal Parsons
There’s a few I suppose if I can have a few? I’ll keep it brief. So the first time I used it on a TV commercial, and then seeing that commercial on TV was incredible, like “woah I’m on TV kind of thing”. It was a ‘oner’, quite straightforward, but timings were crucial as it was a TV ad. It was one of those ones where we had three different dancers on a green screen background and it was the first time that I started using the Movi to be part of the dance as it were.

Because the director wanted me to counterpoint them. So as they move left I move right. Like a seesaw. So yeah, that was amazing to see that actually be on TV.
Then recently convincing a director to do a three minute ‘oner’, in a dialogue scene, in a very emotional dialogue scene and getting it right was a nice moment. Because she’s never used this kit before but she told me that she didn’t want a film of talking heads, shot-reverse-shot etc. I’d looked at the scene and it was all in one room. But it was just them talking. We mapped out a plan of how to make it more dynamic and I think crucially, we didn’t do it for the sake of it. The idea was to get more movement in. But ultimately, the camera moves, because it’s motivated to move. That was really important. We didn’t just sling the camera around.

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Slick Showreels
Does the Movi take a toll on your back?

Neal Parsons
Yes! Gimbals are backbreakers definitely. That said – in terms of the build design and the weight it’s the best I’ve used. Because you can put it down so easily, It’s a lifesaver. The first time I ever took an interest in getting fit was the week after I did a two day Movi job. I was like “Oh, okay. I need to be fit enough to use this to get the results I want”. Even with all the great things that the Movi does, you can still not get the shot. If you can’t get your body in that position. If You can’t hold it for long enough. If you can’t move fast enough with it.

Slick Showreels
Slick Showreels are lucky enough to have you shoot Showreels for us (when you’re free)? Do you use the Movi on those shoots?

Neal Parsons
On the Slick Gold shoots, we’ve started to do some gimbal work.
We’ve started introducing smaller gimbals for standard showreel shoots. Having seen what you can do with gimbals and always trying to up their production values, Slick bought the DJ Ronin-S, which is a smaller gimbal. They say you can put a RED Cam on it. I mean, you’d have to forearms of steel to do that.

Slick Showreels
Oh, I don’t know, I think you could get away with it Neal?

Neal Parsons
No I don’t think so (Laughs).
Anyway, the Ronin-S is a useful thing to have in the kit. It can be difficult for showreels, because no matter how many times Slick try to vary their scenes, actors just want dialogue in their reels. All actors seem to ever want is dialogue and gimbals in general can be a bit tricky with dialogue, particularly if you’re trying to do lots of movement and you haven’t got the full range of the focus pulling kit. So it’s another one of those ones where you go, “Okay, rather than just using this every day, let’s find a reason why we need to move the camera and we want to move fluidly, then this is a really good tool for it”.

There are some scenes that it works really well for. We’ve done more and more kind of walk and talk stuff over the years and being able to do that on a gimbal is amazing. Because It’s a style that people like.

The main problem with it, as far as I’m concerned, is gimbals work best when they’re weighty. So whilst the Movi Pro with an Alexa Mini on it, or whatever, is a heavy piece of kit, that weight helps keep it smooth. Having a little A7S on a little handheld gimbal – you have to be so careful not to knock it, not to bang it. It’s is very reactive. There are different tuning settings and you can play around with that but I’ve still found you get more bounce, you get more wave. 

Slick Showreels
What’s the best thing about the Movi, if you just had to pick one thing and one thing only?

Neal Parsons
It’s built by people that understand the industry. So from the second you get it out of the box, It works. It does what you think it will do and it does it better than you expected it to. Which I feel sounds too much of a sales pitch. But If you watch their videos, they really care about making their product work. Because the original Movi’s, (and FreeFly were quite honest about this) was a prototype.

The wires were all over the place, the batteries exploded if you charged them for too long. It was a prototype. A work in progress but the Movi Pro is near enough to perfection as you could get these days.

Slick Showreels
Are there any drawbacks with the Movi Pro? Is there anything you wish you could change?

Neal Parsons 
Find a way to make it lighter (laughs).
I mean, because the step up from the M15 and the Movi Pro is so enormous in terms of all the things that we wanted it to do; the battery life to be better, being able to change the settings so easily, the ability to plugin and power all your accessories and the camera from the rig. So you don’t need any extra batteries weighing you down. I just feel like, they’ve nailed everything. From now on it’s now just fine tweaking.

Slick Showreels
You’re a pretty big chap… How tall are you?

Neal Parsons 
(Laughs) I am 6 foot 4.

Slick Showreels
So is it easier for a taller chap like yourself to use the Movi? Or can anybody use it? 

Neal Parsons
Probably not actually, I think I spend most of my time crouching with it, getting into low positions shooting up rather than being up high shooting down. But there’s definitely times when you need that extra bit of reach for a high angle shot.
But no, I think you’re probably better off being smaller and more squat, which gives you more balance as well. Most of the photos I see of me holding it on set, I’m crouching with an arched back.

Slick Showreels
So, just to conclude… what would be your dream job be, using the Movi?

Neal Parsons
Well, I’ve just finished doing a really fun dance documentary with Slick Films – and dance and the Movi just seems to me like the perfect combination. Because when you can make the camera part of the dance, the choreography is enhanced.
So my favourite thing to do with it, If I had the chance would just be to shoot more dance with it. Just to get in as many different kind of dance environments, musicals, music videos, anything like that and just shoot dancing because I feel like it’s made for so many things. But that’s what I enjoy doing the most with it.

Slick Showreels
So you’d love to do a Musical Theatre movie? Something like The Greatest Showman?

Neal Parsons
Yeah, I didn’t know it until last year. But I think my dream job would be to shoot big musicals, like Mary Poppins musicals because the world is serious enough. So to get to turn up to work and just film musicals and film incredible people dancing and you have a piece of kit in your hands like the Movi. Yeah, why not. Would love to do that.

Slick Showreels
Thanks Neal, pleasure chatting with you.

 

Twitter: @Neal_Parsons
Instagram: @Neal_Parsons
NealParsons.co.uk

https://freeflysystems.com/movi-pro
https://www.dji.com/uk/ronin-s

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