Kevin Slade

1984 - I was already very good friends with Pauls parents, having worked for his dad and got invited to watch Paul's school film at his house. "Star Raider" was a comedy, filmed on VHS, with special effects, that was made by 15 year old school kids. It was clear that everyone enjoyed making the film and it really inspired me to get some video equipment of my own.

All the short films I had made up until then were cine films of 3.5 minutes each! You bought a Kodak super 8mm film pack and the processing and return postage cost were included. You shot your film, posted it and waited up to a week for it to drop back through the letterbox. The excitement often turned to dissappointment when you viewed it on a projector as the film you thought you had shot so well, wasn't quite as good as you had hoped!

Editing meant physically cutting your film and cementing it with film glue in the right order. Every time a cut piece of film went through the projector, it was touch and go wether it would make it through without breaking!

1985 – Windy Film Productions was born. The name came from Paul's mum's chicken pie she used to make. For some reason, it gave wind to the people eating it! I had gone out and bought my first video camera. It was an ancient piece of equipment by todays standards. The camera and recorder were separate! The recorder was designed to hang from a strap on your shoulder and the camera was just that - a camera, so that part was very light. Despite this, unlike most full size home VHS machines, it did perfectly clean edits.

1990 – The ancient VHS camera had gone and was replaced by a SVHS camcorder, digital vision mixer and a full size SVHS edit deck. After some music videos under our new name of "The Electronic Picture Company", Paul, being the proud owner of a Volkswagon Beetle at the time, pointed out a yearly festival for Volkswagons and custom cars at Newquay, Cornwall and suggested we could go there, enjoy the weekend by the beach and film the event. "Run to the sun '91" was the result.

1992 – This was the year the wedding video's started. Having never done one before, it was one of the most unsettling things I've done. So much is dependant on you and you don't have much chance to reshoot stuff. Fortunately they have all gone well and have been well received.

1995 – The Probe! was born! The brainchild of a very good friend of mine, Pete Germon, it was a printed publication created on Commodore Amiga computers. The idea was to produce a spoof magazine based on someone who's birthday it was and make stuff up! Sometimes rude, sometimes naughty, hardly ever truthful but it made a great gift!

2002 – I had bought a digital video camera at the end of 2001 and was getting into editing and special effects using a pc. I cut my teeth editing a quick 'pop video' starring my two young daughters, Lauren (4 years) and Hannah (20 months). After that I re-edited 'Doppleganger' and used that to learn editing, special effects and DVD authoring techniques. Later, Paul and I got together again to film a special effect short, "Saber Golf" and our move into the digital medium was complete.

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