Music and pictures

In 2017 I toured Europe with NZ Green Party international candidate) Bridget Walsh, hosting pop-up events to encourage expat kiwis to vote in the 2017 New Zealand election. Bridget got used to having my camera in her face, so late last year when the election dust was well settled and we’d resumed our ‘normal’ lives, I took up an invitation to film and edit the maiden live show of her latest songs and brand new band.

I’ve never shot a music gig before, but it was a challenge worth taking. Firstly of course for the filmmaking experience, and secondly to help out Bridget, who had put her music career on hold for many months while championing a change for good in our home country of Aotearoa.

Having at least two camera angles was a given, so thankfully I was able to borrow a second DSLR and utilise Bridget’s GoPro. But all the planning and thinking and widgets can only go so far when the music starts, when you never know quite where or how your main subject will be standing, let alone what the lighting might be doing next.

In some ways it was like observational documentary shooting – capturing the action as best I could as it unrolled in front of me at a furious pace with no setups, no reshoots, no time for hesitation.

My 7D on a tripod at the back of the room captured the essential wide shot, but also meant that I had to lurk in the shadows with the 5D (held arm-achingly aloft on a monopod) to avoid appearing in my own shot – not to mention getting in the way of the audience’s enjoyment of the show.

Post-production was another good learning experience. The ‘promo reel’ is effectively a B2B tool; so the challenge was cutting down and cutting between multiple songs to create something short but with enough content to enthuse promoters. Craft-wise there were tricky moments like getting to grips with the nuances of where to cut a bass riff. Bridget’s ear for (cutting out) moments when things sounded off-key was an eye-opener (er, ear-opener?) – it all sounded great to me!

Editing individual songs was a separate mindset again. The edit of 'Pockets' is not a music video as such, but I brought in as much visual sparkle as possible to try and make it more than just a straight capture of the performance. They’re a fun band to be around, so some behind-the-scenes glimpses from the rehearsal helped add some fun, and break things up visually.

Filming gigs isn’t something I plan to make a habit of, but it was a buzz hanging with the band, pushing the envelope of my editing skills, and gratifying to support great original music.

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If you’re in or near London, you can see Bridget live next Friday, 26 February, as part of this launch gig. (Click here for tickets)

Otherwise check out her web page for other upcoming gigs, and her numerous social channels @missbdwalsh. Plus if you’re a musician or artist, take a look at indhe.org, Bridget's pioneering global online community.

A creative hack

This brief was one of those tricky balancing acts. Ironically for a digital product, it was a completely analogue piece of creative – but one that became a lovely opportunity to do some good old-fashioned print craft.

(Note: this work was done while I was CD at Essence the health agency in Auckland, New Zealand, and I have since moved to the UK – but it's still relatively new work!)

Global pharmaceutical company Novartis created Living Like You, a website designed to support people with Multiple Sclerosis. The New Zealand office was keen to promote this site to New Zealand patients, but had no budget or local infrastructure for digital, or a targeted brief.

The site itself has a variety of functionality and features, so the first challenge was how to convey all of them in a paper-based execution. The solution was classic advertising simplicity – just don’t! Zeroing in on a single aspect of the offering was the best way to drive a clear conceptual route.

Or to put it another way, stop stressing about how to say everything, and concentrate on saying one thing well.

This was a great internal reminder to myself at the time, too. It’s easy to let the ‘noise’ of being a creative director get in the way of actually thinking about the creative.

That one thing was the MS Life Hacks series – 365 tips, tricks and tools to help the day-to-day challenge of the disease just that little bit easier. Some are quirky, some are obvious, but it’s simple, quick and engaging. Plus an easy way to open the door for audiences to delve into the rest of the site’s content.

Turning clickable page elements into some form of engaging print was simple, in retrospect.

Postcards.

You can give them out in packs, put them on a rack at clinics, put them in tote bags at conferences…and obviously, send them to someone in the post.

Seen in isolation from the site, the functional photography used to depict each Life Hack would have been uninspiring. So the second solution was to use illustration. I’ve worked on MS-related briefs on both sides of the planet now and it’s always so damned earnest, if not bleak. It’s a terrible condition to live with, but people are people and they’re bigger than their disease. So I thought they deserved, and would appreciate, a little joy.

This is where the process really became collaboration, not just commerce. Illustrator Natasha Vermuelen not only brought her unique whimsical drawing style, charm and character to the project, but also her own ideas, with a level of openness, initiative and input that I really treasured as an art director.

If you’re putting lotion on your back, well of course you need to have a crab to hold the bottle!

 As an art director / creative director, you know things are going well when you get shown great work that you know you wouldn’t have come up with yourself. Or wish you had!

As usual I poked the client to make this a grander affair, with digital competitions and installations and beyond (all depicted with one of my infamous flow diagrams), but it wasn’t to be. Nevertheless, to have gotten three immaculate – and more notably, especially in the healthcare niche, fun ­– illustrations executed and out there (on an eco-friendly stock, of course) was gratifying.

From what I heard before I left New Zealand, the community nurses (always the best barometer of tone of voice for healthcare patient communications) who had been given the packs to then dispense to their patients were really, really pleased.

From a conceptual and art direction aspect, this has been my favourite piece of work from my time at Essence.

Shooting from the past

Last year after my sister Natalie died, I discovered what I believe was one of my father's old (1970s) cameras – hidden away in his old writing desk which had been at my sister's place since he died in 2007.

Dad was an avid photographer but curiously never ever encouraged me to try it or imparted any advice when I did get into it later in life. So there was something really poignant about this find and I decided to shoot a roll of black & white film to see if it still worked.

Photographers always say there's something intangibly special and authentic about film photography, especially with the imperfections of vintage lenses. I haven't really shot film since 2003, and I do enjoy the precision of my DLSR, but I had to see if this old camera would be a pain or a joy. 

It turned out to be both.

Supposedly the Canonet has an auto mode, but I'll be damned if I can fathom how it's supposed to work, even with an old manual off the internet to help. The focusing is rudimental and quite hit-and-miss depending on the subject. The grubby and blurry viewfinder shows an exposure meter with a needle that waves around seemingly at random (when it's visible at all).

In the end I gave up on that and downloaded a light meter app for my phone, which makes for a two-step process, but is a lot less bewildering. It's certainly not a camera for situations needing a quick reaction.

But after getting my first roll of film developed this week, I've been pleased to feel that it was worth it, and worth continuing. There's only 7 shots of the 24 that are decent, but those show a lovely result. I used to shoot black and white film with my old Pentax MZ50 SLR (until it went for a swim in Wanganui river in 2003, forcing in the digital era for me) but those never had the sort of feel that these Canonet shots do. All these shots are straight from the camera too, no Photoshop involved.

The most obvious specific difference between this and digital photography is when shooting for a shallow depth of field – DSLRs have a noticeable 'band' of sharpness, but with the Canonet a shallow depth of field feels incredibly gradual and organic – compare these two shots…(click them to expand)

So there's film grain, natural vignetting and things like that which add to the character of the photographs,  but beyond all those tangible, specific qualities, that "special something" is really apparent.

At NZ$50 just to develop and scan b&w film, this won't be something I shoot with every day, that's for sure, but there's definitely an active life in store again for my dad's camera, decades after he last used it.

The agency Christmas Card

One of the most dreaded briefs for any creative is the agency Christmas Card. 2016* was no exception but in the end I was able to rustle up a little visual that I thought expressed the reality of Christmas for most of us in any sort of corporate world, without any need for the cliche of tinsel, or indeed the fast-becoming-a-cliche New Zealand Pohutukawa flower.

*the lead-up to Christmas was so intense that it's taken me til 2017 to find the will to blog about it!

Māori Language for Londoners

I've never really celebrated Māori Language Week before, but the beginning of this 2016 one means the culmination of a big personal effort, creating and producing a campaign of online films for Kiwi Greens UK, the London branch of the New Zealand Green Party.

Te Reo for London (#ReoRānana) is aimed at New Zealanders living in London. It was inspired by a mixture of the language podcasts I used to listen to before heading to European holidays, and the experience of being surrounded by so many other languages in London – and feeling a bit left out, thinking it would be great to know a bit more of New Zealand's second language.

So in conjunction with the team in London I've spent quite a few weeks planning, shooting, and, editing, plus creating all the design and social media blitz to go with it.

The aim was to find phrases that were relevant and useful, but also have a sense of irony and humour, which is a real challenge to get right.

While it might seem like bad timing with the post-Brexit surge of xenophobia and racism, even for just speaking other languages, the team in London and I agreed that it's even more relevant for Kiwis in the UK to embrace the diversity of their origins. 

Read some more about the project on the Kiwi Greens UK blog post. The films will be released each morning until Sunday (UK time) so you can either follow the Kiwi Greens UK Facebook page or Twitter (@KiwiGreensUK), or just go direct to the Vimeo channel.

Hard work and pagination

I've recently heard that a Hepatitis C patient support programme I worked on in 2014 has won a silver at the PM Society awards in London. Myself and a diligent design team spent many hours striving to create a huge suite of magazines and mailers that would be the opposite of the patronising and cliche work often seen in this niche, with a genuine voice and a strong design aesthetic. And, doing it all using only Getty stock shots, yet still looking plausibly UK-centric and down to earth.

The PM awards are no D&AD pencil of course, but unlike a pure design or creativity award, this suite of print materials has been judged on tangible (positive) effect on people's lives, which is certainly a 'win' and something I'm pleased to have played a key role in.

Tea and Spitfires

Thousands of fighter pilots flew in World War 2. But this one lived in my street.

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve met and talked to someone and thought ‘this could make a good documentary’. But when I discovered I had an amiable and able-bodied ex-Spitfire pilot living just 10 doors down from my flat in London, I felt like I had an obligation to make a film about him. An obligation to take advantage of the filmmaking opportunity dropped in my lap; and an obligation to capture the history of someone who was part of World War 2, while he’s still around.

The journey from chat in the street to finished film has been a huge learning curve about the pitfalls of personal projects and procrastination. But now here it is; finished at last.

The first commandment of documentary is "Story”, but I felt if I did the usual route of top-line research and developing a shooting script, I could lose that raw first-time-told quality. So I went in ‘cold’ with camera in hand. But despite hours of interviewing and many cups of tea, a narrative hook never emerged.

Jack had many, many quirky experiences and close escapes, but seemingly went through the war without a single traumatic experience.

Showing an initial cut of the film in a film festival workshop, I was told to bring out the tears and the horror of war. Make the audience feel his pain. But as far as I could tell,* he simply doesn’t have any!

This makes Jack an intriguing character in his own way of course, but it set me on a kind of procrastination and perfectionism loop. With corporate films there is always a brief and a purpose, not to mention a deadline. With this project lacking any obvious narrative, yet laden with hours of intriguing – but disconnected – anecdotes, I wrestled with the balance of doing justice to Jack’s story, yet making something short and watchable for the average (non-aviation-buff) viewer. In the end, I believe I've struck that balance well but it's been far too long a road. Thankfully, Jack, now aged 93, is still around see his final film (and just before I left the UK, seemed as full of life as the day I met him).

I had many positive experiences making this film too of course. From a producing aspect, orchestrating a flight with the North London Flying School at the same airfield where Jack flew in the war was a great bit of visual content. Being given stills and footage from the RAF Museum archives (instead of ripping from YouTube) has made the film something that I know has been done properly and professionally.

As a director, I’ve learned the hard way about the reality of self-shooting: simultaneously maintaining your personal connection with the interviewee, listening for themes and plotting the next question in your mind, and keeping an eye on the camera, lighting, and audio.

And from a personal point of view, it’s gratifying to know I gave an old pilot a chance to take to the air again and tell his stories. I'm an aviation buff myself, and Jack and I shared a mutual affection for the Wellington bomber – which he eventually got to fly after the war, albeit an unarmed version just for training navigators.

I must say a big thank you to my friends and flatmates for all the encouragement and patience, and especially to fellow filmmaker Dagmara, who helped with logistics and camerawork on the day of Jack’s flight.

Lastly, like any film release these days, I’ve also put together a few extra clips that didn’t make the final cut – great little stories in their own right. Tally Ho!

NOTES

* Of course this could be ‘stiff upper lip’ or the reluctance of his generation to open up, but as far as I could tell from multiple interviews, two trips to the airfield and many, many cups of tea, this really is Jack’s nature.

If you know your planes, you may notice that there are shots of various different models of Spitfire and different markings/eras. As a fan of aviation, and accuracy, it was a compromise I had to simply endure because of the limited archive footage available. However at least in the clip at 01:12, the aircraft are Mark V Spitfires – just like Jack flew.

Panshanger Aerodrome sadly was sold off to property developers after making this film; so I feel doubly privileged to have captured a bit of history of that place, too. North London Flying School is still going however, operating from a new airfield.

Molecular harmony

In 2010 I art-directed a medical animation which (and I say with genuine modesty) set a precedent for creativity in the pharmaceutical ‘mode of action video’ niche. 

So when I had two opportunities to concept and art direct new films of this type, I was dead keen. While the first, an 80’s-top-scrolling-arcade-game concept, fell by the wayside as the client redefined their brief, the second has finally come to fruition.

Unfortunately due to the sensitive nature of UK pharmaceutical industry advertising regulations, I can't say what the product name is or what the drug does, but there’s plenty to show off nevertheless. All lovingly (and patiently – with my ruthless attention to detail and torrents of references) brought to life by my longtime collaborative partners, Finger Industries in Sheffield. Here are three clips – stripped of their voiceover and text graphics, but still a great taste of the final piece.

As with my original mode of action film mentioned above, the brief was to show doctors how a new drug works in a clear and compelling way while being accurate with the science – and in this case, in only 2 minutes. Similarly there was again a very conceptual challenge involved, to visualise enzymes and chemicals as tangible objects that move and interact. However with this product an even greater level of precision was needed to satisfy the clients in Japan (the first launch market for this global piece) – who despite their nation’s reputation for crazy advertising, found a conceptual approach harder to swallow without pinpoint scientific accuracy.

With this film I’ve certainly cemented two opinions: that these ‘mode of action’ films can be creatively rewarding, but that the development and animation process is not one that can be rushed or done on the cheap. Hopefully this latest piece will pick up a few awards to add to those from 2010, and help further inspire innovation and creativity in this niche of healthcare communications.

To watch the full version, drop me a line and I can send you the Vimeo link and password.

Gorillas need all the friends – and filmmakers – they can get.

The Monday after I had finished a six month contract at Hive, my phone rang and Tim from Earl Productions asked "would you be interested in helping out on some films with Bill Oddie* and an animatronic gorilla?"

Hmm, so a mixture of offbeat filmmaking, working with an actor from my childhood TV world, and the ultimate aim of helping promote wildlife conservation? I'm in.

A few months later and here is the result.

* Bill occupied a special niche in my early childhood with his oddball 70s TV series, The Goodies

While the core idea and several scripts were already established, I was able to contribute art direction, graphic design and typography, copywriting, and some broader strategic wisdom from my years in ad agencies. Plus of course helping shoulder the considerable load of production workload, which on a pro-bono project (where everyone is juggling their own need-to-pay-the-bills jobs at the same time), is also really valuable.

On top of that though I was really pleased to contribute a fourth script. Run fits with the main campaign but works in a more tactical way, with the aim of recruiting people for the Gorilla Organization's annual fundraising fun run.

The 'Toby and Hilary' films approach the gorilla conservation message from a different angle than the usual earnest pleading charity ads. With great documentaries such as Virunga out there to educate on the plight of gorillas, and a never-ending stream of worthy causes coming at the public every day, we hope a humourous and offbeat approach will help create cut-through, plus engage a different sort of audience. A continuing challenge is utilising social media effectively to maximise views, without any budget for that either.

Being part of making these films was a hard-working but gratifying experience, and illuminating to see the advantages and pitfalls of a 'flat' pro-bono structure, where there is absolutely no money involved and nobody ultimately calling the shots: an odd blend of democracy and compromise.

With some cunning networking from producer Tim Earl, we even got cutdown silent versions of the ads onto big screens in Westfield Shopping centre in Stratford, East London.

The final films are a testament to how a plethora of people (and companies) can be convinced to contribute their time for free, when the idea is interesting, and the cause is worthy.

Check out the campaign microsite www.mygorilla.org to see all the films and find out how you could help this important species survive. Plus a shout out to my collaborators Riccardo, Toby, Tim and Tom.

A tasteful collaboration

I had a play last week with a (literally) fresh sort of creative collaboration. I photographed my friend Sophie making a beautiful raw salad for her entry to a foodie blog (and enjoyed the end result afterwards!) A nice and simple little sensory adventure.

Check out the full recipe on the blog here