Late Nights and Big Swells

It’s midnight on the last night of shooting what was an incredible documentary project in the Gulf Province of Papua New Guinea. I’m exhausted beyond belief – but I’m going to write this blog post. Even if it kills me. BOOM. I read an article a long while ago, that really stuck with me, about…

Planting the Seeds of Change

I sat in the bumpy back seat of the car gazing out the window, surrounded by rugged cliffs, leaning palms and paddy fields, wondering what my Christmas day would be like this year. As we got closer to our destination, the low clouds began to reveal the volcano of Gunung Gede and the thought struck…

Documentary Translation Workflow

This Guest Blog has been written by our good friend, Joel Sharpe. Enjoy! In this post I’m going to explain my process working with translation on a recent film I did for NGO As Green As It Gets in Guatemala. Like most documentarians, having very little budget to deal with means creating a workflow that requires…

Keep Our Waterways Clean

Since our Spinning Dreams (in Timor-Leste) Film in 2010 – Ashwin and I have worked together tirelessly together to create important Documentaries which inspire others. Four massive projects later in 4 countries around Asia, and over SG$100,000 raised for our causes, we created our first community message specifically directed to speak to the heart of…

Itacoatiara

Way back in March this year, I once again had the privilege of filming for the Swiss non-profit organisation myclimate. The more I work with this energetic team, the more respect and admiration I have for their projects. This time, the destination was Itacoatiara, which resides by the famous Amazon River. I was being sent…

The Making of PLASTICIZED

Mike Lutman is a great friend and collaborator, who we’ve worked closely since 2010 when he washed up on our shores from San Francisco. He’s currently working full time as a commercial editor at Melbourne’s award-winning boutique editorial company The Butchery, however as an extremely talented filmmaker in his own right, and a passionate advocate…

Africa

Essentially, my work as a documentary filmmaker specialises in branded content for non-profit, social and environmental development organisations. The type of projects I choose to be involved in are diverse to an extreme extent, and each experience continues to take me on meaningful adventures around the world. Last month, the location was Kenya and Tanzania…

Tour de Timor 2012

It’s no doubt that filming almost 400 cyclists through an (albeit incredibly inspiring) developing nation is an arduous mission. When you also add a film crew that comes from 6 different countries (America, Indonesia, France, Australia, Canada and Timor-Leste) and collectively work in 3 different languages (Tetum, English and Bahasa Indonesia) it gets pretty interesting….

Finding Global Perspective as a Filmmaker

Last April I flew from Rio (where my TOPtoTOP footage will be shown at the Rio20+ World Earth Summit) - to Sao Paulo to meet, film & play with World X Cycle. It was an amazing weekend. I flew back to Melbourne (with all my C02 emissions being offset by MyClimate) and finalised post for my short TOPtoTOP doco on Saint Helena Island,…

Documentary Interview Experiments

As part of our Language and Communications class, we split into groups of four people and conducted a series of interviews. One person acted as camera tech, another sound tech, an interviewer and an interviewee. The purpose of the interview was to try and learn something about the interviewee that the interviewer didn’t previously know….