Behind The Scenes

Our new Parnell office in the City of Sails is finally finished and open for business…come say hi!

69 St Georges Bay Rd, Parnell, Auckland, 1052

We’ve spent the last 9 years producing video content across New Zealand from our hub in beautiful Queenstown. But, with projects taking us regularly up North, we thought it was time to open a second production office in Auckland. We couldn’t be more excited to become a part of the incredibly vibrant advertising and marketing culture here.

New offices mean new neighbours and we’ve got the best neighbours we could ask for in the Marketing Association, sharing the space at 69 St Georges Bay Road. Our Auckland team is small and growing fast and we’re excited by the opportunity to fill all the spare desks with new talent. In the meantime, Pete is heading up our film projects from Auckland whilst Zyanya will be our Queenstown based director. Completing the team in Auckland is our Senior Editor, Flo, and her Edit Assist, Millie.

We’ve always been about building spaces that function primarily to serve our creative work. Our Queenstown office has a studio downstairs, for example. And with the post production all running through Auckland, we knew we needed a purpose build post-suite to handle it. So we built one from scratch. Complete with a screening area for Directors, Producers or clients and soundproofing so we don’t become neighbours from hell! There’s even a wall of fame featuring behind the scenes polaroids from our favourite productions with our favourite people.

If you’re in Auckland, our door is always open and we love a reason to grab a coffee (which by the way is powered by Havana Coffee Works!) and chat. So pop in anytime! Although, it’s maybe safest to give us a call – in case we’re all out on a shoot somewhere!

So stoked that our work with Destination Fiordland just won the ‘Best Marketing on a Shoestring Budget’ at the 2022 TVNZ Marketing Awards!

SHOW ME THE GOODS!

We were recently honoured to collect the award for ‘Best Marketing on a Shoestring Budget’ at the 2022 TVNZ Marketing Awards in Auckland for our work with Destination Fiordland. We received this award in collaboration with Shotover and Strategy Creative for the viral Te Anau Time which was part of the wider Beyond Belief campaign.

This award recognises excellence in marketing for campaigns costing less than $30,000 and winning this award got us all reminiscing about one of our all time favourite productions back in 2021 (not to mention how the f**k we did all that with less than $30k!) Fiordland is famous for it’s remote locations, crazy weather and breathtaking scenery, so our small crew of 4 weathered storms and blistering sun to deliver this story in just 5 days. Creative development, production, editing, colour grading, sound design and motion graphics all created in-house with multiple deliverables from the hero campaign to the viral Te Anau Time TVC.

This award pretty much sums up one of our proudest values, that we can offer the best value for money in NZ. We don’t care about the budget, we’re always looking at how can we push the creative boundaries of a project because, ultimately, we want to come away feeling pride in our work and be so exhausted mentally and physically that we know it’s gonna be epic!

Our director pretty much lived in his waders for the 5 days as we filmed from sun up to sun down. We had 4 cameras and sound running almost constantly as we journeyed from forests and mountain tops to fiords, lakes and rivers. A typical day was generally a drive into the middle of nowhere, followed by an hour’s hike through the bush (with all the gear) to get to a boat and then casually hop on a helicopter to a remote lookout for sunset. Tough times!

Highlight?

There’s too many… but the sunset at Dusky sound, meeting Penelope the famous pig and finding hilarity in the craziest storm our production crew has ever encountered, would all be on the shortlist!

From Intern to Edit Assist, we’re pumped to welcome the newest addition to our Auckland production team!

“I love working in a place with other creative people, where I can be creative. I’m challenged and learn new things everyday”

Millie Ketchley has recently joined our crew in Auckland as an Edit Assist working in our Post Production team alongside our Senior Editor, Flo. This is something she’s been working towards whilst being our legendary intern over the past couple of months. Millie is one of the hardest working, talented and best people we could ever have imagined and we feel super lucky to have her on board. We sat down with her for a wee chat to distract her from all that hard work…

What did you want to be when you were older?

An astronaut

What’s your favourite movie?

Moonrise Kingdom because the editing is really cool, especially the monochromatic colour scheme, and the coming of age themes.

When was the first time you knew you wanted to work in a creative field?

When I was 11. I got really into Harmony Korine’s work. I loved the visually appealing aesthetic and knew I really wanted to do that kind of thing.

What do you love about editing?

It’s always different. You can put stuff tothether into so many different combinations and the end product can change so much as a result. Editing is like painting for me. I’ve never been able to paint but, with editing, I can create a form of art and make pictures come alive without a paintbrush.

What’s the best part of your job?

I love working in a place with other creative people, where I can be creative. I’m challenged and learn new things everyday.

Do you think AI can be used for editing?

Yes and no. I think it can be faster but not as creative. AI isn’t part of a team that can collaborate on the most creative outcome.