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  • Days like these with The Cat Empire

    Days like these with The Cat Empire

    Back in the early 2000s I was working as a Producer for a video production company called Tribal. Our boss (the inimitable Sharon Maloney) was looking to build a stable of young directors and so we were doing quite a few video clips. Back in those days there was no real way to make money off a video clip (the world of monetised YouTube channels was but a twinkle in some tech entrepreneurs eyes), but everyone needed a video clip to play on Rage or Video Hits. So most record companies viewed them as a necessary evil, but not one that they were willing to throw a lot of money at. It was therefore fertile ground for new Directors to try their creative wares, on a very limited budget.
    Thanks to the drummer of the The Cat Empire being my brother-in-law Will, I knew that the band were pitching for a production company to do the video clip for their latest single ‘Days like these’. Our Director Mike Metzner pitched a treatment with a ‘City of God‘ feel, and the band loved it, and so suddenly we were on our way to make a video with The Cat Empire!

    Location, location, location.

    Unsurprisingly, the budget didn’t stretch to us flying to Brazil to capture that ‘City of God’ ambience…but Mike had found an amazing location near the wheat silos in Collingwood. Nowadays these are the location for multimillion dollar apartments, but back then it was a derelict wasteland full of loose concrete and tall grass. As is tradition on high-budget film projects, the Director, Producer and Art Department spent a day in full-Summer heat moving blocks of concrete, whipper-snippering long grass and desperately pretending that this was exactly how they thought their career in the arts was going to play out. But by the end of the day we had a space that was never going to pass an occupational health and safety review, but could definitely pass as a South American slum. Best of all, we had managed to track down the owner of the land and got permission to film there.

    Bare feet was a ‘courageous decision’

    Shooting on film

    My kids delight in referring to any story I tell as being ‘from the olden days’. But the more I think about this part of the Cat Empire clip, the more I start to think they may be right, because we actually shot this on film!
    I can still remember the first DOP who shot an entire video on Digital and thinking he was some sort of sorceror (shout out to Ben Allan!) Because up until then, we shot pretty much everything that had to look nice on film. If we were shooting a TV commercial (TVC) we would estimate how many rolls of film we would need (each roll of film was 400ft and would give you about 11 minutes of footage…and in typing this, I’m suddenly wondering if that’s where the term ‘footage’ comes from!) Then you would order if from the Kodak factory in Coburg, and pick it up the night before the shoot. Sometimes when you were filming the TVC you might have used 300ft of film, but know that the next take might need more than the remaining 100ft, so the 300ft of used film would be marked up and set aside to be taken to a place in Elsternwick that would convert the film to a digital file, and then that digital file would be used for editing and colour grading.
    BUT, it also meant that we had 100ft of film that we got to take back to the office and store in a fridge. We had shot about 6 TVC’s that year and so from memory, we shot all of this video on what was in the fridge!
    We also shot on Super-8 and then also worked in some Mini-DV footage shot by the band.
    The final touch were some acetate stains that were created by two finished artists (Dom and Rich, who became known as ‘the stains department’) that were filmed and added in as a layer in post.

    Max Davis, superstar DOP…I’m guessing that’s Darrel Stokes in the red t-shirt…and probably Jack Kenealley’s hand on the dolly.
    Mike Metzner – Director, visionary…man who moved a LOT of concrete to make this happen

    Highlights of the day

    Cameos – At some stage the idea of everyone playing football (soccer) was changed to playing football (AFL) and so we got to see my father-in-law James rock up in full whites as the Umpire, and Melbourne jazz luminary Steve Sedegreen as ‘guy appalled by umpire’s decision’.

    Location joys – While cleaning up the location on the days leading up to the shoot we had found the name of the person who was securing the site, and from him had found the owner…who after some cajoling and $200 cash heading his way, had agreed to let us shoot there.
    Then about half-way through the day, a car pulled into the site and asked what was going on. I explained that we were shooting a video clip, and that we had permission from the owner, so it was all above board. He looked at me and said ‘That’s odd…because I’m the owner, and this is the first I’ve heard about it!’ Seeing that there was suddenly every chance that the entire clip was going to be over before it really began, I frantically began explaining that they were a great local up and coming band, and that we wouldn’t do any damage, and that ‘Gosh, isn’t this a funny situation for two wonderful men to find themselves in’. I think he saw the panic in my eyes and took pity and gave us permission to keep on filming.

    The whole day was probably worth it to see the wardrobe lady’s face when she saw the sunglasses Harry had chosen for the day.

    Surreptitious – At one stage while we were resetting for the next shot I walked past Andy Baldwin’s panel van, and found most of the band having a few cheeky beers in the back. I have no idea what I was worried about, but with all of the impotent power of a pool-lifegaurd asking teenagers not to sit on the lane ropes, I said ‘C’mon guys, you can drink after we’ve finished…and if you are going to drink, can you at least be a bit more surreptitious about it?!’ To my complete surprise they all stopped drinking and looked at me, and I thought ‘My God! I actually got a group of musicians to stop drinking and see my point of view! I clearly command a lot more authority than I had realised!’ Then I heard one of them say ‘Surreptitious. That’s a good word!’. Then they all laughed and continued drinking their beers.

    Pizza – We had arrived early in the morning to get set-up, then worked through a stinking hot day in the full sun, and finally wrapped in the early evening. One of my final duties was to order and collect about 20 pizzas from a place on Brunswick St. When I returned the crew were packing away the last of the gear, there were band-members and breakdancers and friends and family all sitting in the rubble of an abandoned lot as the shadows grew longer across the scene. The footy was still being kicked, we had managed to get everything shot, and I sat down to eat some pizza and left-over watermelon…it was one of the best days I’ve had on set.
    Best of all, thanks to the insane talents of everyone involved, the clip itself came together incredibly well.


    All good things come to an end

    One of the downsides to working with a song you like on a video project is that you get to hear it again, and again and again. In fact, if the person editing it doesn’t have headphones, you will get to hear two seconds of the song continually repeated as they try to make an edit work…it’s the best!
    But one thing I will never tire of, is seeing The Cat Empire perform live. I’ve been lucky enough to have followed them from their beginnings as the Jazz Cat, through to self-financing their first album, through to international fame. I will still happily put one of their shows at The Forum as one of the top 5 live gigs I’ve ever seen (the other four are; Gil Scott Heron, Morphine, Beck, and Rage Against the Machine…never let it be said I am anything but a middle-aged white man). So it’s a little sad to hear that the band will be playing the final shows as the current line-up at the end of the year.
    At the same time, to have survived and thrived in the music industry for over 20 years is a genuinely amazing feat, and to be able to retire on their own terms reflects the integrity that’s kept them together this whole time.
    So thanks to The Cat Empire for letting me be a small part of your journey, but most of all, thanks for providing such an incredible reminder of just how important live music is!

    Harry, full-noise at Fed Square.
    Felix and Olly at the Zoo
  • Paleo pears and patrons; surviving as a creative in government

    Paleo pears and patrons; surviving as a creative in government

    One of the biggest changes I’ve seen within the Victorian Public Service (VPS) over the past 15 years has been the ‘rise and rise’ of in-house creative teams.
    While a number of government departments have traditionally had a graphic design team, and over the last 7 years a number have built video teams, these teams have often been there to produce the ‘less creative’ outputs (Annual reports, video messages to staff, anything with the phrase ‘Getting to know the new HR portal’ in it, etc), while the creative projects were outsourced to Creative Agencies.
    However, over the last five years, the insatiable desire for new and engaging content that social media has delivered, has meant that Departments simply can’t afford to farm out every project that needs some creative flair…and so increasingly, they are looking in-house to deliver these videos, animations, and social tiles.
    But if creativity and bureacracy were dogs, they would spend most of their time barking at each other over the fence…so how can you make a career walking along that fence?!
    Well here’s what I’ve learnt.

    It takes a certain type of person

    I’ve been lucky enough to work in an advertising agency with a few creative teams, and watched as they were able to generate multiple ideas and concepts in response to a brief in a matter of hours, when it would have taken me days to generate just one…and I’ve been lucky enough to work with Directors, DOP’s and Designers with both an incredible vision on how things should ‘look and feel’, and the skills to make it happen.
    But I doubt they could have dealt with the constant iterative changes and dilution of concept that invariably happens in government work.

    Similarly I have worked with a lifelong public servant on a project that required about 10% creativity and 90% number crunching, report writing and briefing into senior people. I knew how time-consuming and boring the non-creative part was going to be and so I offered to go 50%-50% on the work…but the other person said ‘Oh no…I don’t want to do the creative part! You do that and I’ll do the rest!’

    Sadly it’s still true that within a bureacracy you can’t get in trouble for doing what has always been done and having it fail…but you can get in trouble for trying something new and having it fail. So the essential drive of creativity; to find new ways of doing things, is anathema to most public servants.

    So to survive as a creative in government, you need both a high tolerance for process and procedure, but also a willingess to take risks wherever you can.

    The paleo pear predicament

    A few years ago a Federal Government department released this video:

    The video was pretty widely panned, and a lot of people asked ‘How did this video ever get made, let alone approved?!’
    But I could see how it was approved…every individual part of it was fine from a Government perspective!

    Script – If a private company makes a video and it fails…then no-one really cares, after all, it was their money they wasted. But when a government department spends money on a video, then that is money provided to it by the public. So you can expect some pretty hefty scrutiny from the media. After all who doesn’t like getting incensed about what the government is wasting your tax dollars on?!!!
    The result is that Government departments LOVE videos that are scripted to within an inch of their lives. It doesn’t matter if you can see the soul of the person leaving their body as they say them…so long as the right words are said in the right order and no-one can take offence…then it will be approved.

    On screen talent – There are people who can take a dubious script and bring it life as if they really believe it…these people are call ‘actors’. There are also people who can successfully get a briefing note through a variety of sub-committees and eventually get a clause in a piece of legislation changed…these people are called ‘Senior Bureacrats’.
    Interestingly, while it is VERY rare that any Logie Award winners or NIDA graduates decide that they could probably be the Deputy Secretary of a Government department, there is no shortage of Senior people within a Government department who are quietly confident that they can give this ‘acting’ thing a shot.
    And nothing scoots things through the approval process faster than the person approving the video, seeing themselves in the video, as the Counting Crows sagely sang ‘When I look at the television, I want to see me, staring right back at me’.

    The ‘true creative’ will say ‘This script is terrible and the acting unconvincing…there’s clearly nothing in those coffee cups!!!’ and refuse to take part in the project.
    The ‘bureacrat’ will say, ‘This said exactly what the script said it would say…and my boss’s boss is happy…so it’s approved!’
    But the Creative in Government has to be able to find a compromise that will engage its intended audience…without alienating the people who are going to approve it.
    Failing that…just throw in a lot of ‘hawk’ sound effects and get them to walk slowy towards the camera.

    A Patron

    Just as artists in the Renaissance had patrons like the Medicis to support their work…any creative person working in government needs to find senior people within their organisation to champion their work. When I was starting out in the public service, I was incredibly lucky to have a Secretary (Gill Callister) who not only believed in using video as a comms tool (when a lot of senior execs didn’t), but was also really engaging on camera. But you won’t always have the person at the top of your organisation going in to bat for you, so you need to foster relationships with anyone you can who has some sway.
    One of the good things about people automatically wanting the most senior person possible to appear in a video, is that as the person who makes the videos, you get a lot more 1:1 time with people you otherwise wouldn’t. And not just any sort of 1:1, a 1:1 where they are vulnerable and looking to you for advice. These people did not get to where they are by ignoring good advice, so get in there and dazzle them…and then, most importantly, work your arse off to make sure their project is a success! I can look back at my career and identify at least 5 projects, that I knew at the time were really important to a key person in the department and so I worked my guts out to make them work. When they did, the payoff of having someone in the upper echelons of the organisation willing to go in to bat for me made it all worthwhile.

    Surround yourself with good people

    Over 10 years ago I started a group called ‘The Secret Society of Government Video Editors’, which as the name suggests, was a collective of the people doing video work within the VPS. While there were of course advantages in terms of being able to share equipment and expertise…the real reason it has existed for over a decade is that it’s really nice to have a group of people you can chat to and say ‘Have you noticed the way that everyone who isn’t us is really annoying and doesn’t recognise our genius?!’ A sympathetic ear is one of the most appealing physical attributes for a creative! After all, only a creative will know the pain involved in any file named ‘Videomessage_final_V11_revised_newmusic_approved_FINAL.mp4’ or the horror of a design brief that requests a diagram that is “clean and simple, but that works in these 17 processes and 4 thesuaruses worth of words, and represents the circular basis of the main process, but DOES NOT feature any curves or arrows, and really shows how great this new project is but without being celebratory…and we needed it in 10 minutes ago.”
    So surround yourself with other creative people whenever you can. Look for people who challenge you. Try to work with people with different genders, and cultural backgrounds, and life experiences…and make sure that the work you produce reflects these differences, as that’s what’s going to make content that really connects with an audience as diverse as the Victorian public.

    But most of all, revel in the fact that the demand for creative content within Government is only going to increase, and you have the chance to be part of this bold new world. Plus any job that offers both creativity and relative job-security, is pretty awesome.

  • Making video content – approvals.

    Making video content – approvals.

    I often like to compare making a video to baking a cake; they both have a range of ingredients, you can make them in a variety of ways…and when they go wrong, everyone is looking for someone to blame!
    But most of all, if you’ve never made a cake and someone showed you some eggs, flour, butter and milk on a bench…you’re unlikely to say ‘I can totally see how this is going to be a delicous cake!’
    Similarly with video, if you’ve never made a video, it can be very hard to look at a very rough cut of a video and imagine what the final product is going to be like.
    Given that the majority of people who are approving your video have never made one, when is the best time to show them the video to get their approval?

    Stage 1 – The ingredients and the assets

    Clearly a cake.

    Just as there is no use in asking someone to have a spoonful of cocoa and a raw egg and hope they will approve of your culinary skills, asking for approval based on interview footage and a guide music track is a complete waste of everyone’s time.
    So I’m going to ignore this as an option.

    Stage 2 – The batter and the rough-cut

    Batter up!

    In cake terms, this where you’ve mixed all of your ingredients together…but it hasn’t gone into the oven.
    In video terms, this is where you’ve got your rough narrative (ie you’ve edited the interviews down to what is going to be said in your video), you’ve got some basic cutaway footage (the footage that is going to visually tell the story of the video) and you’ve got a music track as a reference (the music tends to drive the emotion of the video).
    Seeking approval here can be a really good option if you’re not sure about the narrative of the video. In non-scripted videos (which is the vast majority of the work that my team does), you’re at the mercy of what your interviewees have said, and so sometimes the narrative of the video can be different to what was initially intended (and more importantly, what those further up the approval chain were expecting). So getting it approved now can save you a world of pain if you keep working on the wrong narrative…only to find you have to go back to the drawing board after the first person who sees is says ‘NO!’
    A chocolate cake can take on feedback and become a jaffa-cake really easy at this stage by just adding some organge juice and rind…but it’s a LOT harder to make it a jaffa cake if you’ve already baked it!
    The counter-point to this, is that for someone expecting a cake…it looks nothing like a cake! If the person approving this is expecting a video, and instead sees something with minimal cutaway footage, terrible transitions and a music track with a digital watermark*, they will freak-out and start distancing themselves from the video. People who have made it to a point in an organisation where they can approve things before the public see them…haven’t got there by associating themselves with failed products. So if you lose them now, you’re unlikely to get them back on board!
    Also, if a video doesn’t look like a finished product, people are a lot more comfortable suggesting wholesale changes (after all, there can’t have been much work gone into this if it looks so average!), so offering it around for approvals at this stage, may lead to more work than is necessary.

    * if you’re using music from an online music provider, you normally download a free version of the track to edit to and then purchase the track when the video is approved. To make sure you can’t use the free download version most companies have a recording of their name spoken throughout the track so that it’s unusable.

    Stage 3 – Baking and the real edit

    Cake…not just a 90’s band.

    This is possibly where the cake analogy falls apart. With the cake, you’re basically just throwing it in the oven, waiting, and then taking it out. With a video, you’re adding all of the cutaway footage, adding in the transitions, making sure edit points work to the music track, adding in graphics, and basically doing all of the things that make a video work as piece of communication.
    But, whether it’s for the cake or the video…this is going to be the most time consuming part.
    For me, this is when you want to present the video for approvals. This is pretty much exactly as you want the video to look, and is also what the untrained eye expects when they look at the video. By showing the video now you’re basically saying ‘This is what is going to be said, and this is the vision that’s going to accompany it. Are you OK with this?’ Not ‘This is kinda how it’s going to look…but it will be better…and this is what we’re probably going to say…what do you reckon?’
    Now clearly, you have spent a lot of time getting it from ingredients, to batter to this…and if you’re only now presenting it for approval and someone says ‘This was meant to be a flourless orange cake’…or ‘You know that the audience is allergic to eggs right?’ Then yes, you are going to have to go right back to the drawing board and start from scratch. And yes, you could have saved a decent amount of time by presenting it for approval earlier. But in reality, if you’ve misread the brief this badly, you may need to look at your pre-production process.
    In my experience, most of the time when presented with the choice between; a video they can use right now that they’re 90% happy with, or a waiting a week for a new version to approve…they will go with the one that they can use right now.

    60% Of The Time GIFfrom Paul Rudd GIFs
    https://tenor.com/embed.js

    Stage 4 – The icing on the cake and the final export

    The icing on the cake.

    Now look, cake by itself is pretty great…but add the right icing and you’ve got a masterpiece! Similarly, with a video, it’s stuff that you do now that will take your video from ‘good’ to ‘great’! Doing a colour grade, animating some graphics, creating captions and making a bespoke thumbnail, are the finishing touches that make you a professional.
    I’m yet to achieve the level of chutzpah that would allow me to deliver a video at this stage for approval, as there is just WAY too much work being done before you take on feedback…but if you can…then shine on you crazy diamond!!

    Yeah Csi Miami GIFfrom Yeah GIFs
    https://tenor.com/embed.js

    So there you go. Getting approvals for a creative project (especially within Government) can be a real balancing act. Getting approvals too early can see people distancing themselves from the project, or requesting unnecessary changes. Getting approvals too late, can mean that all of your work has been for nothing as you’ve headed down the wrong path and now have to re-trace your steps.
    But in my experience, erring on the side of doing more work and being able to present a video that is as close as possible to a finished product, is often what gets it across the line.
    Am I suggesting that this will work every time? No.
    Could there be factors in your work environment that make this approach unfeasible? Yes.
    Do I have a therapists worth of projects that have had to be re-done or scrapped altogether? Yes.
    But most importantly, do I now have a delicious cake to eat as a result of my wife making one for the photos in this blog? Yes…so I will see you next week, when I talk about being a creative person in a bureaucracy.

    Eyes only for the cake.
    Hoping this product placement will earn me a lucrative Tupperware deal.
  • Making video content – the 3 essentials

    Making video content – the 3 essentials

    15 years ago I joined the public service.
    I know this, because my eldest child is now 15 and I joined the public service when he was born, because I was sick of being made redundant in the video production world.
    In 2009 I was lucky enough to start the video team at DHS…and by ‘team’ I mean ‘me trying to teach myself how to shoot and edit videos, while desperately pretending that I knew what I was doing’ (full disclosure, my time in video production had been as a Producer…so I was really good at organising things, but not so good at the actual making of things).
    11 years and one department change later, I’m now the manager of a creative team with three visual designers and two videographers.
    A LOT has changed in this time for video. In 2009 only a few government departments had internal video people…now pretty much every deparment has a video team. Video used to be the high-end tool that was wheeled out to launch only the biggest and most prestigous projects…now videos are part of a daily social media content plan.
    But some things have stayed the same, and so I thought I’d share the three essential ingredients I believe every video should have…so essential, that my team won’t work on projects that don’t contain all three!

    Essential 1 – A Story

    The days of people watching a video simply because it’s there, are gone…nowadays your videos need to engage and retain your audience. The best way to do this is with a story.
    You can list the benefits of your new project or initiative as much as you like, but people don’t connect with projects and initiatives…they connect with people. So if you want to connect with your audience, you need to tell a story about how your project or initiative has benefited a person, or a family or a community.
    So for example, training and apprenticeships are a great idea and you can talk a lot about the levels of funding and courses available…but that’s not going to make for an interesting video.
    Or you can show the story of someone who grew up watching motorsport with her Dad and asking what things were and how they worked…and who has now done training in motorsport and has her Dad asking her what things are and how they work

    Or someone who was originally a florist, and is now driving heavy machinery on major projects:

    Never underestimate the power of a story!

    Essential 2 – A Storyteller

    Once you have your story, you also need someone who can tell the story in a way that will engage with your audience.
    Now I know that the first option most people think of is to get the head of the organisation, or the CEO, or anyone in a senior role to do the talking on camera. After all, these people can say ‘This agile project will deliver key outcomes to our stakeholders and offer synergies with the sector’ without even flinching!
    Plus, nothing helps get a video approved quickly, quite like having the person approving it, also being the star.
    But I can promise you that it will not resonate with an audience, as it just won’t feel authentic. What you need is someone with an actual experience of what your video is focussing on…and if they’re too nervous or shy to talk on camera, then you need one of their peers, or a frontline worker who has seen how they’ve changed. In short, you need someone who your audience is going to like and want to listen to.
    If you go with the boss, you will get all the right words in the right order…but if you go with someone who is actually telling their story, you’ll get a little piece of unscripted magic that people will genuinely engage with.

    https://vimeo.com/372272765
    Let your story teller tell their story in their own language

    Essential 3 – A Visual Element

    Video is a visual medium. So you need to tell your story visually, and you need to engage people visually. If you look at any of the videos above you will see that only about 10-15% of the footage is the person talking to camera, that vast majority is footage that tells the story and engages the viewer.
    So before you commit to a project, ask what is the visual element of this video. If the project is a consultation, or a roundtable or a mentorship…just be aware that the footage of people talking to each other will be engaging for about 6 seconds…after that, you’re going to be in struggle town. If you absolutely have to make a video about something that is ostensibly about peope talking to each other, then it may be better to keep your powder dry and make a video about what the consultation/roundtable/mentorship actually resulted in (as that’s much more likely to feature people actually doing something…rather than discussing the many somethings they may or may not do!)
    Also, the reality is that if you’re posting your content on social media, there is a VERY strong chance that the video will start playing without any audio, so you will need some REALLY engaging visuals if you want to convince people to unmute the audio and keep watching.

    Even if your footage is just people talking…you can still make it visually engaging.
    Dance = easy to show visually,
    Farming = easy to show visually
    Psychology = not so easy to show visually

    So there you go, the three things we demand are part of any video project we commit to creating.
    Next week I’m going to talk about the challenges of getting a video approved…especially in a Government context.

  • iPhone photograpy …the follow up edition

    iPhone photograpy …the follow up edition

    A few weeks ago I wrote a post about using my iPhone on an overnight hike. Regrettably this did not result in Apple swiftly getting in touch and insisting that I take up a role with them as their official photographer. In fact all it did yield was some people asking me how I actually got the shots to look like they did.
    Now clearly, only an idiot would give away their trade secrets…so here I go.

    It’s not about the technology…no wait…it is!

    Earlier this year I upgraded from an iPhone 6 to an iPhone 12 Pro. Now I can promise you that if you have an older phone, then the tips I’m going to give you will help you get better photos…but I also know that if I had taken these photos on my old phone, they wouldn’t have looked anywhere near as good. And besides, the battery would only have lasted for the first 35 minutes of the hike.
    Composition and technique help…but so does millions of dollars of Research and Development! So as with most things in photography, the more money you throw at your equipment, the more people say ‘How did you get that photo?!’
    But telling people you can take better photos by dropping $1,200 on a phone seems like the sort of advice that inevitably leads to a global financial crisis (albeit one that is beautifully captured in photos on Instagram), so here are some tips that won’t cost you a cent!

    Light bro

    We’ve all had that experience of incredible light. Whether it’s the last fading light of a summer’s day, or the first golden rays in the morning, or that incredible light that comes after a big rain storm. You can take pretty much any photo in that light and it will look amazing. Why? Because the light is being diffused. Whether it’s because the sun is just rising or setting and so is only hitting you with about 10% of its light…or because the light is being reflected around by moisture in the air. The result is beautiful soft light.
    The antihesis of this is pretty much any photo taken in Australia from 10am – 5pm, where the brutal sun just a makes everything look flat and unispired.
    So the first step to getting a great shot on your phone is to get up nice and early when that light is at its subtle best.

    ‘I love the look of Pano mode in the morning!’

    Setting the exposure

    If you have your phone with you…bwah ha ha! Just kidding. Of course you have your phone with you! So seeing as you have your phone with you, load up the camera and find a shot where there is something bright (a window or light), and something dark (perhaps an open cupboard or shaded area), and then put your finger on either of these spots. When you put your finger on the bright part, you should see everything else get a little darker…and when you put your finger on the darker part, you should see that the everything gets brighter (to the point where the bright part gets really bright).
    I know what you’re thinking ‘Cool story Chris…but how does this help me?’
    Well, the reason this is happening is because normally your phone is looking at a scene and trying to find the right balance so that the bright parts aren’t too bright and the dark bits aren’t too dark. It’s a bit like making a decision by committee, you don’t come up with the best result…just the one that people hate the least. When you put your finger on the screen you are telling your camera ‘This is the part that I want you to get right…and everything else can just work around it!’ So for example with this shot, it’s the colour in the sky that draws you in.

    More cloud…less guano.

    But if I had just taken this photo as the phone wanted to take it, it would have tried to capture the detail in the shadows on the log in front, or the hills, and so would have added a lot of light…and in doing so, would have made the sky a white mess. So I put my finger on the sky, told the phone that this is what I want it to get right, and this is the result.
    Tragically I have missed out on highlighting the beauty of the birdshit on the log…but these are the sacrifices you have to make as a photographer.

    Similarly if you’re ever at a gig or a concert and someone is up on stage with a spotlight on them, press on the screen where their face is so that the phone knows to expose for that and it will make the background really dark, but have them perfectly lit.
    There was a distinct lack of spotlights on the hike we did…but there some burnt out tree stumps…so exposing for the person’s face in the full light, made the blackened stump fall away to a perfect black background.

    Stand in this burnt out stump son…Daddy’s taking a photo.

    Composition

    I think we’ve all had the experience of walking into an incredible natural scene, being overwhelmed and taking a photo…then thinking “Wait…that looks a lot more shit than I remember!” I call this the ‘Every phone photo ever taken of the moon’ phenomenon.
    My non-scientific belief is that the experience you have is of feeling humbled by all that you’re taking in, but your phone can’t replicate that feeling (an iPhone 12 makes you feel many things…but ‘humble’ is not one of them).
    My photographic approach to dealing with this is wonderfully contradictory!
    First and foremost you need something in the foreground to give the grandeur behind it some perspective.

    At the same time…going for the ‘Pano’ approach allows you to take in a larger portion of the scene, while getting rid of a lot of the sky and ground (I think as humans we can see a bit of sky and a bit of the ground and imagine how the rest of the sky and ground looked). Unless the sky or the ground is the part that’s interesting, focus the viewer’s eyes on what you want them to be looking at.

    Also, speaking as someone who once had to ‘stitch’ 3 photos together in Photoshop (before this was an automated process)…the fact that you can just wave your camera around a scene and your phone will turn it into something comprehensible, is as much a modern-miracle as any life-saving drug!

    Get low

    We spend most of our lives walking around and looking at things from between 5-6 ft high. So if you want your photo to get people’s attention, try shooting from a different height. In particular…get low…especially if there’s water around for a reflection!

    Crystal clear reflections

    Getting high can also help your photography…but that feels like a different blog.

    https://imgur.com/r/thesimpsons/1Lw5r5S

    Post-production

    This may come as a shock…but I didn’t buy a special edition iPhone to take my black and white shots…I actually converted them to black and white in post-production! Similarly, I will almost always adjust the contrast, or pull back the exposure, or raise the shadows, or add a vignette to a photo before I publish them.
    The person looking at the photo doesn’t get to smell what I was smelling or hear what I was hearing…so I’ll be damned if I don’t try my best to engage them visually!
    All of these options built into your phone, and you can ‘undo’ any change you don’t like. So start experimenting and see what you can do!

    Straight out of the phone
    With some tweaking

    If you have access to something like Adobe’s ‘Lightroom’, then you can have even more fun working on your photos…just try to get past the ‘add heaps of ‘clarity‘ to everything’ stage as quickly as possible. Like ‘instant noodles’ and ‘undercut’ haircuts, we all have to go through that stage…but it’s nothing to be proud of.

    So there you go…some free tips on how to raise your phone photography game…for everything else, just drop a distressing amount of money on a new phone!

    Up the creek…with paddles
  • ‘Get back to work Stewart!’

    ‘Get back to work Stewart!’

    ‘Are you back in the office yet?’ is now pretty much the follow up question to ‘So… what do you do?’
    The world has gone through a seismic shift in how and where we work…and the push is now on to get things back to how they used to be. But I’m not going to be leading the charge back in to the office five days a week, in fact I think this is a once in a generation chance to tilt the balance back in favour of workers. So I’m no expert…but here are my thoughts on returning to the office.

    A bit of history

    The Industrial Revolution saw work move away from the home and farm, and into factories and cities. Employers needed people to work in their offices and factories, and workers needed money…so the happy relationship between employers and employees began. The employers would say ‘How about you work 7 days a week and we’ll let your children work alongside you for free?!’ and the employees would say ‘How about we go for 8 hours of work, 8 hours of rest and 8 hours of play and we celebrate with a public holiday?!’ This happy game of tug-of-war has been waging ever since.
    I think that over my career the balance has been gradually heading in the employer’s favour. Where it was once expected that people would do their best Dolly Parton and work from 9-5, that eventually became ‘look we’re not going to say that you can’t leave at 5pm, but we ARE going to create a culture that makes it frowned upon’…and then eventually, ‘of course you can leave at 6pm…but we WILL expect you to respond to emails at 10pm’.
    The trade-off for this has been impressive wages growth…Bwah ha ha! Just kidding! Wages growth has been falling spectactularly over the last 10 years. In fact, unless you’re someone like a CEO or a politician who can vote on their own payrise, you’ve probably been working longer hours for little or no extra money.
    Now of course these extra hours also come at the expense of time doing things you actually want to do, like spending time with your family, or doing exercise, or catching up with friends.
    So are we doing all of this extra work out of the kindness of our hearts? Nah. We just have mind-blowing levels of personal debt (an average of $250K per household), and you know what’s a real-great motivator for doing whatever is asked of you so that you don’t lose your job? Knowing that you’re only just keeping your head above water with that full-time job…and that losing that job would probably see you lose where you live.

    Enter the Pandemic

    Suddenly the working world headed home. After years of being told that ‘we can’t have people working from home regularly as we don’t have the IT systems to support it…and besides we don’t REALLY trust you to work if we can’t see you!’, we miraculously discovered that in fact we could.
    We also discovered, that just as in Industrial Revolution times, it was a terrible idea to have your kids with you at work, as they drain your broadband signal and ruin your Zoom meetings.

    But a lot of people also discovered that not having to commute to and from work every day gave them a couple of extra hours in the day. For me this meant that I could get out for a good run or bike-trainer session, have a shower and still be ready for work at 9am.
    When the kids returned to school, it meant I could do pickups and drop-offs and have those great conversations that only happen in the neutral territory between school and home.
    It also meant that instead of only cooking decent meals on the weekend when I had the time, I could now cook a healthy meal from scratch every night!

    As a human

    So as a human, despite the existential dread that comes with a pandemic, I can’t remember feeling more fulfilled than over the past 15 months. The concept of work/life balance, has become more of a reality, with work having to sit alongside the little things that make you a good person, rather than dictating what little time you have to devote to them.

    Now I totally realise that this is 100% my experience and is in no way reflective of other people. But outside of people with corner offices and a PA to do their photocopying, I haven’t heard a whole lot of people saying ‘I can’t wait to get back in the office 5 days a week!’
    So I’m really hoping that we don’t just blindly go back to what we were doing before COVID-19, as I feel that we have been given an incredible opportunity to take stock of what works for us as people, not just employees.

    *On the off-chance that there is any confusion…clearly these are my opinions and not in any way those of my employer. I am speaking purely on my own behalf.

  • The best camera is the phone you have with you.

    The best camera is the phone you have with you.

    There’s an old photography adage that ‘the best camera you have, is the camera you have with you’. In other words, it’s no use bemoaning the fact that you don’t have your $5,000 camera as a Yeti rides past on a Segway…you need to use whatever you have at your disposal to capture this moment!
    For the last 10 years this ‘camera you have with you’ has been a phone camera, and over the last 10 years the phone camera has evolved from ‘if you squint you can kinda see what I was trying to capture’ to ‘this is only half as bad as I would have done with my proper camera’. But last weekend I went for an overnight hike with my family at Wilson’s Prom, and my iPhone got promoted to ‘this is the only camera I need!’
    So I thought I’d write a quick blog post about how it felt to take my proper camera gear with me…and never take it out of its case.

    ‘So I just push this button?’

    There is a very specific feeling of dread that happens when someone offers to take a photo with your camera. Invariably this will be when you’re taking a group shot, and someone will say ‘Hey, do you want me to take the photo?’ Sadly, societal norms mean that you can’t respond by saying ‘That depends…are you going to f*&# this up?’ So instead you will switch all your settings to ‘auto’ and say ‘Just press this button. No, not that button…this button’. Then they will hold the camera at arm’s length as if it’s a feral cat that’s trying to maul them to death…will press a button other than the one that you told them to…will frame the photo so that it’s only your upper-bodies and 3kms of sky above you…and when you look at the photo, while everyone else is smiling, you have a look of ‘WTAF are you doing?!’ on your face.
    But put a phone in their hands, and people will happily snap a series of in focus, nicely framed images where you are actually smiling…like this one!

    About to embark on our first family overnight hike

    ‘OK guys…just hang on a second, Dad’s just going to take a photo’

    You had best believe that any time this sentence is uttered…the response is a series of groans.
    Worst of all, these groans are 100% justified. Because the translation of the sentence is actually ‘Hang on for five minutes while Dad breaks any momentum that we’d generated so that he can unpack his camera, then decide he needs to change lenses, then get increasinly angry as no-one is able to re-create the happy scene that had inspired him to take out his camera five minutes ago’. But with a phone, you can simply take out the camera as you walk and get the shot.

    On the way to Sealer’s Cove
    On the boardwalk pt 1
    On the boardwalk pt 2
    Bowl of porridge…and a bowl of coffee. Camping done right!
    Zero fear of wading through water to take the shot.

    Yes, but Chris, I’m an artist!!

    Of course you are! And you will not be able to take epic landscape shots that you can blow up and print for your wall…or take tack-sharp portraits…but DAMN you can get pretty close!!!

    Wide-angled black and white. Would I have loved to have had a dancer creating a similar shadow next to this branch? Yes…but dancers were very thin on the ground at Sealer’s Cove
    Pano mode in the morning
    Crystal clear reflections
    Trees and reflections of trees
    More early morning shots. Pano mode with the wide-angle
    The old ‘get them to stand inside a burnt-out log and look towards the sky’ shot.
    The morning sun was breaking through the foliage in this one spot, so exposing the shot for that bright light made everything else fall off into darkness…or I carried a softbox and strobe for the entire hike in the hope of getting this shot. You decide.

    Photos on the run

    There may be times when I decide that it’s worth carrying the extra weight of my proper camera on a hike or bike ride…but there is NO chance I’m carrying a camera when I’m out for a run. Because I simply don’t need to make that any harder than it already is. But at the same time, I tend to do most of my running in the early morning as the sun comes up, and there have been many times that I’d wished I had a decent camera with me. Now I’ve got the best of both worlds. Now I can carry my phone, listen to podcasts, and if hypothetically speaking, there were an incredible sunrise…or a wallaby…or I see that the rest of family are about to paddle of up a river…I can take a shot!

    Up the creek…with paddles
    Pretty sure I’m being watched
    Sunrise over Tidal River
    Never pass up an opportunity to get a photo of a wombat

    So there you go. I don’t intend this to be an advertorial for any phone in particular…nor am I about to sell my Fuji gear. But what a time to be alive when I can get these sorts of photos out of the same device that I can also ignore your phone calls on!

  • My top photos of 2020

    My top photos of 2020

    As I count down the hours until I have to return to work for 2021, I thought I should enjoy my annual trip down memory lane by putting up my top 10 photos for 2020.
    Now I know that in the past I’ve done my top 18 in 2018, and my top 17 in 2017…but there is simply no way I can be bothered doing 20 photos for 2020. I tore the tendons in my ankle, Ruth Bader Ginsberg died…and I’m pretty sure there was something else that happened that wasn’t good. So in no particular order, here are my top 10, and you can just assume the other 10 are screenshots from Zoom meetings where I’m saying ‘You’re on mute’.

    National Photographic Portrait Prize

    My lanyard and program from the National Photographic Portrait Prize

    Impressed with how many times I can work the fact that I was a finalist in the National Photographic Portrait Prize (NPPP) last year into conversation? Well you should be…and you should be glad I now have to devote equal gloating time to this and the Ironman I did in 2015.
    This is a photo that acts as proof that it actually did happen. I actually did get to go to Canberra, and see my photo hanging in a gallery, and get a lanyard with that photo so that people could decide if they wanted to come over and talk to me about it, and that the event where it was all going to be announced had to be scaled back drastically because of COVID restrictions…and I thought that this was DEFINITELY THE WORST THING THAT WAS GOING TO HAPPEN TO ME AS A RESULT OF THE PANDEMIC!!!
    Good times…good times.

    Horsing around

    Black hats and colourful ribbons

    The day after the NPPP, we took my daughter and niece to The Saddle Club where they learnt how to groom, feed, saddle, and ride horses. In my head this was going to be an amazing place to get some photos…in reality, it was bushland that was recovering from recent bushfires and was in full sun that made everything look ‘meh’.
    But at the end of the day, one of the instructors was walking along a corridor inside the house and I saw this photo opportunity. So all hopped on the confidence that being a finalist in the NPPP (and also an Ironman) brings, I asked if I could take a quick portrait, and this was the result.
    I love the colours, and the light, and the fact that Grace was rocking a hat that I could never dream of wearing.

    Opportunities and bees

    Abandoned shed on the road to Warrnambool.

    The last couple of times I’ve driven to Warrnambool, Google Maps has taken me via Camperdown and past this abandoned house/shed. Each time I’ve seen it I’ve thought “That would be a great photo!” But each time I’ve also thought “I’m already late for whatever it is we’re filming in Warrnambool so I can’t stop!”
    But late last year I was heading home from a job (there’s nothing better than driving to Warrnambool, doing a days work and then driving home at the end of it!) and I saw the shed, and I saw the wheat, and I saw the skies, and I realised I had to pull over and get the shot or I would never forgive myself.
    So I found a spot where I could park, and waded my way through the waste-high wheat, keeping a keen eye out for snakes. When I got to the shed I could see a small swarm of bees by the door. I’m not particularly worried about bees, and have a strong belief in ‘If you don’t bother them, they won’t bother you’. So I took a few shot in and around the shed. But the whole time, there were a few bees flying around my head…then they started landing in my hair, then they started stinging my head, then I started flailing my arms wildly and running at high speed through the wheat back to the car, all the while trying not to drop my camera or get bitten by a snake (although I did wonder if I got bitten by a snake AND a bee at the same time, would I get super-powers?)
    Mid-scamper back to the car I looked back at the shed hoping I wouldn’t see a plague of bees coming my way…instead I saw this shot. I took one shot standing up, and then another crouching down to make the wheat the foreground.
    I was really happy with the result…and it nearly made up for the long drive home with bee-stings in my forehead.

    Just a test

    Portrait of my Dad

    If there were a theme to the portrait shots that I’m really happy with, it would be ‘people not smiling, but not unhappy, in black and white’. This is a case in point.
    On the last day that I had the GFX (Fuji’s Medium format camera) I spent the whole day taking portraits with my softbox. Dad was the first cab off the rank and so this shot was literally a test shot to dial in my settings. The shot was badly over overexposed, but the incredible amount of data in the medium format images meant I was able to pull it back in post-production, and it’s one of favourite photos from the day.
    It’s also a fitting tribute to Dad’s ‘Lockdown beard’.

    They shoot piers don’t they?

    The early bird

    As mentioned in the previous photo, I was lucky enough to borrow an eye-wateringly expensive camera from Fuji and play with it for a couple of weeks. During that time we went to Lorne and one morning Josh and I got up super-early to take some photos down on the Lorne Pier. I got some really nice landscapey photos of the pier…but I always much prefer to have a human element in my shots. We were just about to go when this old guy in a bright yellow jacket started walking down the pier, I took a few snaps…and this one with the bird just above him just really clicked with me. I liked to imagine that he was such a wily fisherman that he always got the fish, and the birds knew it…that’s why they were circling him.

    Outfoxed

    An extra from a Wes Anderson film if ever I’ve seen one

    In that wonderful time in between lockdown 1 and lockdown 2, we were lucky enough to get to Bright. The place we were staying had a billabong, and so I got up to get some ‘sunrise over water’ shots. I knew that these were going to be purely landscape shots, so I put my wide-angle 10-24mm lens on and trotted down to the billabong. As I stood there trying to work out the best shot, I heard a noise behind me. I assumed it was one of the kids coming to see what I was doing, but when I turned around I saw this fox. Now I know that foxes are pests and eat native animals…and so I shouldn’t have been so stoked to see it. But in my defence…check out that tail!
    The problem was, I was stuck on my wide angle lens, so unless I could get really close to the fox, it was going to be a very small part of a larger picture. I walked to a different part of the billabong, and noticed that it followed me the whole way. It always kept a safe distance…but was clearly interested in what I was doing. So I just settled into one spot and waited. Sure enough, it came in a bit closer, and then a bit closer still. If I moved the camera in front of my face it moved back, so this was taken from the hip and with a lot of faith in autofocus.
    To be honest I just wanted a memento to prove that this really did happen…I didn’t need to hear ‘Dad’s seeing foxes again’ from my kids.

    ‘Bones’

    Sandy Point legend ‘Bones’ on his way to the surf

    At the very start of the year, Holly and Josh got surfing lessons from ‘Bones’. He’s an incredible character who has been part of Sandy Point for as long as we’ve been going there.
    I was out of surfing action as I had done my ankle and was still in a brace. But after the lesson I asked Bones if I could take a few photos. I was so relieved when he said ‘yes’ that I really rushed through the photos as I was paranoid about taking too much of his time. As a result, the photos were OK…but I didn’t think I’d really captured him as I see him.
    Fast forward 11 months and Josh and I are heading out for a surf and Bones is walking in front of us. I had the GoPro with me to take some shots in the surf…so I grabbed this shot. I love the clouds, the green and blue and the leading lines of the fences…but most of all, I had finally captured Bones as I saw him.

    Advanced photography in the surf

    Josh tearing up the waves at Sandy Point

    A good photographer should be able to see the shot they want, compose for it and then nail the execution. What they should NOT be doing, is setting their GoPro for burst mode and taking 10 shots in 3 seconds and simply pointing their camera in the general direction of their subject.
    So for the record, I knew that if I took this photo at this exact moment, then I would frame Josh inside the breaking wave as it crashed over me. Furthermore, I was not joyfully surprised when I looked back at the dozens one single photo and saw this.

    Caught by the rising tide

    Caught out by the rising tide

    I know that for someone who spent a LOT of 2020 not being able to travel more than 5kms from my home…I sure do have a LOT of photos from the beach! Actually the majority of these photos were taken during that brief window between lockdowns. At the time it seemed insane to be travelling from Sandy Point for one weekend, then Lorne the next…after all, we had the rest of the year to travel!
    Bwah ha ha! Bwah ha ha! Bwah ha ha ha!
    I can’t begin to desribe the number of times Katie and I thanked our lucky stars that we travelled while we had the chance!
    Anyway, this weekend at Sandy Point was meant to be the starting point of me borrowing the Fuji GFX. But in a magical example of the world mocking my best laid plans, the GFX body arrived in time…but the lenses didn’t.
    So I was down on the beach, during an incredible sunset, cursing the fact that I had a $10K camera…but no lenses that would fit on it, when these two guys got caught out by a wave that came up a lot higher than its predecessors and I took this shot.
    I was a bit filthy that I didn’t have the big medium format camera to get this photo, as the colours were so amazing…but in reality, this was such an instinctive shot, that I think I would still have been messing with the settings of the GFX as this unfolded before me.
    As they say, ‘the best camera, is the one you have with you.’

    2020 in a shot

    Our protector

    2020 was a year of many things for our family. A lot of time inside, a lot time feeling that people outside were having fun and that we couldn’t be part of it, a lot of time walking ‘all of Brighton’…and a LOT of time being super grateful to have our Beagle ‘Marnie’ in the house.
    I hope that after the front-line workers get their hard-earned thanks…the pets of Melbourne get some sort of acknowledgment for the work they did keeping us all together during COVID times.
    So here’s to the dogs!

  • Uncle Jack & the iPhone

    Uncle Jack & the iPhone

    5 years ago I was lucky enough to work on a video shoot with Uncle Jack Charles. It was for an organisation called Malpa who are working to address the vast inequality in health between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians. My job was basically to find a suitable location for the shoot (Malpa are based in Sydney, so they needed some local Melbourne knowledge). Never one to pass up an opportunity, I also bought along my camera to grab some stills during the shoot. I got some shots that I was really happy with…but this one haunts me to this day:

    So close…but just missing the focus on the eyes.

    This was taken literally as Uncle Jack was heading out through the house we were filming in. There was a light that just illuminated his face as we were walking and I quickly grabbed the shot. It wasn’t until I got it into Lightroom that I could see that I had hit the focus on his forehead instead of his eyes…I think I could have retired from photography knowing that I had peaked if I’d just got those eyes in focus!!!

    Thankfully that sort of thing doesn’t stick in my head, or keep me awake at night, or re-surface any time I look back at these photos. So when Malpa got in contact again and explained that they needed to film Uncle Jack for a TVC, and that due to the ever changing COVID situation they didn’t think they could travel down for it, and so would like me to do it…I jumped at the chance.
    I mean, had I Directed a TVC before? No.
    Did I have a camera that could shoot 4K? Also, no.
    Even if I could get a camera that shoots 4K, could I be trusted to shoot pictures and record audio at a quality that was acceptable for TV broadcast? No…again.
    But, did this provide me with my best opportunity to get an in focus portrait of Uncle Jack Charles? Yes! So I took the gig.
    Here’s how it went.

    Location, location, location!

    Malpa had said that they wanted a ‘grungy, Melbourne laneway’ for the location…but with $0 budget, there was no way I was going to find a cool laneway that we could section off for our use, and any other laneway that we tried to just rock up and shoot in ran the risk of traffic noise, people in their backyards, and of course if it was raining on the day, then we were stuffed. I also had some concerns about getting a man in his late 70s to walk along uneven cobblestones while looking to the camera delivering lines (the thought of the headline ‘Man who took out-of-focus photo of Uncle Jack Charles 5 years ago, now forces him to have a knee reconstruction after laneway mishap’ really didn’t appeal). But I found a few options near our house that had potential.

    Grungy laneway option

    Then on my morning run one day, I found a location that offered both ‘native bush’ and some graffitied walls that could offer ‘urban grunge’…and more importantly ‘place to film if it’s raining’. I pitched the idea to Malpa and they were happy with it. So I now had two locations…this was going to be great!

    Under a bridge…
    Native bush option


    As part of my rigourous pre-production, I headed back to the location in the mid-arvo, as this was when we were likely to be filming, to see if the light was ok. It turned out that there a significant difference in light between 8am when I had taken the photos…and 3pm when we returned. It was almost as if the sun had moved and become brighter over the course of the day…weird.
    Unfortunately this meant that the graffiti just near the bush location was out of action as it was in full-shadow and was too dark. But if we just headed over the bridge (about 200m) and down to underpass on the other side, there were some great options.
    We had two locations again…this was going to be great!

    Timing’s everything

    I got in contact with Uncle Jack to sort out a date for filming. Unfortunately, the first day that was an option for him was when I was going to be down at Warrnambool with the family, so I proposed a few dates in between when we got back from Warrnambool and when we headed to Sandy Point, but neither of these worked for him. Malpa were hoping to have the TVC’s ready for broadcast from Australia/Invasion Day, so our timelines were getting a bit tight. So I decided that if push came to shove, I could head back to Melbourne from Sandy Point to do the filming, and the return to Sandy the next day. The only day that didn’t work was Tuesday as that was when Josh and I were going to Tooraddin airfield for flying lessons, so I said to Uncle Jack “I can do any day after Tuesday”…and he said “Tuesday is great! Lock it in!”…and I thought ‘I think he’s messing with me!…but he’s somebody who has served time in Pentridge with Chopper…AND has worked with Hugh Jackman…I’m not going to risk it!’
    So it was agreed that Josh and I would drive from Sandy Point to Tooraddin, have our flying lessons, then drive to Melbourne to film in the late arvo. I wasn’t going to be doing the edit, so I could just upload the footage overnight and we could head back to Sandy the next day.
    Josh had been at the shoot 5 years ago…and I was keen for him to help out on this one as well.

    Josh and Uncle Jack in 2016
    Josh, Katie and Uncle Jack in 2021

    Fuji comes through

    I figured I was probably never going to get another chance to take some photos of Uncle Jack, and so decided to roll the dice and get in contact with Fujifilm Australia to see if I could borrow one of their Medium Format GFX cameras again. Against all the odds, and indeed against their better judgment, the magnificent Neil at Fujifilm made it happen! So I now had a confirmed time and location with an Australian National Treasure, a graffitied location that was going to make for an epic portrait, AND a medum format camera to take it with!
    This was going to be great!!!

    Can we shoot this on an iPhone?

    Unfortunately the date I’d locked in with Uncle Jack didn’t work for the DOP (Director of Photography…cameraperson) that I had hoped to work with. This meant that I would have to shoot the video, and seeing as I didn’t have a camera that shot 4K (one of the requirements for the final product), I was going to have to hire a camera.
    Now I CAN shoot on professional cameras, but in much the same way as I CAN eat an entire Tiramisu. Just because I can…doesn’t mean I should ( while both will lead to an amazing story to tell after the event…in reality, they will also lead to very high blood pressure, and no sleep).
    If you’ve ever seen a film crew, you may ask yourself ‘What are ALL those people doing? Surely they don’t need all of them!’ And 90% of the time that’s true…but it’s in those critical 10% of times where you need a dedicated professional to get the best camera shot, or realise that that there was a background noise that ruined the take, or someone to say ‘you missed a line of dialogue here’, or to realise that the shot was a little out of focus…that can make a difference between the success and failure of your entire project.
    With this in mind, I was a little wary of being the DOP, Director, Script supervisor, and sound recordist…especially if I was using a camera I didn’t know. So I asked to hire a friend’s camera that shot 4K and that I had shot on before…but promptly managed to miss this by a day.
    So I suddenly had a script, an amazing actor, locations, a fancy stills camera…but no video camera that could shoot 4K!
    Unless of course, I looked to use my new iPhone. After all, it shot 4K, did 10 bit colour, and had amazing autofocus & stabilisation. If I put my non-existent budget towards hiring some audio gear, and promoted Josh from ‘general dogsbody’ to ‘audio recordist’…and roped Katie into doing the clapper-board so that we could sync the audio, and using a reflector to bounce in light…then we might be able to make this work!
    At the same time, who the hell turns up to a TVC shoot with a renowned Australian actor and says ‘Look, I’m a trained professional who clearly knows what he’s doing…now if you could just look at my phone and deliver your lines, that would be great!’?
    So I did a LOT of YouTube research and eventually convinced myself that I could get the quality that I needed out of the iPhone…and acknowledged that one thing I do bring to a video or photo shoot is the ability to get people to relax and just be themselves. Could I do that while I was also trying work out f-stops and shutter speeds, and make sure I was in focus, and ensure I wasn’t moving the camera too much? Probably not.
    Plus, if everything went to shit, I would at least have my phone handy to call my DOP and blame them for everything that had happened…or use Google maps to find the nearest deep hole I could throw myself into.

    The shoot

    Josh and I left Sandy Point at about 9.30am and arrived at Tooraddin airfield in time for our flights. Any day where flying a plane for the first time is the second most scary thing you will be doing that day, certainly makes for an interesting life.

    Maverick and Goose…in that order


    We then drove back to Melbourne, picked up the audio gear, learnt how to use it, waited for Katie to finish work, then drove to the location. On the way there I saw someone driving a scooter with grey hair billowing from under the helmet…as we drew alongside, I realised that it was Uncle Jack. The man knows how to make an entrance!


    Once we are all at the location, we did a full run through of the script with a static camera…then did a variation with some camera moves, and took some stills.
    We didn’t really have enough to make a strong TVC with, but we still had our hero location under the bridge to do, so everything was going to plan.
    But as we were walking to the next location, I realised that 78 year old men don’t walk as fast 45 year old men who are running on adrenaline and anticipation. By the time we had passed the midway point between location one and two (the bridge between the two locations), I was starting to realise just how insane my idea of getting a shot from the top of nearby hill was. By the time we had crossed the bridge and I had explained that we just had to walk down the hill to the underside of the bridge…Uncle Jack said that he didn’t think he could make it down there.
    So what could I do?! Explain to a man who had fought against great injustice and who had overcome greater barriers than I could ever understand, yet was still willing to donate his time for a charity…that it was really important to my sense of artistic closure that he should suck it up and press on? Or come up with an alternative location and realise that it’s not all about me?
    So we improvised a second location…and it looked like balls…and then we filmed on the bridge as another option, but there was too much wind, and if we looked one way we had too much sun behind Uncle Jack…and if we faced the other way, we could see a housing development, that sort of ruined the vibe. But we got it done, and when the video came back from the editor, you’d never know there was a problem in the first place. Why? Because Uncle Jack Charles is a freaking genius, and the level of energy he brought to his performance could have carried any TVC…and because I wasn’t a jerk and insist he worked an Olympic distance cross-country event into a video shoot, he still returns my emails!

    So what have I learnt?

    • Always take on projects that challenge (and scare) you
    • Plan meticulously…but make sure you can improvise if you have to
    • Trust the technology and play to your strengths
    • Fujifilm Australia really do support their photographers
    • Katie and Josh are the best video crew you could hope for
    • Uncle Jack Charles is a genuinely amazing person, and I’m incredibly lucky to have had the chance to work with him

    The TVC will be on SBS from today…and here are some stills from the day:

  • 20 years in Preston

    20 years in Preston

    I’ve been pretty disappointed that the media seems to be fixated on the 20 year anniversary of the Sydney Olympic games…when something of equal importance happened in September of 2000, Katie and I moved into Preston. So to celebrate, here are my reminiscences on the last two decades in Melbourne’s North…based on the numbers.

    $166K

    In much the same way as I laughed maniacally when my parents spoke of buying a house for $40K…it now seems surreal to think that we were able to buy a house in Preston for just $166K…and we got it in this delightful colour!

    According to the computer at Bunnings, this paint colour is called ‘Whose idea was this?’ green
    Moving in to yellow
    Now hiding it with trees
    2000 – Some beautiful concrete in the backyard
    2020 – Believe it or not, we planted those two gum trees as tube stock when we moved in

    Joni Mitchell metaphors – 0, Carparks – 2

    While Joni Mitchell may have sung ‘They paved paradise and put up a parking lot’ as a metaphor for change, she only ever had the courage to sing about it. Preston, on the other hand, has put this into action!
    This is the Bingo hall at the Preston market

    The Preston Bingo Hall in 2009

    In a rare moment of clarity, this hall was transformed into a little hub where brewers and food vans could sell their wares. There was amazing food, great beer… and you could even get your haircut upstairs!

    They even got local artists to paint the walls

    It was the sort of place that those of us on the Northern side of the hipster proof fence (aka Bell St) were crying out for! On a Summer’s evening you could head over, have dinner, have a beer and the kids could frolic freely! Unfortunately they opened it during the middle of winter, when no-one wanted to venture out to a carpark to drink beers…and by the time Summer rolled around…it was gone, and so was the Bingo hall.

    We did gain some precious car spaces though!

    At the TAFE we also decided that despite they’re being; a train station, 2 x bus stops, and tram stops all within walking distance…and a bike path right out the front…it was probably time for some more car-parking spaces. So we lost a full basketball court and a tennis courts.
    Yay progress!!

    2 + 1 = 21

    To the untrained eye, this equation may look wrong…but NOT if you’re a property developer in Preston. Here you can see 2 houses and 1 hundred year old tree:

    By the power of Preston…I give you 21 townhouses in their place!!!

    We also converted a lawn bowls club into a multi-storey apartment complex…but the Trugo club and Girl Scout hall have remained derelict. We don’t like being predictable here in Preston.

    100% increase in songs written about us

    Yes, yes, yes, I know…”the house in ‘Depreston‘ by Courtney Barnett was actually about a house in Resorvoir”…I don’t care…’Dereservoir’ would have been a stupid name for a song.

    50% reduction in lawnmower shops

    There is a strip of shops on Murray Rd, just across from Preston West Primary School, that has retained its charm over the last 20 years. When we first moved in, of the 8 shops that were there…two were lawnmower sales and repair shops. Now admittedly I had seen other shopping strips that may have had two hairdressers…or perhaps two restaurants of the same nationality and not really batted an eyelid…but the fact that there were two lawnmower focussed businesses within 20m of each other always made me wonder what the back-story was. Had the two proprietors conspired to establish a lawnmower sales and repair hub in Preston that would draw people from near and far…or had one of the owners arrived at work one day, looked a few doors down and seen that a new shop had opened and was selling the exact same niche product that he was, and thought ‘Oh for F$&*s sake! Why here?!!”
    Sadly one of the lawnmower emporiums is now gone, and with only about 6% of the population still having a lawn, I don’t know how long the other one will remain. But back in the day when we used to have a back lawn that justified the owning of a lawnmower…I wheeled my lawnmower through the streets of Preston and got it serviced there and had the blades sharpened…and it was magnificent!!!

    The remaining mower shop…and the cafe that was originally called ‘The old lawnmower cafe’…despite not being an old lawnmower shop
    I love that this old-school milkbar still exists. It’s been a rite of passage for my kids to head up here and buy milk (and usually get given lollies by the family that run the shop!)

    There’s only 1 Preston Market

    My Mum used to take me to the Preston Market every Thursday as a kid. So there are shops at the market that I’ve been going to for over 40 years.
    I freaking love the Preston Market!
    Whether it’s homemade sausages from the butcher, or wallaby shanks, or the ‘Royal mix’ from the nut shop, or fresh fruit and veg from Paradise Fruit, or pasta, or cheese, or coffee, or felafel or legit French pastries…the Preston Market has it. And I will fight to the death to keep it!

    100% improvement in coffee

    For some reason Preston resisted the urge to provide decent coffee for quite a while. There was always coffee on offer, but it tended be at a strength that would appeal to interstate truckers…and a temperature designed to invite a lawsuit. But about 13 years ago it began to change. The first place to start making the coffees I had been travelling to North Fitzroy to purchase was ‘Tasties’…then ‘Pomona’ started roasting and serving their own coffee, then Pam Lane opened at the market and ‘Himalaya, Heralaya’ achieved caffeine perfection.
    But I will throw in an honourable mention to the coffee and biscuit place at the Preston Market (Coffee Central) whose lattes and Italian biscuits got this guy through a LOT of painting and renovating.

    Those eyes contain defeat…but that white paper bag contains delicious Italian biscuits.

    Other key metrics

    18 yrs of marriage
    3 kids
    3 dogs
    2 renovations
    9 jobs
    2 redundancies
    1 burglary
    7,300 coffees consumed (citation needed)
    1,560 trips to the market
    0 disputes with neighbours
    $16,500 The money my Mum convinced me to put towards a home deposit…instead of the modified Honda Civic I wanted to spend it on
    1 Street party
    17 early morning hot-air balloon spottings
    2 fox spottings
    23 Huntsman spiders escorted off the property
    1 person who described training greyhounds as being ‘better than having a yacht and taking it out to sea and having it sink’. Which continues to be the single best reason for me not training greyhounds…or sailing in yachts.
    5 geckos discovered in our shed

    A hell of a lot has happened in 20 years…and yet Preston hasn’t changed that much. I can still say hello to our 90 year old Greek neighbour Peter…and then use a combination of sign language and smiles to get through the remainder of the conversation. I can still head up to High St and get some amazing Chinese and Vietnamese food, it’s just that now I can also get gourmet pizza with bone marrow…or a tofu burger. I know that no matter how hard Vicroads tries to convince people NOT to drive through the red light at the corner of St Georges Rd and Cramer St…they will continue to do so. I know that even though I’ve tried to ‘walk all of Preston’, there will still be little laneways that will reveal themselves for the first time. I know there will always be a roaring Northerly to ride into along the St. Georges Rd bike path. And I know that I will be able to tell when it’s Ramadan by the number of cars parked outside the Mosque…and when it’s Chinese New Year by the dragon dancing in the market carpark…and when it’s 11.55pm on New Year’s Eve by all of the illegal fireworks being set off at Zwar Park.
    But most of all I know I’ve spent the best 20 years of my life here in Preston, and until I can work out how to permanently retire to a secluded beach shack with enough power for a coffee machine and enough wifi for podcasts, this is where I want to stay.