Mountain Culture Brewery's First Ad
I was asked by Mountain Culture Brewery to do a photo shoot for them- they needed an image for their first ever two-page spread ad in a major magazine. If you’re not familiar with them, Mountain Culture Brewery opened up in Katoomba a few years ago and immediately won “Best Brewery of the Year” in Australia, has produced the number one beer in Australia called Status Quo, and is now considered one of the best breweries in Oz and they make seriously good beers and have a lot of fun doing it. They didn’t really know what to do but being as gifted in marketing as they are in beer making, the brief from the owners was “We’re thinking something along the lines of a 1980s Burt Reynolds centerfold.” Owner and head brewer D.J. McCready turned out to be a male model natural.
It’s probably the hardest I’ve ever laughed on a shoot and I made sure in post production to give it some sweet 80s glamour soft-focus highlight bling.
ORIGIN Energy: Griffith Drone Commercial
Origin Energy asked Joe Wigdahl to shoot a motion spot featuring a new large solar panel installation on a shopping centre in Griffith, NSW Australia.
Origin Energy: Griffith Solar
Directed and shot by Joe Wigdahl
Editing by Cloud Herd Films
A few months ago, Origin Energy asked me to shoot a commercial of a new, large solar installation in the large rural town of Griffith, New South Wales. This is my first full motion ad that I’ve directed and shot and also my first motion spot featuring drone footage that I shot. It took several trips over several months to capture the installation and completion and many, many hours of driving to get back and forth from this distant country town.
ORIGIN Energy: Solar for Industry photo shoot
I recently shot a small library of images for Origin Energy’s solar division for both industry and residential uses. I’ve been using a drone more often lately in my advertising shoots where we need a variety of landscape shots to tell the whole story. This was definitely a shoot where using a drone was actually a real necessity and would have been impossible using a helicopter as I probably would have done 5 years ago.
Ad Campaign: Mitsubishi Eclipse Cross
A few months ago I shot a bunch of images for Mitsubishi for their new car in Australia, the Mitsubishi Eclipse Cross.
When we did this shoot this was the only Mitsubishi Eclipse Cross in Australia. It has a busy schedule and the only days I had to shoot it just happened to coincide with the Melbourne Cup race in Victoria, which is something of a holy week there. We couldn't find a location scout who was available (i.e. wanted to take time out of the Melbourne Cup festivities to find locations) so I had to go down to Victoria a week early and find my own locations. Because I really didn't know the Victorian countryside I started every morning looking at Google satellite maps for terrain and roads that might have something interesting to shoot on- especially private properties that looked like they had roads on them that we could get permission to use. I would then spend the next 12 hours driving every day combing over every road in that area and then try and contact homeowners that might have a nice road. After driving around 1000kms of small backroads, at the 11th hour I finally found a family that let us shoot on their land. We couldn't have asked for more amazing weather.
To do the aerial shots I worked with Flying Dragon, a drone company that specialises in high-end cinematography. I had experimented with several readily available drones like the Phantoms and the still image quality just didn't stack up for the size we were going to have to use for the stills. We had to use a camera that was over 30 megapixels to satisfy their print needs and the only drones that can hoist up a camera large enough to do that are the heavy duty 8 blade drones that require professional pilots and cost a fortune. The operator was in charge of the flight controls and navigation on one monitor and I controlled the camera gimbal and captures on the other. I have to say, despite the challenges of short flight times due to battery power, I definitely preferred using a big drone to hanging out of the side of a helicopter.
Client: Mitsubishi Eclipse Cross
Agency: Richards Rose Executive
Executive CD: Adam Rose
CD: Liam Hillier
Brickworks Portraits
I recently worked with the Sydney design firm DesignSuite on a range of portraits of some of the people who keep the huge Australian brick and tile manufacturer Brickworks running.
AD Campaign: Qantas Airlines
A new ad campaign that I shot for Qantas Airlines hit the streets last week. I spent the better part of last month working on it and among the many things that were great about this job were that I had the opportunity to use a Boeing 737 and a jet turbine worth several million dollars as props. I was really excited about the job because it was really about highlighting the real people and their stories behind every Qantas employee.
Creative Team: Agency: BWM Dentsu Asheen Naidu – Executive Creative Director Sarah Parris – Senior Art Director Kevin MacNamara – Senior Copywriter Bonnie Ledsam – Senior Account Manager Simon Holdaway – Senior Print Producer
AFS Construction
I was contacted by the firm Strategy Design & Advertising about shooting some reportage-style imagery for a company profile booklet for their client, AFS Construction. The goal was to make an ordinary, heavy-duty construction site feel like something interesting and dynamic so that they could really showcase what was unique about the equipment and crew of AFS.
A few months ago I was contacted by the firm Strategy Design & Advertising about shooting some reportage-style imagery for a company profile booklet for their client, AFS Construction. The goal was to make an ordinary, heavy-duty construction site feel like something interesting and dynamic so that they could really showcase what was unique about the equipment and crew of AFS. I had only 4 hours to get as much imagery as I could and it was my first time on an Australian construction site so I was pretty surprised when I had to spend the first 2 hours of the shoot in safety and regulations training, multiple waiver and release signings and pass two mandatory breathalyzer tests before I was allowed to even step foot on the site. While I was learning about evacuation points and procedures during fires, chemical spills and natural disasters I was watching the sun move and I was losing light. I was relieved to finally get on site with 2 chaperones and less than two hours left and was luckily able to get quite a good range of images. I was thrilled to see the final designed booklet and website that Strategy Design had come up with and these are the results:
After the shoot was done I was left a little exasperated by what seemed like an overabundance of caution. After thinking about it a bit more I had a change of heart when I started to realize how little caution was exercised on similar shoots I had been on in the U.S. When shooting on top of a skyscraper under construction in Chicago a few years ago the site foreman handed me a helmet, said, "Just don't fall off the side and you'll be okay," and then let me roam around on my own for several hours. I've been on work sites where I've seen fork lift operators drinking vodka before a shift at 7am, contractors rewiring a room with bare hands on live wires, and my own (unwise) safety decisions like shooting in a helicopter in the beginning of a massive electrical storm. The more I thought about how the Australians approach workplace safety the more I'm surprised that Americans seem so laissez-faire about safety- especially with the cost of healthcare and number of lawsuits there.
Project Credits: Agency- Strategy Design & Advertising.
Creative Director/Designer- Dan Mercer. Designers- Geoff Courtman & Christina Perry.
Photos of booklet and website courtesy of Strategy Design & Advertising.
