Joe Wigdahl 15/2/21 Joe Wigdahl 15/2/21

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.

Joe Wigdahl 22/5/18 Joe Wigdahl 22/5/18

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

Joe Wigdahl 28/2/13 Joe Wigdahl 28/2/13

Subaru 2013 Forester- Australia

In September I was asked by the Japanese advertising agencies Hakuhodo and Aoi Pro to take part in a year-long project shooting the new Subaru Forester as it began a drive around the world through some its toughest terrain. I shot stills alongside a motion/TVC production headed by the Australian cinematographer Daniel Ardilley with the Australian production handled by Dynamite Productions. I felt pretty lucky to be involved in this production as I knew I was going to be going to parts of Australia that I probably would never get the chance to go see otherwise and I'd be able to go up in a helicopter to get some great views of the incredible Aussie outback landscape. We first shot in a rather desolate spot outside of Broken Hill, where all the old Mad Max films were shot. While we were shooting we had to endure temperatures of 38°C and higher and the only things that seemed to occupy this blazing landscape aside from the occasional dry shrub were flies. Lots and lots of flies. It was my first time out in the real desert of the outback and I wasn't prepared for how that fine red dust gets into everything, so I spent most of my downtime when I wasn't shooting cleaning my camera and lenses. On our shoot in the Flinders Ranges we were climbing hills in 4x4s so steep that we ran the risk of flipping backwards. I still remember our location scout telling us before we had to drive up the longest, steepest hill of the track to get to one of our locations, "You have to commit to it and go forward and not stop. If you hesitate or stop, you will roll backwards and probably die. You'll also probably kill whoever is behind you." Nice. I don't tell my wife about those parts of the job.

Still, I had a blast shooting alongside a fantastic crew and production team and I enjoyed working with my clients so much that it inspired me to start learning Japanese. They were happy enough with my work on the Australian production that they brought me out to Norway in December to shoot another leg of the Forester's journey around the world. (I'll post images from that in a week or two.)