Too much to talk about here. But very quickly. Film-making has been my teacher. It has revealed my insecurities. My character defects. It has taught me empathy and the importance of objective-ness. It has allowed me a forum to work out my own demons. It has shown me forgiveness. It has given me the ability to study the human experience in a more immersive and intimate way. It has revealed my selfishness and shown me how to serve and love more.

Do you feel there is going to be a backlash to modern man’s absorption with connecting on devices or will they just come even more part of the human interaction? Is it the message or the medium that is the attraction? Why do you feel Facebook and other networks have become more compelling than flesh-and-blood communication?

I’d like to quote a friend Chad Terpstra. On Facebook I had asked a similar question, searching for perspective.

“I liken the social media binge with America’s recent outbreak in obesity. We as humans crave fat & sugar most of all because it’s rare in the wild and useful for our survival. So we devised ways to make fat & sugar the easiest and cheapest things to consume. Then we got fat and unhealthy. We also crave relationships. So we devise ways to make them easier and cheaper to facilitate. It’s going to come down to the individual to regulate their media use and not get fat and unhealthy in character.”

What is your creative process? How do you evolve your ideas into narratives? And then do you collaborate with trusted crew?

It is always changing and different depending on the project, but the passion projects usually come from a personal tension in life. An answer or a solution I am trying to uncover, so that it will stick, deep within my heart. So that I may be healed or help heal a friend. It is personal, like working out an idea in a private sketch book. I am not surprised when a film fails because the ideas are never complete. It is only my intention to get closer to truth. I am surprised when others resonate with anything I create because it makes me feel less alone.

Is there anything else you’d like to share?

“Get Back” was never supposed to be a film or an idea that was complete. It was an opportunity to turn the mirror on myself revealing the absurdity of how I was doing relationships. It was a way to put something on paper, so it was concrete, no longer floating in my head. So I could get back to loving my wife.

Watch, Interact and Listen to The Trip.

What is the origin of your latest project?

“It all starts off with the Goddamn moon.
That’s where they wanted to go, y’know.
They turned to me to make it happen.
My name is Jack Torrance. In 1969 I took America to the moon.
On a studio back-lot, with six actors, in North Western Nevada.
It was all a movie. I was…its director.”

The Trip is inspired by a real life event. The story originates in a dimly lit hotel bar on Tutuila Island.
The man we met over damp cocktail napkins at that bar gave us the name of Jack Torrence.
We could tell right away that he was singularly original. His step, his manner, his easy smile, all gave hints to a man who had lived an interesting life; his fine suit betrayed the fact that he had been well compensated for that life. Jack, a laid back 80 year old with an unforgettable voice.

The next day he took us on a ride across Tutuila Island. A passing comment we made about the NASA Mars project annoyed him, and it provoked him into telling us a tale of how the moon landing was fake. Listening to him was a bizarre experience.
The line between fiction and reality blurred. But the facts and details of his story were logical.

His story that day became the story of this movie. We did what he asked… “spread my story on fuckin iphones, mephones, youphones. Let people know”.

You tell this story across many mediums each medium tells the story in a different way. Can you tell us please why you wanted to express the story in so many formats?

Yes, The Trip is unique. We knew that we had a thrilling story and we had to find a way to reach the audience in an unusual way.

We approached one story in a few different ways. So you can watch, interact and listen to The Trip. You can watch a 10-minute cinema version; The rhythm of the narration here is down to the thrilling performance of Dan as Jack Torrance. It is short but epic.
(A limited special edition is also available on VHS), if you want more, you can spend almost 40 minutes listening to the soundtrack by Andrzej Smolik.

It is a concept album full of references to the music from the 1960′s and 1970’s such as Stan Getz, Astrud Gilberto, Lalo Schifrin and Ennio Morricone. Narrated by Dan Dunlap (There is an iTunes link)

Finally, you can immerse yourself in the interactive version where you decide how long it takes to go through the story. The interactive version of The Trip is a road movie consisting of 11 chapters. It is an immersive, chill out experience built around audio and video loops.

You can watch the film many times,discovering new visuals with each viewing. It is one of the first interactive films for the iPad, and it has just won Webby Award in Best Use of Interactive Video category.

There is one more thing… a large scale photo series made by Kasia. It is great to watch TheTrip on the screen of your iPad, but imagine looking atimages 2x4m big! It makes a difference!

Of course we all realise now that Neil Armstrong landing on the moon was all a hoax, but why did Jack Torrence decide to tell the truth now?

Let me quote Jack:

I know my story won’t change anything.
Christ, I might even sign my death sentence here.
But I couldn’t give two shits about it right now.
I can’t let these bastards live in the shadows any longer.
I know them. Yeah, I know their methods.
They rely on the fact that people haven’t gotten any smarter.
But the technology has.
Back in the 1960s all I had was a couple of cameras and a few archaic computers.
And that was enough to fool the whole world.
And now…what are we?… two thousand and fucking twelve.
How ‘bout that, Stanley??

This story about a moon landing, is in fact, in a broader perspective about technology and media manipulation.

The project asks about their role in our lives, in the 1960s and in the present day.
In 1960s it was easy to fool people using a relatively simple technology, so how about now, when governments and corporations have tools which Stanley Kubrick couldn’t even imagine?

The other thing is how willingly people expose every aspect of their life on Facebook, Twitter etc. Isn’t it a perversive dream of any Secret Policy?
When we combine all those facts together we can realise what Jack meant telling us that society has never been under such unbreakable control.

And what was behind your decision to use found footage? What were you looking for?
And where did you research the footage – was it a long labour of love?

We wouldn’t like to make a classic documentary film, you know, with a guy sitting in the shadow and telling about all those things. Our goal was to achieve that particular nostalgic retro feel that you can get only by using found footage.

It is great that we can now use lots of amazing footage for free, but it is not an easy process, sometimes we have to spend the whole day, literally the WHOLE DAY searching for one particular scene… or even more. This is a laborious sampling process and it’s exactly the same with the music.

Working together, how does your creative process work? Do your ideas usually work in agreement? What lessons have you learnt from this project that you’ll take over to your next – and what will that be?

As we told 1.4 some time ago, our collaboration is based on a principle… Dawid complicates, Kasia simplifies.

It is great to work with found footage, but after 15 months with the Trip we definitely now plan to go into a live-action direction.

Our next project is titled Bee Girl and this will be an erotic thriller, a 1970s sexploitation pastiche where Emmanuelle meets Dirty Harry.
We have just done a shoot with the leading actress and it looks great!
A very exciting project, less conspiracy theories, more sex and fun!

What’s your vision on how interactivity will evolve in the future?

No idea. We want to be surprised. We want to see the next big thing (or make it).
We are focused now on touchscreens and are developing what we call ‘Touching Interactvity’.
We want the spectator to believe that the character on the other side of the screen is
really feeling his touch and responds to it. Our goal is to create mood with sensual imagery and music and generate emotions and suspense through interactions. We are exploring a new territory, where the story is literally in the spectator’s hands.

What about Jack, how are things are going for him now?

We have to protect his real name and place he lives, this is a part of our deal.
So all we can say about that is another quotation from the film.

“These days I’m more partial to the Sun than the Moon.
Feels good on my skin.
I bask in its early morning rays, watching my grandson play in the way only a four-year old knows how.
I sip my favourite drink.
A Blue Moon, of course.”

Ministry of Sound liked my idea of a man swallowing a stereo and suggested we shoot in LA. That sounded glamorous at first, then I realised I knew no-one over there, but producer whizz Sarah Tognazzi flew over with me and made it all less scary. The casting was amazing fun. Rique, who played our downbeat lead, was second in and nailed the melancholy. We had so many funny actors/dancers to choose from for the supporting roles.

We shot it in just over two days on a RED Scarlet and beautiful old cine lenses, courtesy of DP Cale Finot. We spent most of the shoot laughing at Rique squirming in more and more uncomfortable situations. The cast and crew in LA have a fantastic ‘can-do’ attitude and they’re highly efficient. From getting the script green-lit to releasing the finished film was only 14 days. The commissioner said this was the fastest music video turn around she had witnessed.

The shift to live-action felt completely natural as that’s where I’ve always wanted to be. Luckily the commissioner, Caroline Clayton, was willing to take a punt on a live-action newbie and this was never an issue.

Did you work on the post or did you collaborate?

Thomas Grove Carter at Trim did a brilliant job in the edit, bringing loads of great ideas and solutions. It was my first time directing an editor and I loved it. However, it did feel strange when Tom was putting the assembly together and I was just sitting at home thinking, shouldn’t I be doing something right now?

Are we right about the bigger budget?

The budget was about 18 times bigger than my last video. This sounded like a lot of money to me, but in reality it still felt like a shoestring. Line producer Paul Bock pulled a LOT of favours, most notably getting us into an amazing hospital set. Everyone was working on reduced rates but totally threw all they had at the project, for which I’m very grateful for.

What were the main challenges and how did you resolve them?

Settling on the script was a challenge. I wanted to make the film about a woman pregnant with a stereo but this seemed to gross people out. However, I’m totally chuffed with the final script, mainly because it meant we could work with Rique, our pitch-perfect lead.

What’s next?

I just signed to Colonel Blimp in London, which I’m very excited about. I’m pitching on lots of music videos and they have a fantastic animation department so there’s a chance I’ll return to stop-motionanimation (but hopefully not in my Mum’s barn this time.)

LINKS:

Ian Robertson

When we were writing the treatment and listening to the song, we heard a lot of Indian undertones to the beat. We immediately envisioned an elaborate Indian wedding with Iggy as the bride. Initially, because of budget constraints, we thought Los Angeles was our only option for the shoot.

However, after speaking with Iggy and the label, everyone felt that India would be the best backdrop for our vision. Fortunately, Iggy dropped a tremendous amount of her own money which was really instrumental in making the entire trip a reality. We really wanted to pay tribute to India’s incredible culture and its rich and colorful Bollywood roots, so we felt that if we were going to shoot a video about an Indian wedding, it would be most respectful + authentic if we did it in India.

How did shooting in India compare with, say, New York?

Shooting in India was one of the most surreal and humbling experiences of our lives. Compared to shooting in New York, the experience of working in Mumbai, was night and day. For this project, we worked with Geoff McLean from Vision Film, side by side with our producer, Brendan Lynch.

This was our first project working with a producer, so the process of preproduction was very different for us. Prior to arriving in Mumbai, Brendan (who speaks a bit of Hindi) worked with our Indian production company, Stratum Films, to secure locations, extras and elephants. We still can’t believe he was able to pull off everything we needed.

When we arrived in India, we continued the preproduction process, working with our Indian crew. Just being in Mumbai, was really inspiring for us and definitely contributed to the way we approached making this video. We worked with our crew to make sure every decision we made was culturally respectful and authentic to India, and we also worked closely with our choreographer, Devang, who is also a Bollywood director. He was a serious help on set, and always super on point.

This was also our first project working with a DP. Fortunately, we had Eli Born on board and the knowledge he was able to offer really enhanced our setups. We certainly understand now the importance of a good crew for a big shoot like this. After wrapping, everyone felt a bond that was indescribable – and we realized that the connection we felt with everyone involved surpassed any kind of culture barrier. We’ll never forget it.

In true Bollywood style there’s a cast of hundreds, how did you go about finding the dancers and extras?

Prior to arriving in Mumbai, Stratum sent us auditions for some of the main characters in the video. This made the casting process really easy for us. Devang, assembled the Indian dancers and worked with Iggy to create a Bollywood dance routine that was unique to the track and Iggy’s style.

Did you edit and post back home?

For this project, the turnaround was very quick, so we started editing immediately when we got home. After a very stressful process of 12 straight, 16-hour workdays and eight rough-cuts, we finally came to an edit where everyone was happy. We definitely have a better understanding of working with a large label and artist, and the kinds of compromises that are inevitable in the process. It’s all part of the game though, right?

4 TON DREAM: Well we met at different points in our college careers, so we had that common thread of art & design and architecture. Then a couple of years ago we all decided that we wanted to remove ourselves from the city for a few months and live somewhere relatively isolated with the idea of creating a single piece that melded each of our visions (this became our ident piece “4 Ton Dream”). We found an amazing place called “Springwild” in Taos, New Mexico where we hid away for three months. The house itself was quite inspiring (see in Related Content) and we met a lot of talented and supportive people there that really encouraged what we were doing.

Previously, the four of us had each worked together in varying amounts, but we had never all four worked together on one piece. And though our collective interests are pretty diverse, our aesthetics and process of creating video and animation are pretty similar. So there was a unique chemistry when the four of us came together and started brain-storming about where we wanted to go with our ident piece. The landscape in the high desert of New Mexico is impossible to ignore and became a driving force that shaped the abstract narrative for that particular piece.

With so many varied interests – perhaps reflected best in your ident where mathematical references and literary quotes are juxtaposed with fantasy design – how does 4TonDream’s creative process work?

The Ident was definitely a unique case: no client, a dedicated two months ahead of us, little distraction, beautiful location. All of these factors made the Ident fun to make but also one of our hardest projects we created together.

We all roughly had the idea of making a live-action piece that we could shoot and tell a conceptual/narrative story by utilizing the surrounding land that bound us together creatively, from which we developed the story.

Much of the ‘mathematical references’ & ‘literary quotes’ were created as symbols of the large fantasy objects. These were inspired by many of the educational books we had as kids where detailed illustrations of fantastic subjects like spiders, elephants, or launch pads were often accompanied with simple diagrams or quotes to summarize their meaning. We thought it would be interesting to treat our imaginary objects & world in the same annotative style.

Do your strengths overlap or is one particularly good at writing the scripts, another good at shooting the live action, and one of you is certainly very good at cgi work, for instance?

ADAM: Our strengths definitely overlap, especially since we all come from a design background. The design of every element from the story, to the shot, to the final edit is very important to all of us.

4 TON DREAM: Technically we’re all four capable of a lot of the same things. Our process has a lot more to do with how we bring together our influences and interests. We give a lot of credit to Shiouwen for getting us off of the computer, which is much needed at times. She has a kind of childlike way of drawing that works its way into our process and also has a fascination with old cameras that has led me to look at things from another perspective. Rebecca has a documentary style approach to her story-telling that tends to shape the way we structure things. Adam tends to live in the future with Ray Kurzweil, so it’s fun to travel there and pick his brain. Our roles are not that clearly defined, but we each have our own niches we tend to fill and our special assets that we each bring to the table.

NATHAN: A lot of what Adam and I do draws inspiration from visionary architecture of the 60s & 70s like Arata Isozaki, Constant Nieuwenhuys, & Lebbeus Woods, or a speculation we ourselves want to explore and want to put into image or video. We both also have this fascination with structures that don’t work – follies and brutalism or abandoned buildings. These things create confrontational situations which generate human conflict which is an interesting basis for story narrative.

REBECCA: The moments that resonate with me the most are those that are rarely planned. Moving to the desert and meeting inspiring people there was a defining moment for me. One such person was Pozzi Franzetti, a passionate female metal artist. Another such time was working on a design charrette with inspirational educator, Sarah Ippel. I joined a cast of writers, environmental engineers, architects, & graphic designers to brainstorm a progressive school concept. Those moments really stick with me and continue to influence my creativity and storytelling. I believe a humanistic approach runs strong through everything I create.

SHIOUWEN: I tend to have the general story and vibe and pace I want laid out in my head before the visual comes in. Then I would think of the style and the look appropriate for the story. Overall, I enjoy things that don’t necessarily carry a straightforward message but resonate with people on an abstract or interpretive level. I am intrigued by the simpleness and the contrast of emotion against massive landscapes, and tend to incorporate natural elements and landscape in my work.

What is 4TonDream’s vision? Is the plan to create art projects alongside commercial work?

4 TON DREAM: Nathan & Adam are moving forward with their own short film work under the moniker “Freise Brothers”. They are currently storyboarding a script for a short film they plan to shoot this summer, a quasi sci-fi character story that lives in a world similar to the ident. They would eventually like to take the world and aesthetic they’re developing and explore those ideas further within a full narrative arc and project the resulting story to the big screen.

Shiouwen is continuing to create more narration-driven video-based pieces outside of strictly CGI commercial pieces. Currently she is in the process of finishing up a video based on her hometown and sketching a five-minute fictional short.

Rebecca continues to work as a multidisciplinary force. She is an architectural illustrator, designer, artist, & furniture builder. Volunteering in art programs for kids, she thrives on the energy when her work & personal practices bleed together.

4 Ton Dream was established as a method of exploring what the four of us could create together & we’ll continue to collaborate when opportunities arise!

And finally, there’s an element of childhood curiosity and fantastical invention throughout a lot of your work. It would be interesting to hear about your childhoods independently please.

NATHAN: I grew up with Adam as my twin brother so our childhoods were pretty similar obviously. Living in a small rural town I think kids are almost forced to be creative, mostly just to entertain themselves. We had a patch of woods adjacent to our house and Adam and I would spend hours there building catawampus forts out of sticks and mud and scraps of whatever we found lying around.
We would also take every blanket in the house along with chairs and stools and boxes and transform our basement into what we called “Worlds”. Once constructed, we would make our little sis run through it like a platform video game while we chucked fireballs at her, usually tennis balls.

Video games were a big part. I remember we had one called Mario Paint, which was kind of a rudimentary 8-bit Photoshop. It had a thing where you could create a whopping 9 frame animation and loop it. I was immediately hooked and wasted days with that thing. Lego too, anything where we could make something without boundaries. Also, practically half of our house was a wood shop our Dad built, he always encouraged anything we were doing that involved creating something.

SHIOUWEN: I grew up in Taiwan and went to the School of Visual Arts in New York for school after graduating from college. I have always been very fantastical, or ”non-realistic” according to my dad, I was drawn to small obscure details, and stories and questioned factual things when being told to simply believe them. Things from my childhood that influence what I am doing now would be the stories or fables that my parents told and illustrated storybooks.

I would spend time reading and got lost in a storybook that was only ten pages long but each page unfolded into a world I can still remember now. My major in literature in college was where I was introduced to the classic stories and characters, this also had a lot of influence on my ideas. I later started running around with a crowd of artists which oriented my interests away from traditionally structured writing and towards visual stories. This is something that echoed my childhood curiosities and also felt natural to me. The things I am drawn to now have remained the same, “wonder and the pure joy of creation”, which is also the main concept for the ident piece.

REBECCA: I have an older brother which made me more of a Lego and Constructs type a kid rather than dolls and dress-up, it’s the only way you get attention from an older brother. The two of us were always constructing something. I’d like to say I was the dreamer while my brother could solve just about anything. We were pretty quiet kids. My elementary years were spent in Iowa, just an hour or so away from my grandparents. I still claim my Grandma to be my greatest influence, she was a math and art teacher, a great combo inspiring me to go into architecture.Her advice while sitting together drawing a tree in the front yard when I was only about 6, “Draw what you see, don’t think about the symbol you were taught to be a tree.” A powerful lesson in many aspects of my life.

http://www.4tondream.com

See in Related Content for the Making Of the film.

I rarely shoot spontaneously. I don’t do well when I shoot spontaneously. It’s mostly after location scouting (via Google maps/earth), meticulous trip planning and weather watching that I’ll go out to shoot.

I look for settings that are rich with detail and am usually drawn towards those that aren’t so aseptic or where I otherwise might find interesting lighting. I’ve filmed in and around the area I live in on the south side of Chicago but I’ve also ventured into areas of the city that I was wholly unfamiliar with. Filming gave me a reason to explore the city in a way I hadn’t before and usually I will return to locations until I’ve captured the right impression of that location.

The filming feels organic as if you just came across this scene while walking around the city – and yet the atmosphere suits the stillness of Hammock’s music perfectly. Please tell us how the filming came about, where was it shot, what it was shot on. It’s capsulated the past harsh winter perfectly.

I really like Hammock’s music and James Covill at Hungryman in London asked me who I’d like to shoot a video for and before I knew it I was confirmed to shoot their next video for Tornado Warning.

I began filming late last fall, shooting throughout the winter all over the city. I initially set out to explore neglected areas of the city but as time went on and I filmed for weeks on end, I struggled to capture the theme I had in mind and decided to reset and start over.

Soon after, a large fire erupted in a vacant warehouse not far from where I live. For two days, I filmed the action, as firefighters battled to control the fire that in the process created a thick layer of ice over the brick facade of the building, from as many angles as I could access before being told to leave.

The scene was, apart from impressive, somewhat melancholic as here was one building of many in a row of long vacant, anonymous, and undisturbed relics of an economically buoyant era and there it was naked and exposed in the throws of utter destruction by both fire and ice in the dead of winter. It instantly became the centerpiece of the video.

I shot with a 5D2 in natural light. Initially, I met Carlos Lowenstein at the Whitehouse Editors here in Chicago who offered key advice regarding the pace and style of the edit and between us we created the structure of the edit.

Thanks. I think it’s reflective of the treatment, but hopefully progressed further from there. The hotel room setting always felt right in terms of tone, and a space to create some sense of mystery. There was an inherent darkness, but also humour to the idea – so a lot was about balancing those elements. I worked with German cinematographer Julian Hohndorf who is a hugely talented guy with amazing hair. We’d never shot together before, so it was good to connect on this one.

What was the original brief?

The script was simple and strong on the page really, but the guys were really open to where it could go. From there it was about building the visual world, narrative, performance and other details that best served the idea.

Essentially it’s a heightened premise or story about the dangers of being overweight. The idea is basically that he is fat and has passed out, so his shirt button (due to his big belly) has popped off at such a bullet-like pace that it has shot the other person in the room. Hence, him missing the button and her button-sized bullet hole connecting the two characters in the end. Fat kills – so get to Kindgom of Sports and kill fat!

Did you storyboard each frame?

I’d say the board was conceptual and not something that was adhered to so rigidly. It gave a clear idea of where it was to go – key frames and visual ideas – but then on location, shooting and with performance, it took further shape. The edit with Anne Beutel was also fun. It’s nice when a board – or treatment – isn’t seen as the end point, but more as a means or part of a process for where something can go.

The shoot took place over one long day in a Hamburg hotel. The crew and cast were great. Our lead was a gifted young actor by the name of Gavin Spokes, and Maya Stollenwerk in stoic support. Each of them gave so generously in their performances, albeit at different ends of the physical spectrum.

New Zealand or Europe, where are you based now?

I’ve been based in Berlin a little while but with the nature of the job, moving around a lot, between London and so on as you do. There’s still Australia and New Zealand with a smashing of jetlag in between, so a bit of everywhere really.

What are you working on now?

I’m in the final stages of post on another campaign in Europe, spending some time at the Binger Filmlab in Amsterdam and developing my first feature.

Hub Footwear, Roofer’s Point of View shot by Vadim Mahorov and Vitaliy Yakhnenko, Russia

Santec, Swing directed by Benjamin Brettschneider, Markenfilm Wedel

Statoil, Lost Miles directed by Martin Werner, Bacon

Robinsons, Pals directed by Si & Ad, Academy Films

VW, Baby directed by James Rouse, Outsider

I majored in Film at Canterbury University, Christchurch, New Zealand. In my final years of University I made two short documentaries: Night Vision, about an extraordinary relationship between a pimp and prostitute. They were not your average married couple. And Mail Order, about men who order mail order brides in New Zealand. Both screened in international film festivals.

Your work seems to focus on subjects that you personally feel driven to make a film about. Is this the case?

Very much so. The subjects I choose to make films about are always characters that intrigue me on a personal level. There’s something within their personality that I find brave or confronting, sometimes their physical appearance is unique or alienating and their outlook is unconventional and challenging. Predominately, I tend to gravitate towards characters living on the fringes of society; rebellious, mischievous individuals who don’t conform to mainstream conventions. These people spark me creatively and force me to question my own values and the way I look at the world.

Your cleverly-told documentary on cross-dressing policeman and lawyer Rob Moodie aka Miss Alice is an uplifting and intriguing portrayal of a man committed to fighting against injustice. It’s a wonderful film and we urge readers to watch it – it’s in Related Content.

Lost in Wonderland is a “bent documentary about a straight lawyer”. The film chronicles the colorful life of one of New Zealand’s great eccentrics, lawyer Rob Moodie. It tells of his aversion for convention, and his fights for justice – focusing on a harrowing legal battle that went on for 14 years.

Have you just recently started shooting commercials – what would you say would be the ideal script for you?

Yes I have just recently started shooting commercials. Hmmm, my ideal script would involve gritty, original, characters, set in an environment which allows for arresting cinematography and have humor. That sounds very broad, but I like directing a diversity of subject matter and style – it keeps me fresh and on my toes.

Please tell us about the Equality Pay and V-project.

The V Motion Project was a collaboration between a lot of clever creative people working together to create a machine that turns motion into music. The client for the project, Frucor (makers of V energy drink), together with their agency Colenso BBDO, kitted-out a warehouse space for this project to grow in and gathered together a group of talented people from a number of creative fields. I followed the process making 8X webisodes and a commercial for television.

The biggest challenge with this project was trying to distill very complicated information about the technology and creative process into upbeat, captivating, webisodes that the ordinary Joe Blog could watch and enjoy. However, I think because the concept (creating music from movement) was so fascinating and revolutionary there was already an audience for the webisodes. The V motion project was a great creative achievement for us as a team.

10% YWCA was a commercial that encouraged people to support the pay equality bill and demand equal pay between men and women. When I first read the script I could immediately visualise the commercial and it cracked me up (always a good sign!). I knew it would be great if executed in a effortless straightforward way, that kept the focus on the performances. I guess the biggest challenge was the lack of budget because it was for a charity spot. In saying this, it’s a great cause and I’m very happy with the final result.

What are you working on now?

I am currently in post-production with an independent, self-funded, feature film called The Deadly Ponies Gang. I’m delighted to hear that it’s just been invited to premiere at the New Zealand International Film festival this year.

The Deadly Ponies Gang is a film about two lifelong friends, the alternative lifestyle they lead with horses, and the lengths one of them will go to get his mate some new false teeth! The boys love hip hop, and horses, but they don’t like guns, and they can’t afford cars, so the pair have taken to pimping out their ponies instead, blinging out their rides with pearls, glitter and gold (all plastic, of course) eternally trying to impress the ladies.

It takes us into a strange yet familiar world of green kiwi hills, pony clubs and BBQs, strangely intersecting with the customs of a ghetto of L.A. The mix is hilarious, yet also touching, and a little bit inspiring. The infectious enthusiasm of the characters – who include NZ’s only Country and Western gangsta rapper, The Rhymestone Cowboy, and 12 year old equestrian DJ Buster, makes for a joyful gallop.