Randy Campell would be proud

I admire anyone who treks up an icey mountain, risks their expensive equipment or their own safety or stands in the freezing cold for hours to get that 'one' shot. Red Bull run a contest called Red Bull Illume which attracts entries from all over the globe for this extreme sport photo comp. Below are some of the semi-finalists. Thanks to DJ Nick Warren for sending this through.

A little slice of Country Calendar

This month, we've produced a promotional video for Blue Sky Meats in Southland. After much planning and going through every scene before it was shot, the filming itself ran really smoothly and we shot it in only three days and met the tight deadline. Ironically the Southland weather didn't play ball and we had three days of great sunshine - for a lot of the video we'd planned for clouds and rain rolling through. The video got a big tick from the client and was a great reminder of how careful planning can cut production time down later. Check it out.

Blue Sky Meats from Mike Heydon on Vimeo.

Some numbers

We've just hit the second of three big deadlines for this month by finishing production on the 2010 Wellington Lions Rugby Team poster for the Wellington Rugby Union in record time. Here are some numbers about the project:

34 players

2 stuffed lions

9 current or former All Blacks

Almost 60 layers make up the image

Over 30 hours of post-production time

Shot over 9 separate shoots in 3 weeks

90000 posters to be printed and plenty of press ads - phew!

A sport going backwards

We've just finished production on a promotional web video for the largest sporting event to be held in NZ since the 1990 Commonwealth Games - the 2010 Rowing World Champs at Lake Karapiro. Pretty chuffed all the weeks of hard work, early mornings and long hours were worth it. I think it's definitely worth a watch!

We shot the rowing footage over two (big) days and the interviews took another couple of days of production. A bit of a team effort this one which took a lot of organising. Something we've included is a promo code hidden in the video itself - people can quote the code to Ticketek for a discount on tickets to the World Champs. This'll probably also be aired on TV3, SkySport and The Crowd Goes Wild this week and we'll also chop it in to 15 second slots for SkySport closer to the event.