Gettin' sign off.

Over the past six weeks, we've been working away on a small video project with Ocean Design for Living Legends. It's all about planting native trees around the country during the big ol' rugby event later this year. After a week of postponements and 6am starts during filming, we finally got a stunning winter's day to film in Greytown. It'll be broadcast on TVNZ breakfast television as well as numerous sponsors websites. Sign off feels good!


Production: Jet Productions. Agency: Ocean. Soundmix: Bonfire Audio

The weekend off, sort of.

Last weekend I headed to Taranaki for a weekend filming four surfers on a wave seeking mission as a follow up to last years video 'Dropping In Up North'. My self-impossed challenge was to create the video without me actively filming any surfing. The waves never really arrived but good times ensued and thankfully no camera gear was lost to the sea.

A bit of fun

Thought I'd share a bit of light relief from a couple of recent shoots over in the Wairarapa. The first is an outtake from yesterday's early morning video shoot and the second, was shot using a GoPro camera on the way to a shoot in Masterton. Happy long weekend!

Keep'n it real

It's about time I showed the blog some love after a busy few months. This week we finished production on a spot for Contact Energy to promote the Contact Triathlon Series. Produced with/for Zephyr WPD and Rainger Connect. We shot this sucker in Wellington, Tauranga and Rotorua on the Canon 7d at 50 frames-per-second so we could peg the action back to a gentle slow-motion. The brief was for a raw/photo-journalistic feel, fly-on-the-wall stuff and the triathletes we used were actual, real-life triathletes. When you want real, nothing beats reality.

Contact Tri Series promo from Mike Heydon on Vimeo.

What to do with 52 cameras

This is awesome - aerial surfers photographed simultaneously with 52 different cameras all in a row. Produced for RipCurl, the result is a three-dimensional still image of the surfer frozen in space, Matrix-style. Check it out. Right, I'm off to work out who I can borrow about 49 cameras from.

Sneak peak: our first TVC's

Our first TV commercials hit NZ screens tonight. Initially produced as just a web promotion for this months World Rowing Champs at Lake Karapiro, they proved so popular we've cut them in to a 30-second and 15-second spot. They'll air on TVNZ over the next three weeks during the 6pm news, Primetime and Breakfast time slots. The full video has been used by SkyTV [who are official broadcaster of the event] as a promo and build-up for their coverage as well. It'll be nice to sit back, put my feet up with a beer and watch them on the box.

WRCH 30sec TVC from Mike Heydon on Vimeo.

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.

The steep part of the learning curve

We've just finished production on a short promo video for the Wairarapa Balloon Fiesta as part of our new video production service. It seems shooting video with a photographers perspective is a real benefit, especially since we can combine video and stills during a shoot so they both have a similar look and feel. For this project, an early morning was endured, fun was had, characters were interviewed and lessons were learnt. It's the fifth year I've shot this event and capturing it with video adds a whole new dimension of planning and work needed. Leaving a camera virtually unattended amongst a crowd of thousands to capture the night glow time lapse was indeed an exercise in stress and paranoia. I'm pretty happy with the results though, take a look.

We're working on another couple of video projects at the moment which'll be finished soon. Be sure to check back as they'll be posted here.

Wairarapa Balloon Fiesta 2010 from Mike Heydon on Vimeo.