Diamonds in the Sand
Year: 2020
Client: Kate Leeming.
Location: Skeleton Coast, Namibia.
Timeline: 6 month project.
Length: 85 minute feature film
Category: Long expanses of scorching deserts and fierce wind. Unceasing sand dunes, whale skeletons, the expansive territories of wild lions and the rusted hulls of shipwrecks.
Roles: Director, Cinematographer, Location Sound Recordist, Drone pilot, 360˚ Cameraman, Video Editor, Visual Effects.
Scope: Kate Leeming is the first person to cycle the entire length of Namibia’s Skeleton Coast. I filmed the expedition as a one man crew with a small collection of cameras and only a small outline of the next day’s tasks. I edited the film together into a deconstruction of how Kate has developed a total fearlessness to life threatening danger.
Marketing: The film was screened as a 4 part series on National Geographic Asia and was seen in over 50 countries. We are in talks with cinema chains to screen the film in cinemas and online, I have outlined a marketing strategy to promote the film on social media.
Rockpool
Year: 2018
Client: Atara Film.
Location: Christmas Island, Australia
Timeline: 2 month project.
Category: Dense tropical rainforest, harsh rocky environments, tropical coral reefs.
Roles: Producer’s Assistant, Camera Assistant, Behind the Scenes Filmmaker, Video Editor.
Scope: I worked as a Camera Assistant and Producer’s Assistant on this nature documentary on Christmas island. We had to work with extreme patience to capture animal interactions, mostly the red crabs movements across the island. I used the long periods of waiting to produce a series of Behind the Scenes videos of the shoot, the best one is ‘Rockpool’.
Marketing: The final feature length version of the nature documentary was screened on the German TV station NDR. You can find out more about the project here.
Land of the Painted Mountains
Year: 2010
Client: Wilderness International, Atara Films.
Location: Snake River, Yukon, Canada.
Timeline: 6 month project.
Category: Long river kayaking, wide expanses and remote natural scenery.
Roles: Video Editor, Sound Designer, Composer.
Scope: I was brought on this film as an editor to breathe new life into the footage. I knew that the way to make this documentary memorable was to delve into the dreams of its characters and take a playful look at the expedition. It is less of a detailed explanation of the rafting trip and more a fantasy travelling into the minds of the characters.
Marketing: The final feature length version of the documentary won the NaturVision Filmfestival - Winner Best Newcomer Award.
The film was screened for the Gwich'n tribes that call the Snake river their sacred land, and became a rallying call for the elders to overthrow the mining companies trying to buy their land.
Crabnation
Year: 2018
Client: Atara Film.
Location: Christmas Island, Australia
Timeline: 2 month project.
Category: Dense tropical rainforest, harsh rocky environments, tropical coral reefs.
Roles: Producer’s Assistant, Camera Assistant, Behind the Scenes Filmmaker, Video Editor.
Scope: I worked as a Camera Assistant and Producer’s Assistant on this nature documentary on Christmas island. We filmed a variety of intricate wildlife interactions, from the yellow crazy ant invasion, the robber crab lifecycle and the entire mass migration of the red crabs as they leave the forest to the intertidal zone to mate.
Marketing: The final feature length version of the nature documentary was screened on the German TV station NDR. You can find out more about the project here.
Vancouver Island - Projects
Year: 2011
Client: Wilderness International.
Location: Vancouver Island, Canada.
Timeline: 1 month project.
Category: Hiking in rugged coastal wilderness and thick rainforest.
Roles: Director, Cinematographer, Video Editor, Sound Designer.
Scope: This video shows the entire process Wilderness International uses to raise funds and buy natural landscapes to protect it for our future. It shows the destruction of old growth forests and declining salmon populations that impact the biodiversity of Vancouver island. We see the strong support that German school students can have by raising money to buy these forests to protect them from logging operations.
Marketing: The final film was used by Wilderness International to show sponsors and raise money to buy pristine wilderness in Canada. It was used to educate school children on the importance of preserving natural landscapes around the world.
Vancouver Island - The Rainforest
Year: 2011
Client: Wilderness International.
Location: Vancouver Island, Canada.
Timeline: 1 month project.
Category: Hiking in rugged coastal wilderness and thick rainforest.
Roles: Director, Cinematographer, Video Editor, Sound Designer.
Scope: There is a lot of rainforest in Vancouver island so initially I didn't believe that logging was a big issue. It was only when we flew over the logging fields in a small Cessna that we could see that hundreds of acres of timber had been torn from the wilderness. The scale of the deforestation was heart-wrenching.
Marketing: The final film was used by Wilderness International to show sponsors and raise money to buy pristine wilderness in Canada. It was used to educate school children on the importance of preserving natural landscapes around the world.
Helgoland - Insel im Sturm
Year: 2012
Client: Atara Film.
Location: Helgoland, Germany.
Timeline: 4 month project.
Category: Wildlife filming and bird watching, windy filming on sandy beaches.
Roles: Camera Assistant, Assistant Video Editor, Sound Designer.
Scope: I worked as a Camera Assistant, Editor's Assistant and Sound Designer on this Nature Documentary. We had a long list of birds that had to feature in this show so we spent a lot of time with the local birdwatchers. On our day off, a very rare Blue footed Warbler was spotted on a beach on the north of the island so we jumped out of the pool and raced there, it was the first time that this species had ever been seen in Germany, and they added one more to the number of bird species spotted in this country.
I was also in charge of creating the sound design of the documentary using sound libraries and foley.
Marketing: The final feature length documentary was screened on the German TV station NDR. Find out more on NDR’s website here. If you are in Europe you can watch the full film here.
Winner of Marian Zunz Newcomer Award at the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival
Survey of the I-124 Submarine
Year: 2023
Client: Heritage Department Northern Territory Government, Major Projects Foundation.
Location: Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia.
Timeline: 2 month project.
Category: Technical scuba diving photogrammetry survey.
Roles: Director, Cinematographer, Video Editor, Visual Effects, Producer.
Scope: In World War II Japan and Australia fought for control of the seas north of Australia. The I-124 Japanese submarine was laying mines and hunting ships outside Darwin Harbour when it was engaged by Australian forces. It was attacked and sunk to the seafloor. All 80 submariners perished. Lying 53 metres below the surface, the wreck is highly significant. But the Top End's strong tides, murky waters and the submarine's depth have made it impossible to visit. Until now.
The Northern Territory Government led a team of archaeologists and technical divers to inspect the iconic submarine, using the latest in technical diving equipment and innovative site recording tools. Armed with rebreathers and underwater scooters, watch the divers attempt to record the wreck, and experts build detailed 3D models.
The Failed Mt Sarawaget Expedition
Year: 2020
Client: No Roads Expeditions, PNG Tourism.
Location: Papua New Guinea.
Timeline: 2 month project.
Category: Heavy hiking in humid rainforest and high alpine areas.
Roles: Director, Cinematographer, Video Editor, Visual Effects, Producer.
Scope: I joined the expedition team hiking Mt Sarawaget to get the footage. We thought we would die every single day of the trip and you can see this clearly in the film. To complete the film for international festivals I filmed extra scenes of a museum curator researching the expedition. With Mikey Matthews as the assistant editor we brought the film together to tell all of the different storylines in the different visual styles.
Marketing: I planned the marketing strategy on Facebook and Instagram with a combination of paid ads and organic outreach. I entered the film into dozens of international film festivals but Covid-19 shut the world down before the film could be seen. We will return to Mt Sarawaget at the end of 2022 to complete the expedition.
Wild Skeleton Coast Adventure Tours
Year: 2020
Client: Wild Skeleton Coast Adventure Tours.
Location: Skeleton Coast, Namibia.
Timeline: 2 month project.
Category: Long expanses of scorching deserts and fierce wind. Unceasing sand dunes, whale skeletons, the expansive territories of wild lions and the rusted hulls of shipwrecks.
Roles: Director, Cinematographer, Location Sound Recordist, Drone pilot, 360˚ Cameraman, Video Editor, Visual Effects.
Scope: Our tour operator in the Skeleton Coast went above our expectations on our cycling expedition so I decided to make them an advertisement to promote the amazing scenery of the Skeleton Coast. I was very familiar with the footage after editing the feature documentary, so it was refreshing to reinterpreted the footage in a new way. I used a collage style to combine shots and create new visual elements, creating a new style that I can use in future videos.
Marketing: The advertisement was used in Wild Skeleton Coast Adventure Tours’ social media strategy and has 14 100 views
Vancouver Island - Eco Tourism
Year: 2011
Client: Wilderness International.
Location: Vancouver Island, Canada.
Timeline: 1 month project.
Category: Hiking in rugged coastal wilderness and thick rainforest.
Roles: Director, Cinematographer, Video Editor, Sound Designer.
Scope: This film is a very important part of Wilderness International’s marketing process. In Germany they raise money to buy Canadian wilderness and protect it from exploitation. They show this film at schools across Germany in the lead up to their fundraising fun runs to teach the children what they are raising money to achieve. I made films of every stage of their marketing strategy.
Marketing: The final film was used by Wilderness International to show sponsors and raise money to buy pristine wilderness in Canada. It was used to educate school children on the importance of preserving natural landscapes around the world.
Vancouver Island - Canoes and Cedar
Year: 2011
Client: Wilderness International.
Location: Vancouver Island, Canada.
Timeline: 1 month project.
Category: Kayaking through vast archipelagos.
Roles: Director, Cinematographer, Video Editor, Sound Designer.
Scope: This video goes into great detail into how to make canoes from a cedar log. For the Cowichan, cedar trees are central to their culture, their entire world used to be made from these trees.
If we had more time on this expedition, we would no doubt have tried to make one of those ocean-going canoes.
Marketing: The final film was used by Wilderness International to show sponsors and raise money to buy pristine wilderness in Canada. It was used to educate school children on the importance of preserving natural landscapes around the world.
On a Sea of Glass
The crew of the sailing boat 'the Matrix' commissioned me to film an action film aboard their vessel on one of their regular races around the bay. As beautiful as the day was, there was no wind, but I was determined to make an exciting film regardless. The crew are on constant alert, even in the quiet moments, of the position of other ships and then when they reach a marker, all hell breaks loose.
Wild New Zealand - Episode 2
Year: 2015
Client: Atara Film.
Location: New Zealand.
Timeline: 4 month project.
Category: Dense tropical rainforest, glaciers, caves, Maori cultural events.
Roles: Producer’s Assistant, Camera Assistant, Assistant Video Editor.
Scope: I worked for 4 months as a camera assistant on this nature documentary. We flew with a helicopter to the top of Fox Glacier and nearly got snow blindness, we chased the tiny alpine flowers that bloom on the mountain tops, I built a time-lapse camera that took one photo every hour and we left it at the terminal face of Fox glacier to track its movement over 6 months. We froze a mountain Weta and watched it thaw back to life with a thermal camera, we waited all day to film Tuataras hatch from their eggs, we followed a sea lion raise her cubs in the forest where they were safe from the angry males and we followed a Maori tribe as they competed in the Kapa Haka festival. My current focus on filming expeditions is largely based on this job.
Marketing: The final feature length episode was screened on BBC around the world and on the German TV station NDR. You can find out more about the project here.
The show won the following awards:
Opening film at the Green Screen Festival 2016
Nomination for the German Camera Award 2017
Two international Emmy Awards nominations 2017 for "Outstanding Cinematography: Documentary" and "Outstanding Narrator" (Sam Neill)
Green Screen Festival 2017: Best Cinematography Award
Deutscher Naturfilmpreis 2017: Jury Award for Outstanding Cinematography
