Corporate Productions

A series of three-minute Woolworths/Plascon/House and Leisure inserts flighted on M-Net in 2004 followed by a series of three, two and one minute advertorials for a property group launching a new project. These inserts proved to be the vanguard of a genre that Tswelopele has excelled in producing. Neither commercials nor editorial inserts, they still tell a story but allow a generous degree of branding.

The Plascon/Woolworths series involved find key characters who loved colour and wanted to transform a room (kitchen, bedroom, living room etc) into a new zone. Plascon's paint was the hero. What a challenge to showcase the paint in a different light every insert. At one point, I needed a 'waterfall' effect with ice-blue paint which involved taping paint trays to a ladder and pouring (in one take!) a river of paint from one tray to another, a 'Victoria Falls' of PVA.

We practiced with water first and then the brilliant Lourens Human, filming the sequence.

In another insert, we painted my pine cottage at Middlevlei using poet and writer Gavin Joachims as the subject. What had been two ordinary knotty pine and blue bedrooms, was transformed into a sophisticated symphony of white and 'cigar-smoke green'.

The crew was superb. Nikki Burchell (a former UCT graduate) has to be one of the best production co-ordinators in the industry. Her meticulous research and eye for detail oiled what was a demanding series. Balancing the needs of three different clients was challenging!

The crew was tight. It was on this shoot that I learnt the difference between a competent camera operator and a DOP. (Director of Photography). Lourens is simply one of the best. What I loved was seeing one of my madder creative ideas unfold through his lens. Not once in six weeks did he balk at a request. The blue waterfall was one. In another sequence I thought it might be nice to use an animated clay figure as an amusing "Morph-like" character to fall into a pot of paint and emerge. At this point I expected him to throw a tripod at me. He laughed and got stuck in to the mechanics while I fashioned the figure and we shot tiny movement after tiny movement to have my little Plascon man fall in to a can of paint and emerge.

Rupert Smith was the stylists on the shoot and again without his magical eye, the series wouldn't have worked.

I wrote a seventeen-hundred word story line for each insert, partly to talk my way though the sequences and partly to provide the client with a clear vision of how their product would be used. It was useful for the subjects – all ordinary people with interesting jobs – to read their stories and be part of the process. The challenge was extracting 'acting' performances that needed to feel spontaneous, from people who'd never been on camera before. I believe that this is my strength; I am able to gently extract performance from people who might ordinarily flee from performing in front of the camera.

Over three years, I've either directed, or scripted and voiced (or all three) several of these advertorials for Tswelopele (including Leloko Properties and Dom Perignon) and as a team (using a different crew every time) we have managed to create three, two, one and thirty second pieces, often from a single shoot. Not only do I use directing skills but write the script and more often than not, the client requests that I voice them. On a tight budget and with time constraints, an extremely useful set of skills to offer!

For more information on this genre contact Nikki Burchell at 082 772 2539.

The V&A Waterfront and Jenny Handley Public Relations commissioned me to produce a 15 to 20 minute insert of the finalists for the 2005 Woman of Worth nominees. What a heart-warming journey.

Meeting the finalists and shooting on location, again to tight time and financial constraints, was both rewarding and upped the ante when it came to production demands. Locations were split from Kommetjie to Atlantis on the West Coast, from environmental and animal rights activists to charity fund raisers. It was vital that the 12 to 20 minutes we produced balanced the story so that no finalists was favoured. The winner would be announced at the Cape Times/V&A Waterfront Woman of Worth event and we were to give no hint as to the outcome. We weren't part of the selection process anyway and were as surprised as the audience on the day.

I chose Tswelopele Corporate for my post-production and worked with a young, smart editor Paul Spiers who did an amazing job on the five, three minute pieces.

Every project is a learning curve and simply strengthens your skills base for the next project.

Clients include:

• Tswelopele Corporate Division now operating as Big Fish TV
• (Moet & Chandon, Jack Daniels, Dom Perignon, Leloko)
• Jenny Handley Public Relations (Woman of Worth, Corné Krige)