Many of the projects we delivered at the start of the year had their launch plans scuppered by the COVID crisis. So we’re very pleased to finally be able to share with you this piece we created with Strategy Creative for Christchurch City Council | He Puna Taimoana | New Brighton Hot pools.
Rupert wrote a lovely little script around the meaning of the name and offered us the challenge of bringing it to life in a free-form visual narrative.
The film stars Peter Donnelly – New Brighton’s iconic sand-artist (now retired) – and Jeremy Lillico, another local artist who’s taking the reins from Peter. This story alone presented options a-plenty for visual metaphors and symbolic significance. Still, we decided to weave in a few more threads with the kid’s encounter with the artists and the community coming together in the pools.
One of our goals was to explore the textural components of the environments which linked to the script and the brand design developed by Strategy Creative, so we wanted to get the camera into the action, which meant getting wet. The difficulty being, our 8k RED Monstro is not even remotely waterproof. Utilizing a $29 K-mart fish tank, we had a remarkably effective water-housing for our most precious asset – and the shots our “shitty-rig” produced are unique.
To fill the facility, the team at Strategy pulled together a pool of talent (excuse the pun) via street-casting friends and family. Peter and Jeremey were coerced out of bed for two consecutive sunrises in February and set to work scratching out the enormous 50m wide sand art version of the Hotpools logo.
On the days of production, it was a very small crew, having Simon both shoot and direct the piece, supported by camera assist Jannis. Meanwhile Clinton Lloyd worked independently on producing commercial photography.
Once we had captured our shots, it was seamlessly edited by Liddy and colour-graded by Stefan back at Resonate HQ. Toby Ricketts lent his inimitable voice to the project and Jonny Pipe Audio put the finishing touches on the sound design. We couldn’t be more proud of the final product, the outcome is a beautiful, emotive film showcasing the tranquillity of the pools and community, which is sure to be an amazing asset to New Brighton.