UPDATE - 1043 Saturday 2/4/05:
'The Journey' wins Best Screenplay" in the Richmond Rd School Short Film Competition.

UPDATE - 0100 Monday 21/6:
'The Journey'WON THE 48HR FILM CHALLENGE.
Out of 82 teams Team Classic not only won the Audience Choice Award for its group, but also took out top prize. Channel C4 has also played a documentary feature on the weekend and screenings of the 12 finalists, and visit nzshortfilm.com to view the film on-line!

UPDATE - 1200 Saturday 19/6:
'The Journey' is a top-12 Finalist! Congratulations to all the Classic crew.

Strangely enough this turned out to be ourselves. Steve was part of the Classic team in this year's 48Hour Film Challenge held in June.

48HOURS is New Zealand's premiere short film competition. The competition wants to reward filmmakers who can come up with the goods under intense pressure. In that 48 hour period you have to make a short film, from start to finish - OR DIE TRYING.
But there's a catch, and it's a big one! You don't know what genre of film you will be making until a few minutes before the start time. Each team randomly draw a genre for themselves - which means you could end up making a horror film or a romance.

In Team Classic's case we drew the genres- Religious/Educational/Heart-warming Family Fare. We combined all three!

Video Promotions provided not only the editing facilities, but also arranged crew and production equipment, with Steve providing additional creative assistance, and acting as 1st AD and editor.

There's never been a deadline so tight and inflexible (although he put the same amount of passion in to this project as he does for all Video Promotions' clients :-)). But with a fantastic volunteer team of comedy writers and actors, and most of our regular, top-notch production crew we delivered a film we're not only proud of, but which was completed within deadline. It also got a great response from the audience at the group screening (all the laughs in the right places!) so fingers crossed...

"Thomas Edison invented the movie camera to show people killing and kissing."
Quentin Tarantino

Anyone who spends time on the water around New Zealand will know about the incredible work that the NZ Coastguard does. However not enough of those people realise that it's only donations and supporters' membership fees which keep the organisation running.

And saving lives.

So we recently worked with the national organisation to produce a series of video messages improving awareness of the various aspects of public service provided by Coastguard. The aim being to create a call to action to support the organisation that they can't ignore.

The primary audience for these videos are boating public, and the videos will be presented from the Coastguard promotional caravan at public events attended by the boating fraternity- such as boat shows and beach events.The material acquired also needed to be of a quality suitable for Electronic Press Kit use, and, ideally, could be used as TVC's if required. Due to the viewing environment for these messages (as well as an audience with other messages and distractions appealing for their limited attention)we decided on a series of short, punchy messages which could stand alone, rather than one longer promotional video.

Ideally this series would cover the entire range of Coastguard services, however by producing short stand-alone messages there is the option of building up a library at their own pace. The benefit to Coastguard is that they can start with the most important messages, with the most visual and emotional impact, and then add to the series as resources allow- without having to re-edit one long profile as new material is added to their library.

By their nature, short messages also provide more flexibility of delivery (they can be used as TVC's or as EPK's) and more variety of presentation options (incorporated into PowerPoint presentations or streamed as web clips).Testimonials from existing group members- both volunteers and those who've benefited from their service- are the Coastguard's best advertisement, as they provide an emotional engagement and narrative which has more impact than voice-over.

For all these reasons we decided that a combination of memorable imagery with strong, dramatic narrative to engage the audience, followed by a simple direction for what to do to support this service- packaged into 30-60sec messages, would be of most value to Coastguard.

Video Promotions has a policy of using our resources to help one charity each month so covered 20% of the production costs to help fund this project for a much undervalued organisation.

When Electrolux Home Products launched their first New Zealand range of ovens, cooktops, dishwashers and fridges to their distributors (including new supplier Harvey Norman) they engaged Video Promotions to produce the all-important brand launch and product training videos.

Within 2 weeks we created a 3-min global brand launch video for EHP's introductory presentation at Harvey Norman's Australian conference. 3 weeks later we delivered 5 videos covering the different product categories- for initial delivery from laptop at Harvey Norman staff product training sessions, and later on menu-driven training DVD's for other suppliers and customers.

The project included commissioning original music for which we went to regular collaborator and award-winning song-writer Larry Killip, as well as engaging food stylists and caterers MASH Catering to make sure the cooked food looked as good as possible on camera (no easy task when some of the advance demo models were non-operational!).

Electrolux Marketing Manager Rosalie Davison was delighted to have such an important project completed on time and to the high standard required. And we were delighted to be involved with the launch of such a prestigious brand.

OK, so it was a client who won but we played our wee part. SKY TV recently won the top award in the Best Media Sales Proposal category of the 2004 CAANZ Media Awards, for their 2004 L'Oreal NZ campaign proposal for Universal McCann.

Video Promotions created the TV interstitial concept used for the L'Oreal Colour Trophy Awards as well as acting as local line producer for E! Entertainment in the US when they came down to cover L'Oreal NZ Fashion Week as part of SKY's coverage.

Congrats to Richard and David at SKY for a great result.