Jungleboys

It’s LA Hip Hop collided with the Aussie back yard barbie – and a little Danish culture thrown in as well. This parody music video was an instant multi-media hit, including well over 300,000 YouTube views in less than a week

This hugely successful campaign has become an annual event for Jungleboys and BMF Sydney. The 2012 Rant, directed by Craig Melville, also showcases the skills of Emerald City in developing the end reveal scene special effects.

We trekked to opal mining town Coober Pedy to track down Australia’s biggest ‘landlubbers’ – the people least likely to go on a cruise in the pacific. Now we have to see what actually happens when we put them on the ship…

Another little pre-roll spot trying to battle against an audience being inconvenienced waiting for their news story to start. Our plan was to present a strange moment involving a odd character without any context – and to drive people to the website to understand more.

This 15 second spot was created for internet pre-roll and so our aim was to create something that instantly grabbed the un-interested audiences attention. By keeping the story very ambiguous in the cut, and directing people to the website to see more, we pushed the audience online to help make sense of a guy faking an orgasm, in a deli in New York city.

The challenge with this spot was to capture the energy and character of New York City and to make it look beautiful with only a small, fast moving crew.  Being able to secure veteran cinematographer Steve Fierberg as DOP (who shot Entourage) certainly helped. The other challenge was having to use real people (non actors) to deliver fun, natural performances.

Lawrence Leung, intrepid skeptic and comic, investigates the unbelievable. It’s Mythbusters meets Ghostbusters as Lawrence embarks on a mind-bending quest to examine the irrational and the impossible.

We think this music video holds the record for the longest, continuous camera track to be shot in Australia. The entire clip was shot in a single take – so most of the directing was done before the camera rolled – ensuring a constantly changing and visually interesting procession of bands and performances.

Race Relations is an 8 part comedy documentary series created for the ABC. Despite as much preparation as possible, working with John Safran on Race Relations required a lot of improvised directing as each location brought unexpected challenges and opportunities. The series was shot in 12 countries including Togo, Israel, Palestine, The Netherlands, India and Japan. The series concludes in The Philippines with John being physically nailed to a cross. Nails go through his hands and feet.

This is confronting and difficult to watch – and yet it’s a comedy segment. John’s “cheery” cooking show delivery contrasts sharply with the gruesome reality of where our meat based food comes from. The segment belongs to a series of two pilots that were commissioned by the ABC but shelved for being to controversial.

This is a classic John Safran moment – turning the tables on Mormon door knockers – and doing it in Salt Lake City. In directing this piece, it was important to keep it honest – this wasn’t a set up, it was important to keep it real.

The Chaser team came up with the concept of sending up the classic British sitcom, “Are you being Served” as the world’s first single entendre comedy. As the director of the sketch, the key to fully unlocking the comic potential of the script was to absolutely nail the look, feel and performance characteristics of the original show.

Another great Chaser parody. From a directorial point of view it was a fun challenge to balance the surprise comic elements with a faithfulness to Ron Howard’s directing of The Da Vinci Code.