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Angie Hilton sent me these photos from our TV presenting, singing, posing past! Angie is a wonderful singer (see her Kylie tribute show if you can) and I’m a um… well, I like to sing.
Ange now facilitates REDgum Communications presenting workshops.
A couple of other familiar faces in the team shots are the very funny Des Dowling - who recently starred in our REDgum Communications videos for Good Shepherd Youth and Community Service - and the dazzling Nicky Whelan, who recently starred alongside Owen Wilson in Hall Pass by the Farrelly Brothers. Pretty similar projects really…
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RUOK? Day interview. At the risk of looking like a one-trick pony, here’s an interview I did recently for RUOK? Day.
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What an inspiring twelve months for REDgum Communications! We’ve produced a broad range of programs from documentary to advertising, for local government and major clients in Australia and throughout Asia.
The REDgum Communications approach is to produce beautifully shot, lit and edited work which tells stories that move and inform people. Whether that’s with the humour of comedians as in our ‘Talking Stars’ projects, or the desperate sadness of the ‘Genocide Centre’ and abject poverty in Cambodia, years of experience in travel and magazine-style TV means we are adept at telling great stories on time and on budget.
And we care about people, which means we deliver product with heart. -
It’s been four years since we lived on our beautiful farm and five since I decided to create Invincible Summer. The title comes from Camus. There was a long battle. I lost a cousin and friends to depression, and was desperate to be well. So with Simon Wise, Pete Reidy and other generous mates made this 10 minute film to enter in the ‘Hope Awards’ for films about mental health. There are laughs - Lawrence Mooney’s goblin story’s my favourite. We won a trophy. Things got better. And it helped people.
Just lately, lots of people have asked to see it again, so it’s no longer for sale to schools and unis, it’s here for free.Please show it to anyone you think it might help.
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Cambodia and Thailand with the Entrust Foundation
For 8 days in March, I travelled with Richard Beaumont, CEO of the Entrust Foundation, filming enabling projects in the slums and border communities of Cambodia and Thailand. This is a pro-bono project for Redgum Communications which will be the subject of further posts, as the work being done by Richard and Entrust is making huge changes to the lives of some of the world’s poorest people.
We visited the ‘Genocide Centre’ near Phnom Penh - original site of Pol Pot’s ‘Killing Fields’, and gained a sense of the pain of the people who lost a generation of educated, intelligent humans to brutal, mindless inhumanity.
On the up side, we visited the ‘school on the mat’, where teachers take a tarpaulin to a village, put it on the ground and teach whichever children are there. We saw children rescued from trafficking, boys learning to repair motor-bikes so that they can start their own businesses with a microfinance loan provided. We met Graham Taylor, a New Zealander who decided he needed to go from being ‘successful’ at home in NZ to being ‘significant’ in Cambodia. Graham’s mission is to create sustainable employment, improve the health of Cambodians and support local farmers; and he’s achieving all of the above with his ‘So! Nutritious’ fortified soy milk, fortified corn snacks, powdered spirulina (an amazingly nutritious blue-green algae) and ‘So! Borbor Plus’ soy-rice blend porridge for children. Graham’s employing 35 local people, training them, providing free childcare for all employees and creating a self-supporting business that enriches the community in many ways. Graham’s contactable ongraham.taylor55@gmail.com or +855 12 798 290, and is always happy for a chat.
We dined on deep-fried Tarantulas (yes, the very big spiders) and red fire ants at ‘Friends’, a restaurant staffed entirely by former street youth and their teachers (most of whom are former street youth as well).
At Poipet we saw the ‘no man’s land’ of 9 casinos between the borders of Thailand and Cambodia, and the merciless commerce that surrounds it. A vivid memory there is of a child-height, toy-like, fully functioning electronic gambling table for children. We saw young children hauling heavy wooden carts laden with goods for a few cents per 12-14 hour day.
In Bangkok we visited Poo’s Cooking School in the Klong Toey community - a shanty slum built on an open sewer near the centre of town. With seed funding from Entrust, and the inspiration of Australian woman Anji Barker - who with her husband Ash and two children have lived there (yes, in the slum) for 9 years - Poo has created a market-to-kitchen cooking experience for which tourists pay good US$, about which they rave, and which brings cultural awareness and relative prosperity to Klong Toey.
Great news! Entrust has committed to funding for an editor - Tony Dean - to help me put together a half-hour documentary from the footage I shot on this eye-opening journey. It will be a Redgum Communications production to highlight the work of this small but dynamic foundation that directs more than 100% of every dollar from its corporate partners to on-the-ground projects that empower local people.
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Scarlet Runner - now that’s quick!
It took us 35 hours to sail to King Island on ‘Fully-n-Pushing’, mainly because there was very little wind. It meant that if I didn’t get back to Melbourne very quickly I was going to miss my flight to some important work in Sydney with MLA (Meat and Livestock Australia), working with their marketing team on a major presentation to steak…err stakeholders.
So someone knew someone and I was offered a trip back on the fastest yacht in the fleet. The amazing ‘Scarlet Runner’, as the guest of victorious owner Rob Date.
We made the trip in 8 hours, reached a top speed of 21 knots, and I made it to Sydney with time to spare. MLA marketing communicated their messages brilliantly and achieved their goals: it was a golden week.
I shot this piece of adrenalin on a tiny ‘GoPro Hero’ HD camera in a waterproof casing. Luke McDade cut it to Blur and it’s Redgum Communications‘ thankyou to Rob Date and his crew for the lift.
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Redgum Communications created a one-day workshop based on some of Malcolm Gladwell’s findings in ‘Blink - The Power of Thinking Without Thinking’. The workshop explores the idea that you can create a strong and lasting impression in the first 2 1/2 seconds of an interaction. It’s a great exercise in ‘instant personal branding’, and has been extremely popular in the corporate sector. Imagine 60 financial planners on a tropical island, each with 2 1/2 seconds in front of a camera to create a positive and lasting first impression! The compilation of their work is then played at the conference dinner - smartly edited and with titles and music - and it’s a competition to see who stands out and why!
We put this demonstration together to show how powerful an impact can be made in the thinnest of slices - a 2 1/2 second message. (Warning - there’s one swear word starting with F)
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Ovarian Cancer Research Foundation
How good was that? Chasing the dolphins down to King Island while on board ‘Fully n Pushing’, Andy Griffiths’ Sydney 38 racing yacht was amazing. Filming from the top of the mast (with the GoPro Hero) was a highlight, as were the King Island steak sandwiches when we arrived after 35 hours of light-to-no wind.
Andy, a gyneacologist and obstetrician, is planning to sail in the 2012 Sydney to Hobart yacht race, along the way raising money for the Ovarian Cancer Research Foundation. Redgum Communications created the attached video - with Anthony Dean editing - as a contribution to the adventure. I shot most of the footage on a Panasonic HDC-HS700, which does surprisingly well for a small, top of the consumer range camcorder.
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Sustainable Communities
I spent last week travelling the length and breadth of Victoria with cameraman Peter Reidy, filming Microfinance workers ‘in situ’. Redgum Communications is developing training workshops with Good Shepherd Youth and Community Services in a project funded by Sustainability Victoria, and in partnership with Thrive Sustainability Services. For the filming we re-enacted real scenarios Microfinance workers have when interviewing clients who are applying for loans. It was incredibly informative, a lot of fun and will be an important part of the training to be delivered later in the year.
