Corporate Documentary

ELAC (Emerging Leaders Advisory Council) is a two year professional development program established by Chemistry Australia, investing in Australia’s chemistry industry’s future leaders. Our brief was to film interviews with a variety of ELAC participants to screen at the inaugural Chemistry Australia Industry Awards night on 6th April, where achievements of the sector’s ‘best and brightest’ from amongst Chemistry Australia’s diverse range of member organisations are acknowledged.

The chemistry industry doesn’t always get the best rap in the public sphere and this was certainly the elephant in the interview  rooms. It was incredible and eye-opening to have raw, honest conversations about the public perspective and the ELAC participants’ own passion to take action for a better, cleaner, sustainable industry to impact positively upon the world. We tip our hats to the people we met through Chemistry Australia whose focus, priorities and passions are pointed in the right direction, it was an honour to work with them.

Interviews were initially to be conducted solely in the Melbourne area but as happens, the brief rapidly expanded to include an additional three states and REDfusion was definitely up to the challenge!

The big ol’ jet airliners carried us far away to Perth, Brisbane and Sydney and repeatedly back to Melbourne over a whirlwind fortnight of conducting 11 interviews at ten corporations. Getting our copious volume of equipment between vehicles and check in/baggage collection is a challenge not to be attempted by the faint hearted! 

Our team has the fantastic advantage of being multi-skilled and this came to the fore with James and Chris being able to share the role of director.  We had the foresight to have cameraman Sam holidaying over in W.A. and so conveniently already on hand for the Perth gig. First class flights for Melbourne-Brisbane were secured at a lower price, so Chris and Greg were able to really enjoy the high life, before travelling cattle class on the return leg.

We love any excuse to create beautiful cinematography. This takes careful placement of our talent (ideally in wide open spaces), lighting the scene to look bright and fresh with a subtle flare, and moving props and furniture around in the background of images, then trying to remember to put it back where we found it afterwards, like the set of flags we placed in the background of this interview – we’re pretty sure Inspiro decided they looked better there anyway.

It’s important to get the little things right; a little known ‘filmmaking’ rule of thumb is to balance the weight of your frames. In a long form documentary or in our case, large sets of interviews one after the next, it’s important to get an even balance of left and right shots. Otherwise, subconsciously, our audience (that’s you) starts to feel one side of the screen is heavier than the other.