The difference between Authentic films and other video production agencies is that we are journalists and that we have been doing this for decades and as such telling stories is our stock in trade.

Withe rise of the internet and then the increase in connection download speeds enabled everyone to sahe video. It also ment that to promote your business you needed to be making it. So all of a sudden your a movie producer/media buyer. So your looking out at who to make your videos and evryone is offering the same buzz words; story, authenticic [guiltty]

But let me introduce you to jam!

Now i’ve been a photographer since my mid twenties and i was obsessed with it and so i knew a lot of photographers! and the most successful one is the least skilled but what he does the best is tell stories.
I don’t mean tells stories in his photos I mean in real life if I had my top 3 people to have a beer with he is in it all day, everyday and that’s because he’s great value, he tells the best stories. One thing he would say of a boring person is that “they’ve got no Jam!”

Now if your not familiar with the concept let me explain now Stu let’s just ‘ave it”, Stu is from London he’s a geezer so he has lots of funny london slang that goes way back. So imagine you have your bread and butter to eat..again and someone has some jam..suddenly that bread and butter get’s interesting! it’s a treat!
So stuey has Jam, so much jam that he went to hollywood to pursue a carear taking pictures of celebrities who he befriended at the..? you guessed it at the pub, so calls a handful of household name actors his best mates, the worlds most charismatic people have stuey as one of their best drinking buddies because he has equal amounts of charisma jam.eventually ended up taking movie posters and TV show posters.
So he convinces people to buy into what he is selling with story, people buy into it because they want a bit of his jam to sell what they are selling because they’re buying it.
Your videos, your stories need jam!
so watch the films of the directors pitching to you and if they don’t make you want more, then they’ve got no jam.

I did a humanties degrea at universityalot of my universsity time was spent reading and exploring the best writers especialy journalistic writers from the new school of journalism started by thom wolf and ending with hunter s thomson but between there was erenest hemmingway and norman mailer. so i wrote alot trying to find my style and i thought i could take this into film which eventually i have.

I think our clients know who they are and need their story told by the best most experience story tellers available.

I think that just like buying a suit or an office space, video is your introduction it conveys who you are to the world. and just like It is likely the first impression that you make on people when they first discover you. So just like a suite or a business location you need to invest in video/ your apperance how you present to the world.
And so hiring a video maker who has been chosen by GQ and Vogue for their assetic, who has been trained by News LTd and The sydney morning herald, company’s who’s very purpose is to tell story’s that people want so much that they are prepared to pay to view their story’s daily is really a no brainer.

And basically to be honest, I need to be inspired to tell an inspiring story about you because as the name suggests my work is authentic films, not bullshit films.

I’ve always worked in editorial which is media speak for story’s there’s advertising, marketing and editorial the editorial was always the story’s wether that be daily news or sunday supplement thought piece or a personal profile that’s editorial that’s what i’ve always done. And just like writers some videographers tell boring stories that no one wants to watch and i’m not one of those. But what i’m saying is that just investing in video won’t necessarily get you a return on investment if that video is ;boring not technically well produced.

some film makers make movie’s, they make fiction, some make adverts, i make documentray stories

so if you want to make fictional movie, or a TV ad I’m not your man, i can put you in touch with people who can. But if you want your own authentic sotory told in an interesting/watchable stylish way then i’m your man.

If style and besing the best is important to you, if you want your story told in a cool way that reflects well on you then i want to work with you.

Everyone knows that they need films made now but they have never had to before and so they have no experience in knowing what is available. But if you are looking to tell your story to record your story for posterity and to build a brand then you need an experience “editorial style film maker’ think The sydney morning Herals sunday magazine type article not the guy who does the real estate ads. The person chosen by the editors who run the Sydney morning herlad to write a fantastic story because that is hard to do. I mean we can all pic up a pen and write just like anyone can learn to make a video but can we shoot the right things in a cool way and edit together a watchable even engrossing echanting inspiring story no most cannot most cannot. But we can because we have learned how to in the old media establishments where we where trained up until now.

It took me over 10 years to get my first shoot with VOGUE. I had to learn my craft and it wasn’t a straight line i don’t think they have carers advice for how to do that and i won’t bore you with all the details other than to say the most valuable learning period during that period was assisting Australia’s best fashion and portrait photographer Tony Notta.Now i stopped pursuing fashion photography after i shot for Vogue because i realised it wasn’t for me. Fashion photography is all about fantasy, it’s about having a beautiful idea in your mid and recreating it with technical excellence/know how/experience. For me reality interested me more. I was more enchanted by reality by a person’s weknesses and strengths than any idea that i could come up with.

Fashion photographers earned the most money so i thought if i could attain this i could have time to make documentaries but then i thought why not just cut to the chase and make documentaries. Follow my dreams more directly.

So I got a job at pascol paints factory in Botany, Sydney. filling 40 leater containers with paint and then lifting them onto a pallete and repeate. I did the night shift so that i could shop my portfolio during the day. One day i stopped outside news ltd on holt street and asked to see the picture editor. Luckily for me they were deperate for photographers because of a flu outbreak in their building, so they saw me. The picture editor quickly flicked through my portfolio with his feet on the desk and looked at me and said “alot of pretty pictures mate but can you do news?’
I said earnestly that i hadn’t ever but i would love to try.
Desperate lack of staff and maybe he saw something in me that remided me of himself made him give me a try so i was ordered down to the gear room to get a long camera lens and given cab charges to get a taxi to the wharf where i was to board a water taxi and:

Pic Editor” Get a picture of it flapping it’s tail with the Manly ferry in the bakground, ok!”

So i remeber bing on the water taxi linging up the whale between me and the manly ferry like i was a green leaning capt ahab thinking I’m really doing this”!

So i got the shot, it was published and so i got shift number two.Alex had made it’s way to little cove in Manly, the walking track atound the cove was full of people. the interest in the whale was huge. It was a beautiful story. I’d been given the afternoon shift so I found peter barnes the old pro who i was releaving. He had found a good vantage point, high up on a bank overlooking the bag with a direct line of sight to the whale that was lazily rolling around enjoying a snooze in the warm waters of the shallow bay.
Me: “ what’s been happening Peter?”
Peter;”not much he’s just been laying around doing what he’s doing now”
Pete was eager to get home so he detached his camera from the long lens and mono pod he had and dundied off.
i attached my camera to the lens and took in the scene and snapped a few shots to test my exposure and check the camera settings.

As anyone who has lived in Sydney know’s at about 3-4 O’clock the southerly kiks in, it’s a cool wind from the direction of the an artic.
The cool winds made the temperature drop which awakened the sleeping giant and as he awoke he became more enegetic. This made my adrenalin start to pump..”ok we’ve got some action here..”
within a few mintues Alex fully launched himself out of the water as i rattled of shots as fast as the cara would go..this was film days so i had a max of 36 shots before i had to change a roll.’
To be honest i cannot remeber if he jumped from the water more than once. But a call came in from the picture desk eager for something for a picture of alex for tomorrows edition because the morning had produced nothing from him. I told them my story and they excitedly ordered me back to HQ immendiately.

I rushed back to surrey hills with the film, usually i’d develop it, choose the best shots and put those into the sytem so that my pic editors could decide what to use. But on this occassion they took the films from me and i stood back as the head and assistant took over all that. They found a picture of alex full biody leaping from the water it must have been just at the point before his body reached critical point and fell over. The best part was that an old man in a finshermans cap had rowed a tiny dingy out to view the whale and he was sititting very close to the whale in between me and the whale, the long focus length had compressed the perspactive so he looked even closer. it gave the image scale and most importantly a human story elememnt.
The pic editors did their cropping and the picture made a full page colour shot in the next day’s paper. The shot was then turned into a free poster in the paper and mentioned on TV and radio and ‘whale boy’ was born!!!

So that’s how i started in news journalism.Dave highett the assistant picture editor with his feet on the desk made sure i got more shifts and took me under his wing for which i’m forever grateful to him for. It was a gift from god. I’d serendiptiously been gifted this opportunity.

I worked with the daily and sunday telegraph with Dave for 10 years after that doing everything from night shifts to hard news, portraits you name it. It wasn’t all plane sailing and dave told me off when i produced something he thought was belwo par but he always explained why it was wrong and how to fix it and i listened and leraned and he always congratuleted me when i did well.

Part of my pint is that alot of videographers and production companies you will have to choose from have now journalistic trainging and very little real work experience and so they haven’t learned what it takes to make a great story.

my advice to you. see who they have worked for if they have been chosen to work for great publications that’s a good indication.
rather than being convinced by there slaes pitch and promises look at their video’s do they inspire and entertain you? can you even be bothered to sit through them?…..if not then no one esle will either. Choose someone who makes stories that ntertain and inspire, inform.

Most peoples videos you just dont care about the people and the ideas in them .

Don’y make ads know one wants to watch your ads, they are an anchronism like TV ads that we had to watchin the day because we were in the middle of watching something like a movie or editorial news show that we dwre enjoying intersted in.Something they will remeber something they are surprised by, feel emotional about and will start a converstaion they will rember it be inspired by it.Don’t think about it like a marketting exercise where points have to be crossed off it needs to be an emtionally emgaging story..this is the internet and it needs to be human most of all human to stand out in what we soon be a see of ai it needs to connect to our human desires not be correct.

Those days ae over noe want to watch your ad so don’t make them.don’t waiste your money on them.spend your money on creating something people will enjoy watching instead.

It was mentioned on news

So i got a job with News ltd at the daily telegraph. On my first shift I got a shot of a whale that was nick name

d Alex in sydney harbour.it was the first time they had found the harbour clean enough to visit for a decade or two, it was a good news story. i got the shot of it flapping it’s tail as instructed

Then the internet andthe digital age happened and my stills cameras could now produce video and people needed their story told online.