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We all enjoy a good coffee shop, me included. But having a 12-man film crew there with me just hit different. Picture it: I’m on set, it’s a production for a soon-to-be-launched financial brand and I’ve been appointed DOP. Literally, a dream come true. There was just one not-so-small challenge: we’re also in the middle of a global pandemic. Oh, and we had just one day to pull off the job, obvs.

It was nerve racking, to say the least. Adapting to new hardware, such as the beast of a camera I had personally picked out for this project, is difficult enough. For the first hour or two I felt locked-in to getting the shots we needed at a base level. In retrospect, I think of those opening hours as “warming up”. But it wasn’t long until the indie filmmaker in me said “invoke motion” – which is my personal mantra when filming any kind of content creation. Basically, if it aint moving eyes, it ain’t turning heads.

It was probably by scene 14 and all the mandatories were in the can that I attempted a whip pan shot; which is what I would usually do, were I operating a gimbal. All of a sudden I heard the director shouting “Yes! I love that, let's go with that!”. Admittedly this was a hard shot to pull off with such a ridiculously heavy rig but when you see your name on the clapperboard you realise that you gotta do whatever it takes to make that happen. Balls to the, uh, camera.

Working with Director Lamar Bonhomme gave me something extra, it must be said, to push through and get out of my box. Or whatever you call it, when you’re somewhat set in your ways. Each Director will have their way and his was part collaboration, part exploration. I figured that my role was to help him discover the beauty for which he searched. Loved it. Every now and again, he’d throw a famous quote my way to help me understand his intentions or to inspire a shot that wasn’t boarded. While that might be weird for some people, it made the experience interesting for me.

So what of the pandemic and COVID challenges?

Well, it all kinda just faded away to be honest. There were people assigned to ensure certain protocols, but as for me and my responsibilities: I was geared for the worst. I expected everything to be harder, more awkward and a whole lot slower. But I can’t say that this experience was any more challenging than what we were doing pre-pandemic. And for that, I thank my entire team at TNG.Productions. I think it all comes down to two things: passion and people. Together, those elements allowed me to focus on the job at hand, the thing I love.

And I can’t wait to do it again, mask and all.

Reach out, you’ll find me on all social media platforms.
Keegan Jood, TNG Productions

New needs friends, start here: hi@thenicheguys.com

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The director yells, “Cut!” Everyone on the muddy, rain soaked set breathes a sigh of relief through their masks. Not because they’re relieved we got ‘the shot’ but because in spite of the nervousness about being back on set, it’s exhilarating being back and doing the thing we love.

Oh, how we missed all of this.

To pull off almost any kind of shoot you need to meet in person. Face-to-face. Side-by-side. Equipment passed from hand-to-hand, shared scripts with over the shoulder peeks - touching, brushing and rubbing up against each other. All par for the course.

Before COVID-19 that is.

The past twenty months have been littered with postponed shoot days which quickly became cancelled shoot days as Levels were adjusted, curfews introduced and reintroduced, the proximity to other people just wasn’t comfortable anymore and the utterance of this pandemic brought a lot of life to a deafening halt.

“Action!”

But now twenty months later I think the world realises it isn’t about waiting for this pandemic to end before we get on with life, it’s how do we continue life whilst battling the pandemic. So with crew, cast and client masked, sanitised, socially distanced when possible and vaccinated (fully or semi) TNG.Productions happily achieved two shoots in September for the tech finance app Spot Money and South Africa’s favourite toilet cleaner Domestos.

Both spots will be hitting screens in the coming weeks and we can’t wait to share this work. In the meantime, here’s what nervous excitement and somewhat-relief-about-being-outside looks like: check out these images from the set.

We’re pretty proud of our COVID-friendly learnings and systems for large scale productions.

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