More photos...

Here are more photos:

Dublin - such an awful, ugly place. Such awful, unfriendly people. No people willing to discuss the Springbok vs Ireland game happening next weekend...



The skyline of Manhattan from a certain agency...



This computer bumper-sticker just epitomises Toronto for me. "My other car is a Thomas Pynchon novel..." - does it get more literate / pretentious than this?



The boxer that greets you at the door of Boxer Films (funnily enough).

Photos from the marketing trip

Here are some interesting, some beautiful, some meaningful, some snappy, some posed photos from NY, Lon, LA, Toronto & Dublin.

This is a photo of a living window display in SoHo NYC.



Rick Singer - Gatehouse's official driver / DJ / Foodie / surfer outside of "La Playita" in Venice - possibly the best Mexican food in LA, eaten standing up amongst tires from the garage next door. Both of us ate for less than 10 dollars and we were stuffed!



Guard-dog in a wine-store in NYC



"No really Mr. Director, we value your showreel, your work is unique, in fact you are a unique snowflake..."



View from the Snorri Bros' office in Dumbo.

Bruce Millen joins Gatehouse

The newest addition to the Gatehouse crew is the not so new Bruce Millen. With over 25 years of experience this veteran, full of quirky laughs and nonchalantly dressed in bad 3/4 surfer shorts, is anything but a disorganized old man.
 
Having far reaching experience Bruce has managed the Vikings from the North, the passionate Italians from the Mediterranean to the colorful locals of the South. A committed Deadhead and Ry Cooder buff makes Bruce a welcome addition to Gatehouse. It rounds out Morne's Electronica obsession and Maynu's Hip-Hop mania. We will not mention Joel's unspeakable addiction to Wedding Mariachi bands and Perry Como's "Anvilania".

We are ecstatic to welcome Bruce to our family.

Gatehouse on tour

this photo was taken in Heathrow, just after we left the UK. It's that time of year! Gatehouse is coming to NY, LA and Toronto and this year we have added Dublin as a destination.

We look forward to saying hi to old friends and meeting new ones. It's an exciting time in our industry and we love to sit down with everyone and discuss the ramifications of the changes: technology, business models etc.

Please expect a call soon :)

Gold Loerie!

Hooray, we are so happy. This saturday night The Loeries awarded our Volkswagen 6 "Lucky" advertisement a gold!

Here is Chris, Prabashan "Blue Steel", Sanjiv and Bev at the awards on saturday night. As you can see we were all ecstatic with the gold. We partied hard at the Ogilvy after party where we were joined by Gav, Iris and everyone else who made it all possible.




There will be no photos of the after party as they can be used to incriminate us in a court of law :)

Our thanks goes to Gav who had the temerity to think outside of the borders of South Africa to find the right director for the job, to Chris who was brave enough to back Henry's vision, to Prabashan and Sanjiv for the amazing creative and the leeway to realise it best, to Iris the consummate production professional, to the VW client for having the vision to try a different kind of car ad and last of all to Henry-Alex and everyone at Smuggler and Gatehouse who worked so damn hard to make it all happen.

Red Leader standing by...

Technology is coming! As the seasons progress we get asked more and more for the film alternatives. Being the service-minded people that we are, we have to make certain that you never have to leave your comfort-zone when handling new technology and that you have confidence that your footage captured will interface with your post process to give you the best result.

Enter Caleb of Red One Africa, a native of Portland Oregon, who has been working with the Red One since beta phase. With the camera technician jumping in seniority to the lynch-pin on set, we feel confident offering his services as the technician who can get the most out the red camera for you.

The system includes multiple back-ups from the RedHD, on-set rushes if necessary, footage to offline edit if necessary and he will keep a 3rd back-up for 48 hours in case the world explodes ;)

He will also talk with your post people to make sure that the Red footage meta-file is tweaked properly so that your colourist is not having to make-up, but is rather adding to the footage instead.

Have a look at this commercial for the University of Pretoria shot on the Red One:

Deliverance delivers editing service on set

Of course all we can think of is Ned Beatty and duelling banjos, but Ricky and Anthony are 2 highly skilled editors who are teaming up with Gatehouse to offer editing on-set, if so required by our clients.

We are finding more and more that with the increased pressure being placed on production companies to deliver in shorter and shorter timeframes, it can become necessary to see what we are cooking as we are cooking it. An on-set editor is becoming more and more common. Whether it's taking the VT feed and working with that or working with yesterday's rushes, editors are sitting at a table on-set with their high-powered laptops working on an off-line.

Anthony edited our short-movie "Unto Dust" for us and we love working with him and Ricky. Both are great guys and very talented editors.

Have a look at their stuff on their website www.deliverance.co.za.

Annie is back!!

Hooray! Annie is back from maternity leave. Her beautiful son Jude is now 4 months old and she is ready to take up her post as office ninja.



The office has had a spring-clean already and we feel like spring and season are beckoning from around the corner.



Here is a picture of the little tyke:

Slamdance Workshop

Last weekend we had the privilege to attend a workshop on guerrilla film-making with Daniel Harris, one of the founders of Slamdance in the US. Slamdance is the edge festival that sucks up all the Sundance rejects for that year and happens in Utah at the same time.

It's all about making an independent feature, a task that is herculean in effort. It was really cool to sit down with fellow producers from other Cape Town film companies and compare notes and talk shop. The course had definite points to get across, but was informally structured so that if we were interested in a point we could discuss it for over an hour. The time literally flew by and we left there armed with knowledge that we can apply to The Umbrella Men.

Snorri Bros use footage of South Africa for new music video

Snorri Sturluson sent us this great music video for the Icelandic artist Lay Low from the album Farewell Good Night's Sleep. It's fresh and innovative and a beautiful song.

The video contains footage from several of the Snorri Bros trips to South Africa, to shoot Hummer and Aquafresh. Look for footage of The Waterfront, Namibia, Chapman's Peak and Golden Arrow busses :)

Beautiful stuff - thanks Snorri!