Safely back in ‘real-life’, beautiful to be back in the warmth of family life with Dee and Kathy..

I was offered a job in one of the ‘hottest’ boutique agencies, run by an Italian art director, one of the best in the country, and certainly the most colorful, and very influential in the style of the work of the day. I felt fortunate to become part of it, again to be influenced by the best in their fields. I had a great relationship with the art director and writer; it was not so good with the Italian, a little too colorful for me; we bumped egos and decided to part company.

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The inaugural Awards Night of the Melbourne Ar Directors' Club happened shortly after, but I had prior arrangements asd couldn't attend.

 The next day, an excellent art director I had a lot of respect for came to visit bearing news: I had amongst the most work awarded in the show. I had gone freelance, and we decided to join forces and become a team. We were soon offered an attractive full-time job at the first agency that had brought me to Melbourne. I had now progressed from being the oldest junior to a senior writer!

The creative partner of the agency was a charismatic raconteur, humorist, social commentator, and a delight to work with. On his morning ‘rounds’, he would pop into our office and have a lovely chat about life, about his famous collection of Egyptian artifacts, while I would share about the thousand-petal lotus that flowered with self-realization, and he humored me. Reinforcing my reputation as being a "space cowboy" and"out there".

His presence would often help sell difficult work as he would enter a presentation, warmly greet the client and say “Wonderful work, isn’t it?", the charisma would work its magic and the work usually got instantly approved while he retired to lie on the large couch at the end of the room ...and, of course, the work was usually wonderful!

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Club Med(iteranee) was a client that needed to be ‘re-positioned’, it had been portrayed on a television program as a cheap place for affairs and needed to be 'straightened' up a bit and add some family appeal. They were ready for change, were a great client to work with, and a source of a few adventures.

Our first shoot was in New Caledonia. Next, Tahiti for a photographic shoot..

Then the Maldives, to a small island surrounded by beautiful turquoise waters, home to the most amazing range of technicolored fish and breath taking beautiful coral reefs. But we didn't see that when we arrived​

It was pitch black, pouring with rain, and after midnight. The airport was on a small island that reaLly only had enough room to fit it on.

We boarded a small local boat and headed off, braving a fairly decent-sized swell. Fortunately, my surfing experience made it feel like an adventure while most of the film crew retired below decks to 'ride it out'.The ‘pathway’ through the reef to the island was marked by a series of poles, and it took several attempts for the captain to get them perfectly aligned through the blinding rain, finally the exhausted and stressed film crew fell onto dry land, which was actually very wet sand.

Perfect weather greeted us the next day. Our idea was to show the water sports available at a Club Med as a windsurfer, a sailboat, a skin diver passed seamlessly through the screen in front of a beautiful beach as a voice said

                                                                  "The Best things in life a still free at Club Mediteranee."

We needed to build a camera platform offshore, looking at a background of the Club's village of simple native style huts, on a pristine white beach.  We spent the day wading out carrying poles and parts for the platform till the sun went down. Finally, to the bar for a self-congratulatory drink, and I fell into bed, tired and sunburnt, but happy and anticipating a successful day's shoot as everything was perfectly set up and ready to go. What  ould go wrong?

 

Gale force winds and torrential rain! 

A ferocious storm hit us at midnight, it was the tail end of the monsoon - and this tail was really lashing out. 

The sun rose to reveal most of the roofs ripped off a large number of the huts, and only a very thin strip of beach, a lot of the sand had

been washed away. Not an attractive sight for a location-based holiday, we would have to wait for repairs. 

How does a film crew fill in time while waiting for repairs to be done? At the bar of course!
There were also some very strange floor shows each night in the talent competition, and I'm still hoping any footage shot at them remains in some-one’s bottom drawer..

Fortunately, we returned home our very sunburnt heads held high as we had managed to fit the shoot, working double time, into the originally allocated time.

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