Role: Campaign Director

BRIEF: To create, film and produce the first ever TV commercial for Caroma – Australia’s leading bathroom brand.

SOLUTION: “My Caroma” – a moving, touching yet light TVC that showcased a series of poignant family moments spent in the bathroom. With a memorable jingle playing under the vision, it put a smile on the faces of the audience, leaving them with a feel good factor that they associated with the overall qualities of the brand.

RESULT: This family centric and moving TVC enabled the agency (Storyhead) to introduce and establish Caroma’s award winning products and drive home the brand message: Australian heritage, innovation and commitment to excellence.

Wanting to increase brand awareness and sales of their Coolpix camera range, Nikon put out a brief for a breakthrough idea that would capture the imagination of the Coolpix target – the social media generation!

Working closely with the Storyhead agency team, I came up with a quirky yet strong concept called ‘The Deconstruction of a Profile Pic’ that explored the idea of what it takes to get a  great profile picture on a social media site.

With the premise that most of us like to have a memorable and meaningful profile pic and go to great lengths to take one, we created a series of videos that follow Australian actors/celebrities Joel Phillips and Holly Brisley on their fun, bizarre and memorable journeys to create the perfect profile pic using their Nikon COOLPIX camera of course! The campaign had a strong engagement factor – a competition that gave the public a chance to win a $5000 ultimate profile picture experience. The videos, web advertising and promotions were rolled out online via web advertising on major sites like NineMSN and CNET with great results that rocked the kazbah. See it here:

Official Nikon Campaign Web Page: http://mynikonlife.com.au/assignments/deconstruction-of-a-profile-pic

Role: Campaign Director

BRIEF: To produce a television and print campaign campaign for RACO – one of Australia’s leading cookware brands – that would drive awareness and sales.

SOLUTION: Development of strategy and roll-out of a full marketing bells and whistles campaign.  The TVC and print collateral centered around “Molly” a young woman who turns from a disaster cook into gourmet home chef,  thanks to her trusty RACO cookware. The TVC is on-air now but why not watch it here now?

Death defying heights, hanging on the edge of the world. Time to embrace the thrill of the adventure … with a Nikon D3S.

Credits: Neva Mwiti – Campaign Director/Producer

Client: Nikon

Agency: Storyhead

Today there are over 27 million people trapped in slavery. Many are hidden in the shadows, unseen, unheard … they’re the long, lonely cry in the darkness.

This 4 minute video gives voice to one such story.

Watch it here – Be Her Freedom

Credits: Neva Mwiti – Producer/Director

Agency: Storyhead

Client: The A21 Campaign

Yesterday evening I was immersed in a multidimensional universe that literally blew my mind; creating new mental pathways and neurons in my brain, so much so that I dreamt in vivid 3D all night.

As a film maker I can only give you a limited description of the most amazing filmic experience I’ve ever had in years; one that transported me to a whole new universe that left me wanting to migrate to … Pandora.

Avatar is the career making film I would have loved to make, but I don’t yet have Cameron’s gazillions of dollars that paid for the the performance-capture soundstage, and budget to pay for the intricate computer-generated (CG) scenes, which make up about 60% of the finished film, and milions more for  software and special cameras created for the film.

That said, I was in heaven for the three odd hours it took to get into Avatar’s world. Every one of the 2,500 special-effects shots, took my breath away as the ground beneath me literally shook (excellent sound design and score!) and I almost touched the jungle beauty of Pandora with my own hands. I was immersed in a rich sensual environment and story that melded the real world and the fictional one with not even the tiniest sense of dislocation – however I’ll have to watch it again, in 3D, to see if I missed anything. It’s the director in me. 

“And as much as he could, Cameron tried to place the cast emotionally inside the environment of Pandora. He took the actors to Hawaiian rain forests and shot reference footage for them to use as sense memory. To help them feel an explosion, he boomed a noise over amplifiers, threw foam particles at them and whacked them with a padded jousting pole. To approximate Pandora’s moss-covered terrain, he laid plastic sheets on the floor, forcing the cast to walk gingerly. When Zoe Saldana, who plays Jake’s Na’vi love interest Neytiri, was “riding” a flying creature, she clung to a giant gray hobbyhorse rocked on a gimbal by grips. For scenes that combined live action with CG, Cameron used a new tool called a Simulcam, which allowed him to see actors playing in exotic CG surroundings in real time.  It was the kind of filmmaking environment that required both imagination and patience.”

Cameron’s dedication  to the art of film making means that he has again broken new ground for onscreen storytellers like myself. Inspite of the naysayers he pushed for the making of Avatar and staked his reputation on a fantasy. I’m thankful that his crazy dream has come true and that Avatar’s muted prophecy of man’s future demise (unless we get our act together; take care of Planet Earth, choose peace, listen to the most wise amongst us who don’t necessarily look or play the part and quit the war mongering) rings home and true for many.

My new short ‘just because’ film made from a series of stills taken of the beautiful Maasai people, my people! (well at least 1/4 of me is Maasai! The rest is Meru, and that’s another story …)

‘Red’ is the precursor to a book (or film – haven’t decided which) that I’m working on based on the story of my grandmother, a Maasai woman who was kidnapped from her people by my grandfather when she was barely out of her teens. I’m fascinated by her experience and I can’t wait to tell it. Watch this space. 

The voiceover is an excerpt from Michael Jackson’s ‘Planet Earth’ poem (‘This is it’ album). 

Red (c) Influence Media, 2009.

Masterchef runner up Poh stars in a wry and rather tart-y TVC that I helped produce for Matchbox – a leading Australian kitchenware retailer. Funny story, happy client, great results! (Credits: Producer, Production Company: Storyhead)

Story … is a pattern … threaded through all of us … that defines who we are by allowing us to organise and share our experience well as shape and make sense of our belief systems and reality.

Since the dawn of mankind, while children nodded off to sleep around the campfire, fathers, uncles, grandmothers and wise men told of brave warriors, immense beings, grand wars and great victories. They wove fantasy and adventure so skillfully that it only served to awaken our innate sense of curiosity and make us believe the impossible was possible.

From Jesus to Homer, Shakespeare, Miguel de Cervantes (Don Quixote), Franz Kafka, Winston Churchill, President Obama, Leo Tolstoy, Ngugi wa Thiongo, CS Lewis, Chinua Achebe, Toni Morrison, Speilberg, Guillermo Del Torro, Tim Burton, Michael Jackson, and U2, the best leaders, politicians, bards, ashiks, griots and prophets have understood the power of story. They’re each skilled orators weaving together the dreams and hopes of entire populations using myths that are intriguingly similar in content and structure from culture to culture.

In ‘The Hero with a Thousand Faces’ sociologist Joseph Campbell explored the theory that important myths from around the world which have survived for thousands of years all share a fundamental structure, which Campbell called the monomyth. In a well-known quote, Campbell summarised his theory: “A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.”

Joseph Campbell’s monomyth explains the structure of humanity’s eternal story, a tale that lies deep in our souls, placed there by the Ultimate Storyteller. This eternal story is what we respond to and recognise when we read a fascinating book, watch a poignant film or hear an amazing tale. 

The power of story to galvanise and inspire humanity rests in the dramatic tension, the unexpected yet familiar emotional reaction, the memorable story arcs and prevailing resolutions that convince us of a reality distant yet very similar to our own, that make us laugh and cry and that transport us to a place and a dreamtime far, far away, where everything is possible, where joy abounds and where there is no weeping and no pain.

“Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.” CS Lewis. 

“The greatest stories are those that resonate our beginnings and intuit our endings, our mysterious origins and our numinous destinies, and dissolve them both into one.” Ben Okri.

“Our individual stories are an infinite, ever changing, unfettered, unmeasured, organic life force in themselves. Yes it seems that we are all telling the same story. One of birth, rebirth and despair, joy, love and pain, heartache and rejection, victory, triumph and redemption.” Neva Mwiti.

“The greatest stories are those that resonate our beginnings and intuit our endings, our mysterious origins and our numinous destinies, and dissolve them both into one.” 

From blue chip corporations to single individuals, we each have a story to tell. Stories shape how we see the world

and in turn how the world views you … me … us.

So … what is your story?