I’m a local creative. Producing content for print, motion graphics and video work. Recently I was lucky enough to be project lead (shooter/editor “shredditor”) on an adventure documentary with a shoe string budget.

Watch the documentary here.

Faced with the daunting task of creating 10 minutes’ worth of content that keeps a viewer engaged while telling a narrative was quite outside of my comfort zone. Nguni Runner was my first documentary, first project with this much scope, my first narrative to be seen on TV as well as many other firsts… essentially, I went deep and was looking for opportunities to alleviate some of these stresses.

Logistically it was a bit of a nightmare. I had a single shooting day that would include multiple second shooters, helicopter liaisons, 4 mountain peaks, winter conditions and a scheduled 18 hour day, as well as a handful of interview days and supplementary b-roll shoots.

I had the basics covered for gear, but knew that there was a chance to really amp up the production value if I could string together some extras. I’m no stranger to renting from TCS (Hi Liz!) to help flesh out my kit, but this was a bit uncommon, I found myself needing a handful of different pieces and at all different days during my production. GH4, Slider and Canon 24-70 for interview days, Canon 16-35 and 70-200 for shooting in the mountains and typical to my workflow, nothing wanted to line up nicely so that I could bang out everything in the same week. I presented my case to some sympathetic listeners at TCS, and before I knew it Peter Jeune and Evelyn Drake were emailing me with ideas of how to help. TCS has always been a huge resource for me, whether it was just industry talk asking about gear with Jordan, or renting everything under the sun with Liz. This time they really helped me by just giving some added rental support to a local production, I’m sure it’s quite small in the larger scheme of things with TCS but it was a huge help to me.