Over the course of my career, I’ve been lucky that every few years the stars align and I get the privilege of working on a true unicorn of a project. By “unicorn,” I mean a project that ticks every box: great clients, great collaborators, an amazing destination, and—most importantly—wonderful creative.
This project was exactly that. A dream collaboration with creative director Michael Williams (ACL & ACL Golf), The Fliers Club, and Titleist.
The brief was to help develop the first film in a travel series that featured golf while staying true to the brand’s ethos and adventurous spirit. During pre-production, we put together rough scripts, story structures, and shot lists, while keeping the creative flexible enough to allow for detours and new ideas once we were on the road. It was incredibly refreshing to work on a project with a longer runtime—one unconcerned with six-second deliverables or rigid format constraints.
In an age of wireless monitors, Zoom feeds, and video village, it was equally refreshing to be trusted by the team to do my thing and shoot this project in a truly documentary style. Leaning on my many years of international experience, I put together a streamlined camera package: an ARRI Amira as A-cam and a Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K Pro as B-cam. Knowing the entire look and coverage was on my shoulders, I brought just three lenses—a Zeiss Standard Prime 20mm, 40mm, and 100mm. Simply put, that’s all you need to shoot a well-styled documentary.
While my career has primarily focused on DP work, I’ve learned that I’m also pretty good at producing documentary projects overseas. From shooting chefs in Italy, to motorcycles in India, to trekking Kilimanjaro, I’ve now produced projects on four continents, often in some pretty wild conditions.
With the help of Tokyo based fixer and producer Masato Yamada, we put together a tight seven-day shooting schedule, hitting Tokyo, Kawana, and Osaka—then back again by bullet train. The toughest part of the job was dealing with Japan’s heat and humidity. We shot in mid-September and unfortunately caught a heat wave, which made the exterior golf days especially exhausting. Thankfully, the Fliers Club team always had a cold beer waiting for me at dinner.
Below are some of my favorite stills from the project. To watch the full 17-minute film, head over to The Fliers Club.
Drone Video & Photography by: Omar Rawlings
