Role(s): Creative Lead, Videographer, Script Writer, Actor.
Every few years, I have the pleasure of creating an epic video made of the video birthday messages from that person’s loved ones. After I created the first production over 12-years ago, the individual messages from the core group of friends have gotten creative, elaborate and have fun—It’s great to have been apart of opening the floodgates. The creative gloves came off and they have created Music Videos with the words changed, Comedy Skits and whatever came to mind they created.
All projects are managed remotely to a loose brief (mostly tech specs such as Landscape and in 1080p 24fps with good lighting––All mobiles have this), with creations arriving within a deadline from various places in the world resulting in a final production often lasts over an hour.
It’s a wonderful feeling to see both how happy each person/team is with their creation and also the surprise look on the birthday boy/girl’s faces when they realise we’ve done this all behind their back and delivered on their birthday.
Recently, during lockdown, it was a friends 40th so being unable to gather and celebrate this was even more important to the group.
The video below is my message contribution to this.
Initially, I was struggling to be creative after seeing everyones videos. It was as if my creativity has left me…
… So this became the concept.
For this solo project I needed to script and storyboard as well as plan my shot list with editing in mind to tell the story.
Please note: Where he’s from the have a funny colloquialism for referring to each other. Ie: where I (growing up in NZ) would say “Bro” to my friends, they say something different 🙂
Darren Bandoo 
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