Director of Photography | Jagermeister BTS Ice Cold Gig 2017

Technical Camera Opperator | Jagermeister Ice Cold Gig 2017

The Jagermeister Ice Cold Gig with London's own Modestep may have been the most interesting and challenging shoot of the year. I was asked to come on as the Technical Camera Operator and DP of the BTS by Tom McShane at Secret Compass. From the very beginning the project sounded like a major challenge, but that is exactly why they chose the team they did.

Not only did Jagermeister have to find a band willing to perform such a wild gig, we also had to figure how to rig and shoot it safely. Josh Friend and Pat Lundy from Modestep were excited, scared, and up for the challenge. I have been working with Brian Mosbaugh & Scott Rogers on high angle rigging & filming projects like this for several years now, but this one still left us scratching our heads trying to figure out how we would pull it off.

Jobs like this require a team of skilled professionals who can perform several different jobs at once. Helicopters became props in the set, riggers became AC's, and DP's became safety crew. This type of job was required to be done by a small crew in an even smaller weather window. We all had many hats to wear and needed to work as a single unit to pull off an impossible gig. In the last 48 hours the weather cleared just enough for the helicopters to spin up their engines and get the team on location where we rigged the first ever live performance in a spacenet, looking over the beautiful Queenstown, New Zealand.

Modestep | Queenstown, New Zealand

Watch the BTS! See how we did it...

It takes a widely talented group of professionals to pull off this type of gig! Huge thanks to Scott Rogers, Brian Mosbaugh & Secret Compass, for putting in 15 months of pre-production on this project . Tom McShane, Tom Bodkin and Dave Lucas you guys are legends, and the gears who kept this entire thing rolling. To all the incredible local New Zealand mountain guides: Hugh Barnard, Davie Robinson, Bruce Dowrick, Tarn Pilkington and Tony McCutheon, without your years of experience and local knowledge we would not have been able to make it past the planning stages of this event. To AJ Sutherland, Donna Allen, Tim Reid and Tim Pierce without your creative vision and dedication to excellence we would not have created the emotion and energy this film conveys to the world . Tony Young, for creating all the stunning scenic aerials of Queenstown. Geoff Ellis, for engineering the glass platform, even when we break them during sound check and you stayed up all night to remake them . Heli Glenorchy, for some of the most impressive and precise piloting skills I have ever seen. Sherwood Queenstown for the un comparable accommodations and dining experience, you created an atmosphere that allowed our team to rest and refule day after day as we battled the storm of the season!