Who are you and what do you do?

My name is Chad Peacock and I started tinkering with film making in the nineties when I was 12 making really bad short action films with the family camcorder. Making videos/films has been a part of my life in one way or another ever since and has taken me to some really interesting places all around the world.

I currently teach high school media studies and find it a challenging yet inspiring job (plus I get to live vicariously through my students who have been finalists and winners in the WASA’s in the last few years!). My most important job though is being a Dad to three young girls, and it is really them who got me back into making short films again.

All the techniques I had been messing around with in our family videos came in pretty handy for the last few jobs I have done – the most notable being the ‘Creepy’ job.

What was the brief for the ‘Creepy’ vid and how did you approach it?

There was no real brief except to capture the three main phases of production of the biggest section of the artwork. The film only documents 14m of a 45m job – the final piece is really going to be amazing and will be installed at Murdoch University in the next few weeks.

I basically filmed a few hours each day for four or five days and set up another camera shooting time-lapse as Kyle (AKA Creepy) worked throughout the day. I had been experimenting with shooting on DSLR’s for about a year prior and had a pretty good grasp on what did and didn’t work – luckily this particular subject really suited this type of film making which does have it’s limitations.

In terms of gear though it was really pretty simple. I shot 90% of the video stuff on the Panasonic GH1 using a variety of cheap lenses (Nikon e series 28mm and a $40 eBay security camera lens that was really fast and great in low light).

Out of all the DSLR’s I love the fact the GH1 has a flip out screen to do the low and high angles – the Canon’s are currently pretty limited in this regard and I just used the 7D to shoot the time lapse stuff (tracking done in post) and the tracking shots at the end of the video.

The dolly shots were done on a ‘wally dolly’ and also on a ‘glidetrack’, which is a really simple but innovative piece of kit that I borrowed for the shoot. In terms of music we were stoked to get ‘Explosions in the Sky’ onboard as I am a really big fan of their work on the film ‘Friday Night Lights’.

It was a really enjoyable experience and everyone is happy with the final product, which is always nice.

What’s the story with the HK Airport vid? What was the hack?

I was traveling to Canada for a family wedding and had a 12 hour stop over in Hong Kong. I thought it would be fun to test out my little DSLR camera with limited gear in a confined space. I spent a few hours shooting, using things like the airport trolleys for my tracking shots and then edited the piece on my flight to Vancouver.

I found out later on my way back home that the airport is way bigger than I had thought and I could have shot a whole lot more interesting stuff but it turned out OK anyway. I enjoy the challenge of using limited equipment – I’m a strong believer in using constraints to foster creativity.

In terms of the hack that is a firmware update this guy has released to increase the capture bit rate on the Panasonic GH1. It is a really interesting time for filmmaking in terms of new these DSLR’s with a lot of people pushing the technology to it’s limits and getting some pretty cinematic looking results.

What are you working on at the mo?
I will be doing a really short promo piece for Kyle (Creepy) at his upcoming gallery show at Turner galleries, a corporate job promoting Perth to overseas education institutions/students, and later in the year I will be heading to Zambia to shoot a documentary with our School which I am really looking forward to.

Where can we find you (online or off)?

Online I can be found at Vimeo, musically at Sundaysaway.com, and the Zambia doco will be landing on swanmissions.com early 2011.

Offline I can be found playing in parks around our great city with my kids (and occasionally you will find me playing in dingy pubs with my mates in Sundays Away).