Grain have recently been commissioned by Canon to produce 2 promos to promote their new HF10 HD camera. The first promo will be based around snowboard legend Reto Kestenholz while the second will be shot with veteran pro-skater Jürgen Horwarth. The above picture is from the recent shoot in Zermatt, Switzerland to film the snowboard promo.
Some of Team Grain are out in Saas Fee, Switzerland shooting a snowboard movie for Nike 6.0. Summer snowboarding has some definite challenges including thin air, heavy packs and deep cravasses. We've got a slightly off-the-wall concept for the film which we expect to drop sometime over the coming winter. As always, keep your peepers peeled.
Half of the Grain team is currently out in French Canada filming for the NISSAN UCI mountain bike World Cup. Its been really hot, we've eaten a lot of maple syrup and of course filmed some awesome mountain biking. Here is a waterfall we saw by the side of motorway!
We have just returned from a challenging 2 week shoot in India and
Nepal for development NGO SPW where we were shooting for the charity's
new promo video. SPW do some amazing work with young people in many of
the world's poorest countires and we were stoked to be able to devote
some time to helping them out.
It's been a really busy month for the Grain Monkeys. We've been to Andorra, Fort William and Italy on the Nissan MTB job which is ticking along nicely. We've also had a simian out in Zambia on another Water Aid shoot for GMTV (amongst others). He's filming some corporate execs
getting muddy, should be good. We've also just done another shoot for
EDF producing a news tape for the launch of their new half marathon in
Birmingham which is being run to highlight the impact of climate change
(sound familiar...?)
Coming up we've got Switzerland, Canada,
Australia, Nepal and India in our 'going to' list. There are also a few
projects on the stove that we hope to be serving up sometime soon.
It's been another epic few weeks for the Grain simians. We've covered well over 2500 miles in 2 weeks covering the UCI mountain bike tour. We drove from London to Offenburg in Germany to Madrid to Northern Italy to Maribor in Slovenia. After 16 hours in a van you really get to know what everyone's had for breakfast. Watch this space for a video apology from Orlando to Will "Whatshisname" Bridges, our new 'Award Winning' editor.
On the back of the success of the last series of promos we created for development NGO WaterAid, Grain will be producing a series of new promos to highlight the problem of sanitation in developing countries. 40% of the world's population do not have access to a toilet and by looking at people in everyday work environments, we will explore the possibility of what it would be like if a statistic like this was true for the UK. In the first phase of this campaign we will be producing 3 promos based around a chef, a surgeon and a TV presenter. We have a really good team working on this and are roping in some very well known faces to front the short films so we expect to produce a great product.
Grain and Factory Media will be producing all of the on-location web content from the 5 Nissan Qashqai Challenge freestyle mountain bike events happening across European cities this summer (Milan, Madrid, Munich, Paris and London). At each event, 15 of the world's best urban freeride mountain bikers will compete on urban freestlye courses for a huge prize purse and in front of massive crowds. Check out www.nissan-sportsadventure.com for more info. We have a very experienced and talented team behind this and are stoked to be involved.
The monkeys are off again, and this time it's to the lowlands to film mountain biking. We were a bit surprised that the notoriously flat country of Europe had a mountain biking scene, but, unless this is all some huge practical joke, we're off to film it. It's the first trip of the summer for us, we'll be spending the next 6 months following the UCI mountain biking world cup around the world for the Nissan Sports Adventure website.
Grain's recent trip to Macedonia was real success and we shot what will hopefully be a very nice travelogue TV show. The filming conditions were tough to say the least and we had both biting cold and 100km/h winds to contend with however like the pros we are we soldiered through! Click here to see a short teaser of some action highlights from James Stentiford and Jonas Emery.