Young directors usually start by making short TV spots for non-profits called PSA’s (public service announcements). a 30-60 second PSA may take five days to shoot and produce. In the exercise you learn most of the fundamentals of telling a story well in the least possible shots which is good practice for later when you work up to longer pieces. I have a team of four (Lucky, Elzet, Chris and me) at Media Village, here in Cape Town, South Africa. We shot this over two nights. The first night we got caught in an unexpected winter rain. It was cold and we all got soaked (camera too). We ended up with great footage of the robbery and arrest (about 20 seconds worth). Then the rain stopped and we were faced with a problem. Half of our sequence would be wet and half dry. We didn’t want to reshoot everything so we decided that we had to learn to fake rain like Hollywood does. In half the shots it wasn’t really raining (maybe I will tell you another time how we did it). Hope you enjoy it. We won an award at the Cable Awards in Cape Town for this short video.

At the Cable Awards here in Cape Town I won the award “best producer” for the video above. This was a win for all of us on the team. Nobody makes a good video alone. This one was the true story of a lady we met patrolling the streets at night while shooting our other video. Her name was Gwen Holmes. She had a 13 year old son gunned down on the playground four years ago and consequently joined the Neighborhood Watch program. She began patrolling the streets at night armed only with the authority of a mother. Gutsy woman. Then a month ago, her 22 year old was exiting a grocery store when he got caught in a drive-by shooting between two gangs and was killed. She thought about it for two weeks, cried and had some hard talks with the Lord, then she went back to the streets and began walking her nightly beat again. Our family got to know hers pretty well and we spent about 30 hours on the streets of a dangerous township filming this 8 minute video. It may take you a few minutes to stream this video so please be patient. this was the most advanced thing I had ever attempted in video. Hope you enjoy it. Please post your comments.