That's a wrap

As we wrap up for the year, I reflect back on a very eventful year at Goosebump Productions.

The biggest achievement was the completion of the WWF Sustainable Seafood documentary, which has taken about 3 years to complete. I am happy with the final version, but due to politics in the fishing industry some of the most hard hitting shots had to be cut. This is quite unfortunate as I felt that the film should leave one reeling, and to hopefully make more informed choices when buying seafood.

Besides the numerous corporate, and event videos we also did a number of jobs for TV, including inserts for the Afrikaans travel show, Reise en Soetkuise, eTV’s showbiz report, Carte Blanche, and I even appeared on Top Billing! (whist filming a Top Billing Wedding), I was also involved with filming 2 documentaries that will be screened on SABC in the new year – one was about the legendary Zebelon Dread, remember him? The black dreadlock guy who used to sell the “Hey Foetsek!” magazine on the streets of Cape Town…. And the other doccie was about 3 black woman from Mandela Park in Hout Bay, who are quite avid mountaineers and will be attempting to climb Mt. Everest.

Some other highlights were the production of the DVD for the Paarl School for handicapped children, which was an extremely emotional experience. My footage of Goldfish performing live at Submerged Sundays at Ignite made it onto their latest CD. These guys are really doing well for themselves and have come along in leaps and bounds since I filmed their 1st ever gig at Up The Creek a few years ago. Some of my footage was also used on their music video for Soundtracks & comebacks… check youtube for that one. I also got to meet the bokke before the very successful English tour. I had to help them prepare for the media onslaught they expected when arriving in the UK. I had to stick my camera in their faces and intimidate them and project their images on a big screen, while they were getting nailed by hard hitting journalist questions. I learnt a lot from this experience and my respect for John Smit has grown. This guy is just in a class of his own, when it comes to dealing with media, and these days winning the media war is possibly more important than winning games….! Besides that I was also evolved in a number of environmental projects, specifically in the Tanqua Karoo, and produced a lot of training material for the WWF (the World Wildlife Fund for nature – not the wrestling people!) Speaking of the Tanqua Karoo… I also attended this years ‘Afrika Burns’ event, held in the Karoo. Wow! I took my camera along and focussed on the theme of the event, which was energy. I filmed mainly the events around the actual burn, and all the interesting people who participated. I still need to do something with all the footage, but I managed to catch some beautiful moments.

And that about wraps up 2008. Lets hope 2009 has even more beautiful moments that I can shoot!

All the best for 2009,
Mark Chipps.