The latest campaign from Qld Transport comes courtesy of BCM Partnership and focuses on alerting people to the crippling effects of driver fatigue. Directed by Brendan Williams (B Films) the stunning footage, along with its unique look and pace, recreate the haze a driver may go through during a long trip. The viewer is taken along for the journey throughout this suspenseful, haunting and realistic tele-visual experience, which effectively reveals the extreme dangers of driver fatigue.

director spotlight

with Brendan Williams

We know you always try to make each job look different. What do you think really brought this commercial alive? 

My daughter Ella of course. She's so beautiful and is the best little actor in the world. I think visually the flashbacks or 'thoughts' of the driver looked great. We shot those on stills in a variety of dramatic lighting situations and then Zenon added some grades, layers and vignettes to the sequences in aftereffects to make them even more flickery, I wanted them to feel like a dream or random thoughts of a tired mind. My favourite shots in the spot, however, are the stop motion driving sequences. We captured those in camera near lake Moogera in a painstaking way, taking 30 second exposures to read the stars then move the car and the camera a few metres then another exposure and another, so a one second shot took an hour to capture! I love the result, and I've caught up on sleep now. 

Being a DOP who likes to get as much material as possible "in camera", how did you find the process of putting together this TVC?

There wasn't a huge budget for post, so we shot on video with a small crew and generally got as much in camera as possible. We used a video projector on location reflecting in the windscreen and as I say lots of digital stills. There was a few cleanups, some morphing in the little bullet time moment, stabilising and Zenon's flashback effect I mentioned above. The experience however was wonderful, The Post Lounge guys were enthusiastic about it from very early on right to the end and delivered above and beyond.

It seemed to be a dream job where there were almost no changes. Did you find that everyone could really get their teeth stuck in and make it better than you thought it was going to be?

Right from the first briefing I could see this job clearly, the agency and surprisingly the client, were keen to do something artistic. The last thing we wanted was another 'shocking' transport ad. So everyone all the way through just let me go for it. Unchallenged all the way (a bit like a charity job) gets the best ads on tele. There's a lesson there for clients if any are reading this hehe.

Any interesting items on shoot?

There was a strange wet rubber thing in the grip truck. And an owl flew at us!

 Anything else you would like to add?  

A big thanks to my producer Claire of course, and also BCM, Shano, Nick, and the brains of the operation at BCM Andy Iles and Andrew Bartlett for trusting me with the job and for a very smooth collaboration, also a quick plug for the lads at Regatta Studios who did a fantastic job on the sound track. I want to thank everybody who worked on it, as I am very proud of this one. Thank you The Post Lounge.