Production Company: Betty Wants In
Director: Michael Mouritz
Editor: Michael Mouritz
DOP: Chas Mackinnon
Producer: Ally Curtis
Executive Producer - Drew Dunlop
Online & Grade: Raffael Oliveri
Agency/PR: Minc Communications
Agency/PR Contact: Michelle Campbell

I loved exploring the world of winemaking with Shadowfax Wines for their new spot. I was given a lot of creative freedom from Michelle (MINC Communications) and Alister and the team at Shadowfax on this one. During the pre-interview and recce I realised that a lot of the embedded values of Shadowfax weren't being communicated to the market. I thought Shadowfax Wines were a high-volume, low price point, big footprint enterprise. I couldn't have been more wrong. In reality, it's a boutique operation that punches big. The vineyards are not just in Werribee; they have some of the highest altitude vines in Victoria at Trentham and Little Hampton. The wine team is a team of five, with those in the winery also working in the vineyard. And the wines are bloody good.

We established early on that we wanted this to be a mini-doco approach with cinematic visuals, and a voice-over from winemaker Alister Timms but without the visual of an interview. We really wanted the audience to feel grounded in the story and not be removed from it by a cut to a staged interview. We filmed a number of shoots at different parts of the winemaking season, with our final one occurring in the middle of winter when the team were pulling the Pinot Noir grapes from the Little Hampton site. It was pretty incredible to capture ripe grapes still on the vines after the leaves had already yellowed.

Awesome work by my whole team at Betty, especially Chas Mackinnon (DOP) who imbued the visuals with a dreamy, cinematic flair.