“This was an interesting and challenging exercise! I was working with Grenville Turner, one of Australia’s masters of panoramic landscape, portrait and documentary photography. The brief was to produce seven short films to be part of the interactive display in the new Royal Flying Doctor Visitors Centre in Alice Springs. We made one film for each department; Aviation, Engineering, Medical, Communication, Human Resources, and Marketing, along with a short history of the organisation. These are displayed on touch screens in the visitors’s centre.
The challenging part was that, despite Grenville’s long association with the RFDS, a stringent set of rules and regulations limited our access when we would have liked to get amongst the action!
Nevertheless, the client was happy with the results and went on to ask us to produce a longer film to be projected in the Visitors Centre theatre. This one was mainly made from archival and existing footage, gathered between the 1940’s and today. Grenville shot some great interviews with survivors of dramatic rescues and I edited all the various elements together, creating an emotive piece that is played on a daily basis at the visitors centre and motivates people to donate generously to this invaluable and unique organisation.”
Directed and edited by Pierre-Jacques Ober, MEFA Film