Video Production History
January 15, 2018Lights. Camera. Action.
Creative Director, Myke Mollard has been involved in television commercials for at least 22 years. He has developed, in part, over 200 commercials over the past two decades. The range of experience in these years brings a wealth of directing and production experience. From animatics to slice of life, storyboarding, SFX and directing 3D Animated characters, all this experience truly adds up.
.
Myke’s working knowledge of film and directing commercials is pretty vast. He cut his teeth early with some ground breaking retail advertising, where he has had to art direct the monthly production of different promotional commericals for “Brashs” and “Retravision”. In retail you often have different versions of each commercial on different local networks so the studio time can be constant. At the time, Brashs and Retravision were his main focus. But as a conceptualiser and storyboard artist, Myke’s storyboards; won pitches, enabled him to work on other big brands, helped fellow creatives pitch their scripts to their clients, and production houses and film directors have used these storyboards and rough animatics to direct, quote and deliver the final TV commercial.
“Film production and creating advertising commercials is a truly collaborative process. Myke is often just a big or small part in a process that can have so many moving parts. It’s that pure adrenalin that attracted Myke to film and TV advertising in the first place. “
So being collaborative Myke can’t take all the credit. A lot of these television commercials that make up his reels are lost due to the changes in video, DVD and now digital technology. To be honest Myke was creating so many different things and his reputation as a bankable creative meant he rarely needed a formal reel for employment.
Today, is such a far cry now from those intense days in the agencies. Yet, now Wildfire enjoys creating corporate videos for a few of it’s clients. Myke personally has been writing scripts and producing a pilot for a wildlife and artistic educational YouTube Series.
Below are just a few samples of Wildfire’s current work. We are sure this clearly demonstrates Wildfire’s ability to deliver quality productions, good animations, clever transitions, well edited and thoughtful storytelling in it’s video presentations. So if you are in need of a TV commercial or corporate video, strike up a conversation with Wildfire Today.
Wildfire Productions Current Reel.
.
.
Some Corporate Advertising Done a Few Years Back.
.
The Skeleton Closet..
It’s a bit “scary” presenting dated work, but also a little fun and nostalgic. I guess Myke feels lucky that every bone in this ‘skeleton closet’ is creative.
This is the backstory of Wildfire’s Television, animation and video production. Some of these may seem old, but this was in the days of VHS, BETA and well before Photoshop Aftereffects and later Apple’s Final Cut Pro was just being released as a desktop animation tool to the broader design public. It kind of strange to look back at those days.
.
So let’s do a time warp!
Myke Mollard has been writing, directing, storyboarding and producing commercial television and videos for clients since 1996. Myke had always had a passion for film since his early work experience days on the set of a Whirlpool washing Machine commercial, BMW advertising and later on, and being invited onto the set of an Ansett Australia commercial.
No stranger to television Myke was interviewed by channel 9 and Channel 7 when he founded the Magazine “Metropolitan Style”. He has done formal media training for television and radio presenting, as well as, working with Peter Crofts for close to a year learning how to present to camera. He has also directed many fashion shoots and magazine stories, which has given him a great working knowledge of art directing models and actors over the years.
Yet looking back, his first real shot at television commercials was some ground breaking retail advertising for his client “Brashs”. Produced out of the George Paterson Bates’ AdTown agency, with creative director Fysh Rutherford and Ken Gray. Myke co-wrote, art directed, storyboarded and developed a many commercials for “Brashs” and Myke’s skills saw him storyboarding pitches, animatics and other retail commercials for Kmart and Myer.
.
.Brashs.
.
.
Some Pitch Animatics + a fun personal Reel Intro.
.
.
Grey Worldwide.
Myke went on to Grey Worldwide to work on “Retravision”, “Mitre 10” and at Grey became the ‘go-to storyboard artist’ for many of the agencies pitches and client’s commercials adapting the copywriter’s scripts getting them visually ready for filming and approval on Accounts like “TAC”, “Smackos”, “Uncle Bens”, “Boral Bricks” and “Water Safety” accounts.
The bulk of Myke’s work was the monthly “Retravision” TV commercials. This animated concept was original conceived by Cameron Blackley and Jason Williams, which employed Momentum Animations Studios to do the 3D animation of the products and again was ahead of it’s time. In his final year at Grey, Myke worked on developing pre-production cartoons for a trilogy of “Smackos” claymation advertising, one commercial featured here, he fully developed and wrote that was finally produced on his departure.
.
.
Lorraine Lea Linen + Miscellaneous Projects + Animatics.
.
Myke has continued to work on Television projects from year to year, for both agencies or as the Senior Creative at Lorraine Lea Linen. There his television, direction and editing experience was utilised on promotional videos, TV commercials and marketing training DVD presentations.
.
.
At Advertising Associates Myke did a lot of preproduction work and rough editing in studio for pitches, so the agency could develop it’s ideas before having the final animatics produced.
As Creative director at Wildfire Myke and Luke have been working producing producing animatics monthly for one of their largest clients for the past 4 years and they recently produced an animated commercial for Cashmaster and helped OMC International with their corporate videos.
.
.
Wildfire’s future is looking wild.
The demand for clients creating Youtube and Vimeo content is increasing and Wildfire’s ambition to develop a wildlife Youtube series is on the horizon. It’s only a matter of time before these years of anonymous production becomes a synonymous production in the future.
Myke’s passions are Wildfire and art. Apart from working in advertising for close to 26 years and forging inroads in publishing as a bestselling kids books author illustrator for the past 11 years. He has been using his unique skill set to personally develop and present a Kids online video series called “Sketching Wild”.
This explores his skills as a wildlife filmmaker and has given him the opportunity to experiment with educational presentations. This has given him good insight in guerrilla filmmaking, the highly unpredictable nature of shooting wildlife in the Australian bush, as well as, diving into the southern ocean to chase aquatic creatures, stingrays and sharks.
Currently his sense of adventure has lead him to developing a script for feature film. Always writing and developing stories, Myke’s boutique production company Wildfire Productions has a real desire to develop it’s filmmaking capacity as the demand for VLOGs and video presentations on the internet increases every year.
Wildfire knows with this being said, that there’s a real art to getting your story or ideas across in 30 seconds or a minute. Script writing and sticking to a strict budget isn’t easy. Every client wants the best result for less. Getting a really professional finish isn’t something you just take to overnight.
That’s why Myke is so relaxed and approachable under pressure. A professional communicator and natural leader, he’s had the great opportunity to work both, behind and in front of the camera. So directing and getting the best out of cast and crew is something he knows all too well. If you want the best from your corporate video you can’t go wrong with employing Myke to develop and direct your next production.
We hope you enjoyed our little look back at how times have changed.
