Wellington studio on the rise with new international signing

Wellington production studio on the rise with new international signing.

MEDIA RELEASE

WELLINGTON, 19 February, 2018:

Dusk are heading into 2018 with a revamped identity, a new web site, some very cool new work and the impressive signing of a new director whose history includes working with The Beatles and Gorillaz.

Dusk is a Wellington based live action and motion graphics production studio equipped with an in-house Visual effects and post production team and facilities. Initially Dusk began as motion graphics design and VFX studio in 2011, and have since expanded into Live Action and VR360 productions.

NEW DIRECTOR

Lee Gingold showed up at Dusk midway through last year fresh off the boat from New York City.

“We feel really lucky to have Lee on board. It’s hard to find people with experience across such a diverse skill set and at such a high level. Just the fact he has directed a music video for The Beatles is impressive enough but the work history that got him to that point is also outstanding. Lee is a very welcome addition to the Dusk family.”
John Strang - Dusk Company Director

Lee cut his teeth directing Music Videos for Australian bands in the early 2000’s before heading off to London and joining acclaimed animation production company Passion Pictures. Whilst at Passion Lee honed his post production skills working on jobs including music videos for Gorillaz and the spectacularly trippy cinematic for the RockBand Beatles game as well as numerous high profile TVC’s and feature film.

“Passion was a really great time. On the one hand I was learning the technical side of the business from some of the best VFX supervisors and artists in the business. At the same time director Pete Candeland really took me under his wing which was a really valuable relationship for me. I just got to learn so much about the craft of story from one of the true masters.”
Lee Gingold

Lee eventually moved to New York with Pete Candeland where he played a key role in launching Passion Pictures New York. By now Pete and Lee were a finely tuned writing duo and the relationship culminated in Lee directing the music video for “Words Of Love” by The Beatles which promoted the release of “The Beatles Live at the BBC Volume 2.”

Drax Project - Woke Up Late

“We were keen to put Lee’s unique skill set to work right away so we introduced him to Drax Project who are old friends of ours here at Dusk. Here we are now 3 months later and the music video we’ve made for Woke Up Late by Drax Project is the surprise smash hit of the summer. It feels like we see the video every time we glance at a telly, the songs all over the radio and we’ve just heard that Drax are opening for Ed Sheeran's stadium shows in Auckland.”
James Manttan - Dusk Senior Producer

Director Lee GIngold had this to say about making the video,

“I always feel as though the most important thing is making a human connection with your audience. Whether it’s through laughter or sorrow if you can remind people of their own humanity you’re really talking to them. In this case we were exploring the whimsical side of life. That’s what the song is I feel. It’s like you wake up next to someone you don’t know and it could be really awkward. Awkward can be cute though and this sort of a human response to a situation can lead to some touching moments laced with a lot of magic.

The joy of life is a phrase I kept on saying. This and a sense of magic is something I wanted to bring to the film and to the whole production. So I left a lot of room for that to happen. We meticulously planned narrative build, location, framings and dancing reference but were careful to leave enough room for the magic to happen and when it did happen recognising it and embracing it.”

Six60 - Lyrics Videos

Whilst working on the Woke Up Late music video Dusk was approached by Six60. They wanted 6 lyrics videos in 6 weeks. A new video every Friday of every week for the campaign #Six60Fridays. Every there was a new song from Six60 and a new creative response from Dusk. The finished films were the result of collaboration between Lee Gingold and in-house Design wizard Leo Chida.

When you are making videos for Six60 you can reasonably expect a big response but no one was prepared for the scale on which it came. At the time of writing the first video in the series had attracted 2.5 million views on YouTube.

For the last 3 months 7 out of the top 8 selling New Zealand singles have been the six Six60 songs and the Drax Project song that Dusk made the videos for. Combine this with the fact that Six60 are the other band (alongside Drax Project) chosen to support Ed Sheeran on his NZ tour and you can forgive Dusk for feeling like they have been a part of a pretty special moment in New Zealand music.


Dusk website: https://dusk.nz/

Watch the video for Woke Up Late here: https://youtu.be/ZD4LgdcDdVc

Watch the videos for Six60 here:
https://youtu.be/1frLJSKKCx8
https://youtu.be/weehlkUOi38
https://youtu.be/zJ_JQig8thw
https://youtu.be/ZPQ8d55_rhE
https://youtu.be/Xo7WjnC8ekQ
https://youtu.be/sRLbVFRdt1w

ENDS

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