I recently sat down with commercials director Brett Wild of Hammersmith and Elephant to talk about his most recent work. Little did I know I would be sitting with him for five weeks.
Wild was on an expedition – he is most days but this was official. He was curious to know if his wife’s Smart Car could make it from the Cape to the Serengeti and back and he agreed to the interview if I didn’t mind tagging along. Of course this had to be a working trip for Wild and I, so we devised a theme for a documentary.
Fortunately we are both curious about the smart things that are going on in Africa and it seemed a natural fit. One of the smartest people we had heard of was William Kamkwamba of Malawi who built electricity generating windmills for his village. He seemed a great role model so we decided to go and find him and other people like him.
The documentary is not an ad for a Smart Car. Mercedes Benz was not involved, but they did contact us when they found out what we planned to do and expressed interest in coming on board. When they explained to us that they would like to see the car filmed in urban settings (because that is what their customers would relate to), we described exactly where we were going and all communication ceased. They clearly knew something about the limitations of the little car. Boy, did we prove them right.
We put the vehicle through stuff it obviously wasn’t designed for, but breaking down opened up wonderful aspects to the trip. Besides forcing us to spend time in the communities we floundered in, it meant that the mechanics we met, because of their inventiveness and resourcefulness in dealing with this strange car, became part of the “smart’ thread of the story.
Wild and I came back smellier and, dare I say, smarter. One of the things I enjoyed was the incredibly long interview with Wild, affording me the opportunity to see how he really ticks.
At times during the smart trip I was runner, gaffer, loader, assistant director, director of photography (DOP) and editor. At other times I was agency and client, and I was “badass’.
But Wild never lost sight of the vision and he was the eternal gentleman and optimist. Where others would give up, he kept things moving forward. Wild is on an expedition and that’s official.
The documentary will be released early 2013.
By Anton Crone
Screen Africa magazine – August 2012
