Interview with MoFresh Productions

MoFresh Productions is the dynamic husband and wife duo of Faye and Preston McNeil, an award winning directing team from New Zealand specialising in Music Videos. Passionate about music videos, MoFresh have worked with a variety of high profiled kiwi artists such as New Zealand’s own Hollie Smith, Iva Lamkum and The Black Seeds. As winners of the Adi Dick “Beautiful View” Music Video Competition 2007, Etch Magazine throws a few inside questions at Faye and Preston about their professional journey to date.

Hello! I visited your website earlier on this week and I noticed you had a nice collection of music videos, along with a variety of other videos and clips, tell me when did the both of you first get into video production?

Preston (P): 2004 – making a music video for GND a local Wellington hip-hop group. This is the first time that Jeremy Mansford and I worked together and later co-founded MoFresh.

Faye (F): 2008 – making a music video for Electric Wire Hustle – I used the same DOP as Preston had used on an Iva Lamkum video – that’s how we met and the rest is MoFresh history, we’ve been working together ever since. 

You say that Mofresh are passionate about music videos, what inspires you most about this type of creative art form?

P: Creative freedom to try new techniques and/or mediums to create visual content that compliments the music. The projects have a fast turn around which keeps the process exciting. Because the projects are relatively small I get to use a variety of my skills, from animating through to directing.

F: The Music – it is what it’s all about! Creating the vision that you get from listening to an inspirational piece of music and trying to recreate that vision, and the journey that it takes you on, you always end up somewhere different from where you’d imagined. It’s exciting that not knowing!

One of the key hurdles to starting your own business is finance. In your profession it can be very expensive with all of the operating equipment required, how did you finance your first big camera to get the business started?

P: Rent, borrow, steal.

F: A bank loan that keeps me awake at night…  

I see that you have worked with a number of different artists – how often do you try new techniques/ styles in your music videos?

P: Constantly. Mofresh has a fairly wide variety of music videos; different styles of animation, mixed media and live action.

F: Any chance I get – it’s really important to observe what other people are doing and try it out for yourself – find out what you like and what you don’t, so that you have it in your mental back catalogue of tricks. 

Are you often up-skilling and how do you do this?

P: Always leveling-up, just like life, through experience. Working with new peeps, trying new techniques, reading, listening.

F: Collaborating and working constantly. Being around other people that have been working in a different area from you, talking to them, watching them on set – this is a very small and tight community of artists – we all help each other out in that respect. And just keep on doing stuff – practice makes perfect. 

What has been your favourite artist to work with to date and why?

P: Hollie Smith, because she’s awesome… great fun to work with and understands the creative process. 

F: Hollie Smith – we’ve made two videos for Hollie this year and she is such a dedicated artist. She works really hard on set and she’s just a really nice person to be around – our work with her has been relaxed and fun and based on very solid trust of each other’s skills in our separate crafts. That kind of trust is rare.

What is the most difficult part of your job?

 P: Usually deadlines and budgets. Both can be very restricting to what you want to produce. But that’s part of the challenge.

F: The lack of sleep is by far the most challenging part of any production. Having to be on point, creative and constantly moving for hour after hour, on a couple of hours sleep, that shit gets to you after a few to many days of it. 

When starting your own business you are almost guaranteed to make a few mistakes. Do you have any on-site or off-site blunders you would like to share with us?

P: Filming the Black Seeds video “Slingshot”. Using the Red camera we shot a lot of footage using the wrong aspect ratio, which took $1000 and a week to correct. A couple weeks later there was a firmware update for the camera to correct this, typical.

F: When filming ‘Mamma’ for Hollie Smith, we had a scene where she places some explosives in a car – we totally forgot to get the prop, so we had to go to a restaurant and they gave us some pizza dough which we wrapped in gaffer tape, and we used that instead. Luckily the shot is quick, but if you look closely you can see the lumps in the dough. 

How much does the average music video cost these days?

P: It pretty much goes in three tiers;

No NZ on Air funding $200-$3000
Got NZ on Air funding $5000
Got NZ on Air funding and adding to the pot $6000-$20000

Music videos rely heavily on the commodity TIME, and who has what spare to invest in the project.

F: there is no average cost for a video – but in NZ there is a $5000 grant from NZ on Air that a few lucky artists get. So a lot of videos here are made for that much – But I’ve made videos on way less – that’s the best thing about this medium if you can get a camera and have a good idea and a willing band – anything is possible! ANYTHING – But money really helps!

If you had a $500,000 budget what ‘expensive’ idea would you most like to try?

P: Explosions and live action stunts….. 

F: Helicopters, reflective glass floors and pyrotechnics!

Lastly, what do you have planned for the future of MoFresh and where can we check out some samples of your stuff?

P: Short films, both live action and animation. More music videos here in NZ and looking to Asia and Europe for projects.

F: We have some large scale music based projects in the pipe lines so keep an eye out www.mofresh.co.nz

Preston McNeil – director’s reel 2010 from Mofresh on Vimeo.