Grrrr. Today’s new director is fiercely creative, and he’s called Luke Savage to boot. Flying Fish and sister music video section Fish’n’Clips have been high on our radar as one of the best production set-ups down under for years so it was with glee we rummaged through their website and discovered the delights of Luke and dancing chickens.

We heard Chicken Techno for Domino’s is gathering glory by the number of awards its won and, of course, it’s one of our favourites. We’re very curious about the brief and what you brought to the execution of the spot.

Chicken Techno was a very strange project to direct I must admit. Everyone was quite surprised the script ever got past the client! It was briefed as more of a homage to early 90s house videos – vision mixer effects and fluoro colour schemes. I think C&C Music factory was the buzz word at that point. As we started unpacking the idea it became apparent that taking inspiration from contemporary hip hop videos was much funnier and less restrictive.

I still consider it a minor triumph that we managed to get a shot of a chicken doing a poo into the extended music video version (at 1’00”).

We’ve pushed the pause button a million times on RDC Grenades and love the fact that it looks like an art installation but doesn’t lose any impact of the message. Put us out of our misery – is it post or in camera? How did you do it?

The Grenade TVC is all in camera, shot entirely on Steadicam. I love when people ask how much long it took to build the scene in 3D. It was definitely one of those projects where the agency and client were really trusting and we were given the freedom to spend three days wandering around the set with a handycam as the art department installed the car rather than drawing storyboards and writing shotlists.

There’s lots of visual trickery going on in your work – from stop motion to live action. Tell us about your background in film making. Did you learn on the job or did you go to film school?

I studied Film at university but in more of a film theory capacity, which I’m glad of because the lecturers could barely operate the projectors in the lecture theatre let alone switch on a camera. I pretty much cut my teeth directing music videos and crewing on other people’s short films and music videos. I fell in love with visual effects and stop motion early on because my close friend Puck Murphy was coming up the ranks as a Flame artist and we quickly realised it was the best way to get bang for your buck considering the meagre music video budgets in NZ.

You’re based in Auckland – what do you do when you’re not making music videos and commercials?

I’m directing a short film at the moment which is great fun and super challenging in a completely different way than music videos and commercials are. It’s really exciting at the moment in the sense you can grab a 5D, shoot elements for effects shots and the like and really hone the story at your own pace.

What’s your favourite thing about the directing process and your least favourite?

It’s definitely not a boring job and I’m totally allergic to boredom so I’m very fortunate to have inveigled my way into directing. So managing to have such an unboring career is my favourite part! One of the things I really like is that you get to work with so many talented and fruity people who if they weren’t in the film industry probably wouldn’t really fit in anywhere else. It always feels nice to help these people pay their rent or mortgages by giving them work.

I guess the least favourite thing is when you pitch on a job, get really excited about it and can visualise exactly how you want it to be… and then the client gets cold feet and the job doesn’t even get shot. It’s not so much the energy you’ve spent, more that you don’t get to see the project finished.

See more of Luke Savage’s work on www.flyingfish.co.nz