Design Fella

Design Fella is an independent video editing, motion graphic and graphic design business.

I have been a huge nerd for film and design since I can remember. Being transfixed to the television and watching Roy Scheider retreat into the Orca when Jaws pops up out of the water proclaiming they need a bigger boat, Jason and his men fighting off a horde of skeletons or even the simple beauty of the opening crawl of the Star Wars films.

These were some of the strong influences I had for my love of film, my appreciation for visual effects and fascination for graphic design.

I would mimic the process when I was a child, with a toy Tyco Video Camera that I used to film battles between my GI Joes and Transformers. The lack of sound recording was supplemented by title cards with sounds written down like *ZAP* and *CHEW CHEW* for lasers. Throughout high school, a filmmaking class gave me my first hands on experience with the editing process where I would “edit” by recording from one VHS tape to another to get the story I wanted.

My love of design was expanded upon with my foray into Web Design, which led to freelance work in the growing web design industry, whilst my love of film continued by getting into simple photography of local bands and nights out with friends.

After becoming a father, my love of film was extended to my children and it became a way for us to bond as I included them in little projects and they became my test subjects for my early visual effects tinkering, editing story and cinematography.

At the start of 2014, I learned that there was actually a film school in Sydney. Within two weeks of finding out about it, I had applied and was accepted into their ranks of film nerds and kindred spirits whom all happened to be 10 + years younger than me!

I learnt how to cut and edit real 16mm film on an old Steenbeck Flatbed and modern systems like Avid Media Composer and Adobe Premiere Pro; load film into magazines (which is one of the most stressful things I have ever done), light scenes correctly and shoot black-and-white film with an Arriflex SR2 Super 16mm film camera; and the finer points of standing still for over an hour holding a microphone boom-pole above my head recording sound for an interview.

I had the chance to learn and collaborate with Tim Ferguson of Doug Anthony All Stars fame about comedy screenwriting; have a chat with upcoming people in the Australian film industry such as Brendan Cowell and Gracie Otto; and getting tidbits of knowledge from Academy Award winning Cinematographer Russell Boyd.

In all, I came out of film school well versed in all aspects of filmmaking, from directing and cinematography to editing and acting. From that initial spark of an idea to the end result of having the film appear on the silver screen.

My new business, Design Fella, combines all of my passions for video editing, motion graphics, logo & graphic design, website design and more — introduces a creative and professional service to get the finished product that you need.