Water Cooler Games – Festival 2018 Commonwealth Games

The Water Cooler Games was a human art installation gathering together 40 suited participants – carrying briefcases and mobile phones – for a race along the beach, followed by a wade into the ocean. This is all topped off with an award ceremony, with the gold medallion presented by a local dignitary!

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnlIoDrBKP0?rel=0&showinfo=0&w=560&h=315]

We were booked to officially film and create two video edits of the event by Festival2018 , organisers of the cultural programme which ran alongside the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games.

Devised and directed by artist, Andrew Baines the event became a hub of media attention over the weekend, featuring on TV, radio and local press.

Filming on the beach in the midday sun was a novel challenge for a videographer more used to the grey skies of England – too much sunshine! Using a Blackmagic Cinema Camera with its monitor screen at the rear was great, but very hard to see in such bright sunlight. Remember the image of turn of the century photographers disappearing under a black cloth to take the photo? That was us, only minus the flash powder.

The challenge of filming a fast moving event like this is that no one can tell you where the action is going to happen, so you have to be prepared and on your toes for the whole time.

We started at the beach to capture some of the set up by the local senior surf lifesavers (or the Fossils as they call themselves). While we were there we took an opportunity to interview artist, Andrew Baines before he got too occupied with photographing the event for his paintings, then moved across the road to grab some quick interviews as participants registered at the desk. Twenty minutes later the starters horn sounded and the race was on, finishing shortly after and leaving the tail of camera people and media coverage buzzing around the beach interviewing anything that moved.

We had to capture the full life cycle of the event, and in the end one of the most interesting parts which our video demonstrated was the dynamic life of the event, from the expectation of the build up to the media teams excitement to capture the energy of the relatively short event itself.

More:
https://www.gc2018.com/event/water-cooler-games-andrew-baines-aus