Fresh Eyre

Flying in over Boston Bay heading towards Port Lincoln the masses of tuna farm rings stand out in the turquoise blue water. The BLM crew once again have teamed up with Justin O’Brien, Dani Tinker & Mark Cowley from RedBikini Video Content Agency to shoot some merino footage for upcoming advertising campaigns.

We arrived in Port Lincoln early and the RedBikini team were raring to go to try and utilize some of the intermittent sunshine. We jumped in 2 hire cars and made our way towards the little town of Cummins where we met our good friend and long-time BLM user Bruce Agars. Bruce is a well-respected icon in the merino industry and also looks after our Elliston Depot.

The destination was Brimanna Poll Merino Stud which is situated out near Yeelanna on the Lower Eyre Peninsula. Jayden Harris was the brave soul who agreed for us to film at his property. Jayden is a young producer who is passionate about farming and has much dedication to producing award-winning Merinos. The pride and passion that Jayden has is clear after seeing the high quality of his Merino flock. Introductions were short and sweet as we were whisked off to the paddock to find some ewes and lambs to film Jayden’s interview in front of. As people always say, never work with animals or children, as we quickly found out when the sheep didn’t want a baa (pardon the pun) of us or our filming. So off Kym, Chris & Bruce go to round up the mob and bring them back into the shot so we could get Jayden’s interview done. For the first timer in front of the camera, Jayden did a brilliant job and the interview only took two run-throughs and we were done! The property was looking fabulous helped along by the recent rain through the Eyre Peninsula.

Next stop was filming Jayden’s prized rams coming out of the woolshed. Having had the opportunity to go on a trip with the RedBikini team through Outback Queensland last year, the phrase “One more time” is NEVER one more time! The rams were extremely well behaved, and quite confused after the 5th time being herded in and out of the shed. The day went on and rams were shot from every angle imaginable, and come to think of it, so was Jayden. His gorgeous kelpie Occy, also made a guest appearance on film as I had the privilege of shooting an “end tag” for our advert coming up for the World Merino Insight which is in September. He was very patient and thrived on all the cuddles and attention, even though he was quite frightened of the lights, microphone boom, and camera. It didn’t help that it took me at LEAST 6 goes to get it right and believe me, it’s hard trying to come up with a phrase that I hadn’t practised whilst 7 people stood and watched. Thank goodness for Occy’s sake (and mine) we got it done.

As the sun went down and the cold night air set in, we pulled stumps just as darkness hit. We headed back to the Cummins Hotel, where Coffin Bay Oysters were on the menu and a whole lot of laughs were had. After spending days on end shooting footage I have a new appreciation for how much work goes into producing a 30 second advert. It may take 4 hours to get the PERFECT SHOT which may only feature in the ad for a second or two!

Thanks to Jayden Harris, and his family for allowing us to infiltrate your world for a couple of days. We can’t wait to see the result. You can visit Brimanna’s Facebook page at www.facebook.com/brimannapollmerino/ or follow their Twitter account twitter.com/brimannapoll for updates and contact details.

Also, thank you to Bruce Agars for the inspiration for the title of this blog. Bruce and his family have just started a venture called Fresh Eyre Merino. Head on over to www.fresheyre.com.au for more information.

Last but not least we cannot recommend RedBikini enough for their fantastic work. If anyone is looking for a fabulous, professional team hit up www.redbikini.com.au for more information. They have produced all of our adverts and corporate videos and they truly are the most amazing people.

Written by Jacqui Mathys