Presentation by Helen Baxter, Mohawk Media.

http://mohawkmedia.co.nz

I was born in NZ but grew up in the UK, watching animations from the film board of Canada, and dark post-war Polish cartoons played on old 35mm reels.

These inspired this scene from an animated series we produced at Mohawk Media on Solutions to Child Poverty.

http://mohawkmedia.co.nz/video/child-poverty-solutions-in-nz/

I moved to Bristol aged 18, just in time for the explosion in Trip Hop, Drum & Bass and of course Banksy's early works.

I worked at Venue Magazine, which was the equivalent of Time-out for the South West of the UK, writing music reviews and articles about this new thing called the Internet.

While I was at Venue I started crewing for WOMAD (World of Music Arts and Dance) and toured Spain as well as working at their UK festivals every summer.

http://womad.org

In 1994 I was asked to take part in a shoot at Real World Media, the digital arm of Peter Gabriel's Real World Studios.

The director for the shoot was Michael Coulson (who directed SledgeHammer and a lot of Gabriel's early videos) and Tim McMillan from Bath University who had invented a technique called 'Time-Slice' photography.

Tim McMillan went on to launch Time Slice Films in LA which led to the classic bullet time sequence in the Matrix.

Tim Macmillan - Early Work 1980 - 1994
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocLJWCnMhTo

http://timeslicefilms.com

Not only was that my very first time on a set, it was also the first appearance of a young Jacob Anderson, who plays Grey Worm in Game of Thrones, and releases music as Raleigh Ritchie.

http://www.raleighritchie.com

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Anderson

Meanwhile I worked in a media data start up, then launched my own .com, before setting up an internet training centre at a Bristol based Internet Services Provider.

The other thing about Bristol is that it is very much an animation city, with the great Aardman Animation and lots of video production companies .

So it's not surprising that I met and fell in love with an animator, who was working at 4:2:2 Videographics producing work for BBC Natural History and the Discovery Channel.

What was unexpected was marrying Chelfyn on the iconic Pyramid Stage, as I'd spent 10 years crewing in Theatre and Circus at Glastonbury Festival of the performing Arts,

We asked Michael Eavis if we could perform a ceremony on the main stage. We never expected him to say yes, and our wedding video was broadcast by the BBC in 2000.

My main commercial contract at this time was as Founding Editor of KnowledgeBoard, an international community for Knowledge Management run by the European Commission.

The focus was predicting the future of the workplace in 2011, and gave me a blueprint for building a remote agency network of creatives.

KnowledgeBoard also gave me the chance to continue working remotely from New Zealand, when I moved back to live in 2001.

After a year in the Waikato, where the internet was slower than carrier pigeon, Chelfyn and I moved to West Auckland for 7 years.

While in Auckland we launched a record label, and ran a radio station called Twisted. We also produced an 8 week animated science and technology series called the g33k show on ALT TV with a production team of two and zero budget.

The g33k show continued as a weekly webcast + radio slot on Kiwi FM for five years.

https://www.youtube.com/user/theg33kshow/videos

We ended up with a fortnightly science and technology slot on Radio New Zealand for three years, before moving to Wellington in 2010.

In 2010 we rebooted Mohawk Media as a data-driven storytelling agency based on Cuba Street.

Our first infographics client was the Science Media Centre and we're now the only specialist animated infographics agency in NZ.

This is where the free-range storytelling comes in. It's the idea of seeing storytelling elements like Tetris pieces that stand together on their own, but also interlock into a bigger picture within the same universe.

Each creative element can be remixed and reused across various channels, and the aim is to provide assets that allow your audience to continue to tell stories on your behalf.

https://www.thebigidea.nz/news/columns/msbehaviour/2014/oct/151008-rockstar...

At Mohawk Media we produce static infographics for a range of government ministries, academia and business like the piece shown celebrating 150 years of Wellington being the capital of New Zealand with a great quote from the Nz Minister of Statistics.

What was interesting about the Wellington 150 project was the challenge of showing how the city has developed, when data from 150 years ago is still paper based. We sent a data analyst to Statistics NZ to delve deeply into the archives, and tease out stories of interest.

One of the most interesting statistics for modern day Wellington, is that after English, French is the most commonly spoken language before Te Reo Maori.

As well as static infographics we produce a range of animated video content, from the popular white-boarding style shown here for creative Commons Aotearoa, to facial and motion capture with green screens.

A lot of our current work is aimed at enabling conversations around complicated or difficult topics such as science, social or health content.

This clip is from the 'Did You Know' series to support youth and health workers in South Auckland, in talking to young people about alcohol and drugs use.

http://mohawkmedia.co.nz/video/did-you-know/

This image is from a e-learning module we produced for the Ministry of Health to help GPs and health professionals have open conversations with people about weight management.

The thing I love most about working in the data driven storytelling space is the variety of topics I get to learn and write about.

Fun is our prime directive, and the reason we run Mohawk Media is to fund our own creative projects.

One passion project we're involved with is the League of Pragmatic Optimists, which is like speed dating events for ideas.

http://www.leagueofpragmaticoptimists.org

And finally, I've written about all the tools we use for running a remote creative network in an ebook available on Amazon called Dance at Work.

http://danceatwork.net

http://www.amazon.com/Dance-Work-creative-business-toolkit-ebook/dp/B00NQSU...

https://www.haikudeck.com/dance-at-work-business-presentation-3eH17ZIU8U

If you have any questions about the free range storytelling work we do at Mohawk Media you can email me - studio@mohawkmedia.co.nz

Thanks!