The Director & The D.O.P
The Director & The D.O.P is a video podcast about commercial production and advertising. Each episode features a director and a director of photography breaking down real projects rather than discussing theory. It is hosted by Ethan McLean and Liam Brennan. New episodes are released weekly.
Episodes
How Do You Edit a Film for Four Screens at Once? | Ep 25 w/ Jamie Rusiti
For the first time, we put an editor in the chair. Jamie Rusiti breaks down a Destination NSW immersive experience — a four-screen dome you physically walk inside — that he and Ethan built together over six months with no rulebook to follow.How do you cut for a room where the audience can look anywhere they want? Jamie gets into the homemade four-screen preview rig, the RED Komodo 360 array, a 12-
We Built a Monster by Hand (No AI, No VFX) | Ep 24 w/ Andrew Seaton
In an age where everyone's reaching for AI, director Andrew Seaton (Mint Films) built a monster by hand. He breaks down ResMed "Lossy" — a lack-of-sleep puppet brought to life with a hand puppeteer and mechanical eyes instead of VFX, and why the tangible, practical approach gave it a charm no prompt could.Andrew takes us through finding puppeteer Rob Cook, ADR-ing a puppet into cute
"It's Such a Dumb Job" — A Director on Directing | Ep 23 w/ Toby Morris
Toby Morris (Cousin) is one of the most in-demand directors in the region, with a singular, playful visual style. He breaks down his Kia Seltos spot — shot with two full crews running simultaneously, a solo-built CG fly-through of Sydney's Town Hall, and a director's-cut approach of jamming the best gags out in the edit.Then the bigger story: Toby's just-finished independent feature &q
We Built a Whole Backyard in a Studio in 48 Hours | Ep 22 w/ Ruth Levi
Art director Ruth Levi breaks down Liquorland "Score More This Summer" with Pat Cummins — four completely different worlds (a talent show, a game show, a bowls green and a backyard) crammed into a single shoot day, and the torrential-rain forecast that forced her to build an entire backyard from scratch in a studio with 48 hours' notice.It's a window into a department this show h
He Won a Show That Drops Filmmakers in 10 Countries With No Plan | Ep 21 w/ Elliot Constable
Elliot Constable just won ABC's Race Around the World — the rebooted format that drops six filmmakers into ten countries and makes them research, shoot, edit and star in a film a week, completely solo. We met Elliot on a Destination NSW shoot; here he walks us through the near-impossible logistics, the stories (Moldova, Svalbard's polar bears, a Brazilian favela homage to City of God), and
Our Biggest F'ups, Our Biggest Hits | Ep 20 (20th Episode Special)
A special one: 20 episodes in, we've ditched the guest and the breakdown to look back at the journey so far. Liam ranks his favourite alliteration intros (and finally gives Ethan one back), we count down the five most-watched clips we've ever posted — with a couple of genuine surprises — and we get honest about our biggest on-air fups, what still makes us uncomfortable, and why we've n
The Ad That Threw Out the Script | Ep 19 w/ Dave Jansen
Dave Jansen — Chief Imagination Officer at Connecting Plots — breaks down Best & Less "So Much Better," a brand-repositioning platform for one of Australia's most iconic value-retail brands. And they made it by breaking every rule.They threw out the written scripts. They sent cameras to real families to shoot themselves. They convinced the client not to come to set. And they scor
We Made a Rugby World Cup Epic… With Toy Cars | Ep 18 w/ Scott Otto Anderson
Our first ever director guest: Scott Otto Anderson (Photoplay) breaks down the Rugby World Cup 2027 campaign for World Rugby — a Mad Max: Furiosa-style epic where a dust storm reveals itself to be hordes of rugby fans in nation-themed vehicles.The twist? It was heading for a huge VFX / virtual-production build until Scott pivoted to something far more tangible: 1:10 scale miniatures. Driveable rem
The Most-Watched Ad in Australia | Ep 17 w/ Catherine Terracini |
It's the ad every Australian has seen a hundred times and every Australian director secretly wants to make: the Qantas in-flight safety video.EP Catherine Terracini (Elastic) breaks down what it actually takes — 136 deliverable versions across aircraft types and languages, chasing grounded A380s around the world, shooting in real cabins with the air-con off, and a resident falcon in the hangar
I Turned a Lens Test Into a Punk Music Video | Ep 16 | Director and the DOP
Liam breaks down Human Fking Wrecking Ball — the most personal thing he's ever made, and it started as a lens test.Asked to shoot a test video for Sigma's new autofocus cine lens, Liam refused to make the usual soulless lens-chart reel. Instead he drove to Wollongong, spent two days shooting UFC prospect Colby Thickness on a single lens, and — when the footage refused to become the slow mi
How to Shoot 8 Episodes in 4 Days With 155 People | Ep 15 w/ Matt Taylor
Matt Taylor — founder of Milkmoney, now an agency EP in branded entertainment — breaks down Rivals, a TV series funded and driven by Rexona that pitted Australia's top athletes across codes against each other on Hamilton Island.Matt takes us inside brand-created entertainment: how you balance the "value exchange" so it's neither eight half-hour TVCs nor an ROI-free show, why flyi
Everything That Could Go Wrong On a Shoot… Did | Ep 14 w/ Kat Alvarez-Jarratt
ECD Katrina Alvarez-Jarratt (Le Truc, part of Publicis) joins us to break down the strangest, most complicated shoot of her career: Heinz "The Pickle." The idea — put a man in a giant pickle costume and send him into La Tomatina, Spain's tomato-throwing festival. The budget — tiny. The plan — barely held together.Kat takes us through a bribed balcony, a GoPro stolen within five minut
Why I'm Quitting Focus Pulling After 13 Years | Ep 13 w/ Louis Lau | Director & the D.O.P.
1st AC and focus puller Louis Lau joins us to break down a two-minute single-take beach safety PSA for Surf Life Saving Australia — Angus Sampson delivering an unbroken monologue while a dozen actors, a Polaris buggy and a Westpac helicopter choreograph around him. The brief called for Australian summer sun. They got rain, and shot it anyway.Louis explains what a focus puller actually does (it'
Liam Hates My Colour Grade (And Said It To My Face) | Ep 12 | The Director & the D.O.P
Tokyo. London. Mexico City. New York. All of it shot in Sydney, in two days.Ethan breaks down Lenovo "Play-by-Play" — a global FIFA World Cup campaign for Shutterstock Studios — and Liam asks the questions he'd have asked if he'd been on it. Why Sydney beat LA and Melbourne. What got cut when grip ran out of room. The one shot worth protecting. Why the client asked for it to feel
Practical Effects Chaos (You Need a SUPPORT Horse?) | Ep 11 w/ Henry Richardson
Freelance producer Henry Richardson joins Ethan and Liam to break down U Bank — a maximalist, three-spot campaign directed by Jesse James McElroy built almost entirely on practical effects: a horse walking through a beach set inside an "office," a man bursting out of a flooded kitchen sink, toast flying on a roof. Henry explains why the shoot pivoted from location to a full studio build,
The Pitch Process Is Broken | ft. Erin McBean, Infinity Squared | EP 09 The Director and The D.O.P
Erin McBean is Executive Producer at Infinity Squared. In this episode she breaks down Mountain Dew's "Do the Dew" campaign — a green screen shoot built almost entirely on AI-generated backgrounds, until the client's legal team said no three days before they rolled.We get into how the production pivoted, why a smaller budget sometimes gives social content exactly what it needs, a
What Clients Actually Mean | ft. Marcus Friedlander, Colourist | EP 08 The Director and the D.O.P
Marcus Friedlander is a colourist working across commercial production in Sydney. In this episode he breaks down the grade on Nike "Run Your Run" — shot in one day in Southeast Asia, multiple cameras, and a director who walked into the grade and asked him to push the look further.We get into what density actually means, how to unify footage from different cameras in a single working colo
We Had Our First Fight plus guest Casting Director Steph Pringle | EP 07 The Director & The D.O.P
Steph Pringle is co-founder of Chicken and Chips Casting. In this episode she breaks down the NRL "This is How We League" campaign — a hybrid process mixing trained actors with community and street casting, built around one of the most articulate diversity briefs she's seen in her career.We get into what casting directors are actually doing on a project, why the callback process is d
What an ECD Is Actually Looking For | ft. Russ Tucker, Omnicom | EP 06 The Director & the DOP
Russ Tucker is ECD at Omnicom. Ten years ago he wrangled an uncommissioned Intel short film, a real robot from Swinburne University, and the Sydney Opera House — with no agreed budget and a TEDx premiere date closing in fast.In this episode Russ breaks down Being a Robot Usher. We cover live-coding a robot on set, engineering interviews so the Opera House staff unknowingly described the robot as t
The Super Bowl Ad That Almost Didn't Happen | Ep 05 — The Director & The DOP
n Episode 5, Ethan and Liam break down ESPN Have a Sick Day — an Australian Super Bowl promo for Now We Collide agency with Mint Films, produced by Henry Richardson.They get into why Ethan wrote a treatment for a job that didn't ask for one, how they found lead actor Jack William Newell through a casting tape that made the decision instantly, shooting a loose unscripted performance style with
I Shut Down a Pub and Lit It From the Street | Ep 04
In Episode 4, Ethan breaks down Adidas Bound by Legacy — a film for the Sydney Roosters made in collaboration with Helium and Hype Republic, directed by Ethan and shot by Donny Buppapirak ACS.They get into why Ethan chose to light an entire pub from the street rather than inside, how First AD Murray Robertson’s “you get one light” call shaped the entire look of the film, working with rugby league
I Nearly Turned This Job Down. Here's What Changed. | Ep 03
In Episode 3, Ethan and Liam break down Changi Taste of Asia — a 12-day, four-country travel campaign directed by Luna for Infinity Squared, with Liam as DOP and no camera assistant.They get into how Luna planned every location digitally before ever setting foot there, why you have to plan spontaneity, how Liam stripped the Sony Burano down to football size to shoot handheld across Southeast Asia,
Nine Days on the Road — How We Choose Our Crew | Ep 02
In Episode 2, Ethan and Liam break down their Destination NSW Central West content capture project with Mint Films — a 9-day, multi-location shoot across regional NSW on natural light only, with a lean crew and no lighting team.They get into how Ethan selects a DOP for a long-form road job on emotional intelligence as much as skill, how Liam chose his First AC Molly Sutherland ("Little Miss N
Our First Good Project Together (And What We'd Do Differently) | Ep 01 — The Director & The DOP
In our first episode, Ethan and Liam break down Grant Burge Leave Your Mark — a TVC, social, and OOH campaign featuring Dylan Alcott, where Ethan served as both Creative Director and Director.They get into the Panavision H Series lens choice and why it defined the look, working with non-actor talent who calls their own takes, the decision to bring Dylan's dad on set, and Liam's handheld-on
