Miles Goodall, a director/DP currently based in Cape Town, has signed with New York-based Taxi Films. Cape Town’s Giant Films represents Goodall in South Africa and the European market. Prior to his Giant representation, Goodall was represented for four years by Liberation Films, a company which he founded and later closed in order to focus on directing. Before launching Liberation, Goodall was represented by Johannesburg-based Velocity Afrika for three years.
Goodall has developed a niche as a technically adept director/DP who achieves notable juxtapositions using a minimal amount of postproduction. That self-mandated approach is exemplified in Telkom’s "Touch" via Ogilvy & Mather, Johannesburg. That spot, which was produced by Liberation, features an African bushman in a desert setting who approaches and eventually touches an Eskimo in a snow setting. Sans postproduction trickery, Goodall accomplished the feat by filming at a desert location where the sand dunes bordered a salt pen that resembled snow.
In BMW’s "Starry Night," also produced by Liberation via Hunt Lascaris/TBWA, Johannesburg, Goodall shot a BMW convertible driving through a nighttime setting. A pair of two-kilowatt tungsten lights substituted for the car’s headlights during filming, and provided the only illumination for a canopy of trees along the car’s path. The spot ends with the tag, "And you thought the Sistine Chapel had a beautiful ceiling."
Goodall said he won the BMW job because he told the agency that he’d shoot the stars in-camera. Though it is difficult to capture a star-filled sky with a wide-angle lens, Goodall filmed stop-motion exposures of the sky on two adjacent cameras mounted with 85-millimeter prime lenses. He then "built" the starry background by assembling the two sections of resultant footage.
Richard Goldberg, Taxi’s executive producer, said of Goodall’s striking visuals, "The images have a strength and simplicity to them that is heightened by the naturalness with which [Miles] captures them." Goldberg added that he felt the American market could appreciate such a director, and that Taxi would pursue telecommunications, Internet and car spots for Goodall.
Goodall said he signed with Taxi because he wanted "to explore other markets"-particularly "visually-driven" spots that had a "storytelling angle" to them-and felt that Taxi would represent him well in the U.S.
Of his "in-camera illusions," Goodall said, "I try to push that side of it because I feel like I’m in control of the imagery at that point in the process. I like to work with the elements [of light and nature] and try to give them an edge. It really inspires me to make something that might be ordinary look special in the camera."
Though Goodall said he might consider relocating to New York, neither he nor Goldberg felt that his being a South Africa resident would be detrimental to his securing stateside spotwork. "It doesn’t really matter where I am, because I shoot on location wherever required in the world," Goodall said.
Goodall added that his Giant directing duties would not keep him from doing a Taxi-produced spot. "I’d love to do a project with [Taxi], and should one arise, I’d be able to fit it in easily," he said, noting that he was being "very selective" about spots he is directing through Giant.
Other credits for Goodall include Old Mutual’s "Green," produced by Giant via Ogilvy & Mather, Cape Town. The spot follows swaths of the aforementioned color through urban and rural settings.
Goodall joins a roster of directors that includes George D’Amato, Patrice Dinhut, Ian Gabriel, Barry Kinsman, director/DP Ian Paul, Pieter Maas and Sid Roberson.
Taxi is repped by Deborah Zwayer in Chicago. Richard Goldberg and director of sales Elan Kaplan represent the company nationally outside of the Windy City.
