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Visual Obsession was contracted by Mango Productions to carry out a still and video shoot for Tourism Australia for the New7Wonders of Nature campaign.  The New7Wonders of Nature is a global search to recognise the 7 most wondrous natural sights in the world, as voted by the world community. Visual Obsession contracted WIN News to join them and capture news footage to be aired that night nationally across Channel 7, Channel 9, Channel 10, and ABC.

Here is a video of some of our behind the scenes work:

The Scene:  Deep in the heart of the coral sea, patriotic Australians and enthusiastic travellers snorkled and splashed their way to the world's most scenic and remote polling booth which was placed on a Great Barrier Reef sand cay 30 Kilometres North-East of Cairns.

Because we needed to capture the scene from the air and on the ground we broke the production team up into two main groups

- Visual Obsession production manager, Corey Austin.

The ground crew: Corey Austin: Cameraman/Production Manager, and Ewan Cutler: Production Assistant.

The sand cay was located two and a half hours by charter vessel from the coast of Cairns. This meant a bright and early start (2.30 am) for Corey and Ewan.  All equipment was methodically checked off, including all audio and camera gear. The crew and talent were then ready to depart the wharf by 4 am.  Once the boat came to shore the props team set up a temporary voting booth equipped with an iPad. The team then commenced their section of the shoot of the polling scene and interview.

The air crew: Kevin Austin: Cameraman, and CJ McNamee: Still Photographer.

The air crew started their day at 6 am. After loading their HD video and still cameras they set off to Great Barrier Reef Helicopters at Cairns Airport. Kevin and CJ set up the HD video camera onto a Gyro Stabilizer. Both doors were removed from the Turbo Jetranger with a clear line of sight to shoot the talent voting. The ground crew had finished their shoot and were safely back on board the boat. Once they received the “Okay” call, the helicopter commenced the flight to the sand cay. Both the Aerial and ground crew captured some stunning footage and photography.

Andy Ridley, Executive Director from Earthhour Global and Ben Southall the winner of the Best Job in the World were there to promote the reef.

It was a pleasure to work with the great people from Mango Productions & Tourism Australia

Editing the photos and video for Social Media uploads onto Tourism Australia Facebook took us through to 6pm. A very long day for some of us but we don’t mind when we are able to get great shots of one of the most beautiful places on the planet. Within the hour there were 3,000 Facebook "likes", and then within 48 hours there were over 10,800 likes! Just goes to show how many people are interested in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.