Recently Air Chathams captured the beauty, ruggedness, and ancient geography of their spiritual home on the Chatham Islands. They documented the rawness of the archipelago through rich visual storytelling and cinematography with a camera crew at the last viable weather opportunity in Autumn.
For four, 12-hour days, Air Chathams’ marketing manager Brent Condon, and a talented film crew from the production company ‘Moonshots’ trail-blazed the islands, to all four corners, capturing as much rich visual content as possible.
With Ranginui (sky father) being kind and the seas of Tangaroa (god of the sea) being calm, the film crew was able to capture the many personalities of the Chatham Islands, its people, wildlife, and the fauna it harbours.
From the cheeky seal pups teasing their mothers and playing tag with other youngsters around the craggy rockpools of Point
Munning, to the ancient Basalt Columns formed by lava flows around 80 million years ago. The remarkably regular geometric patterns seen in the Basalt Columns and diversity of local sea life all add to the ancient mystical atmosphere of the entire archipelago.
The Chatham Islands are also rich in marine mammal diversity, with five seal and 25 whale and dolphin species reported around the islands.
All the visual content captured during this adventure, has been invested into a new destination advertising campaign simply called ‘I am the Chatham Islands’.
With the key focus of pulling at the heartstrings of intrepid adventurers, travellers, and nature lovers of all ages. To put the Chatham Islands at the very top of their travelling bucket-lists.
To pay tribute to the local landscape, the campaign is narrated in the first-person, personifying the island through the eyes and voice of a young Polynesian woman dressed in stark orange, symbolic of bravery, sunrise, and sundown in many Pacifica cultures.
The narrator is the actress within the TV commercials and the simple verses champion the Chatham Islands and its own airline, with the following words:
“Spiritual solace, rugged beauty, wild spirit and ancient knowing.
Fortress of nature, defiant peaks, scarred cliffs and stinging seas.
Remote and resilient, a sonata of wailing winds and silent coves.
Refuge for birds, a marine mecca, harbourer of tribes and ships.
At earth’s edge, meeting the corners of the sky…
… I am Rēkohu, Wharekauri, the Chatham Islands!”
The script speaks to this ancient, nature-forged place at ‘earths end’ – whilst letting the Jurassic-like cinematography speak for itself in volumes. The Chatham Islands maybe at the edge of the world, but to Air Chathams it is the thriving centre of all we value.
Keep an eye out for our Chatham Islands advertising campaign on your televisions, laptop, or at local cinemas… but what would be even more impressive, is to immerse your wild senses in the rustic charm of the Chatham Islands for real. We promise you will be richer for it!
For more information go to: www.chathamislands.co.nz
