Passionate about visual storytelling

Jack Parow and Freshlyground’s action-packed spoof of the spy genre, Army of One, won the award for the best music video at this year’s South African Music Awards. Craig Parker, CEO of Motif Studios, who co-directed this video, talks about Motif Studio’s journey into show business.

- Glenneis Kriel

While you might never have heard of Motif Studios, you have most probably seen some of the diverse work they have been involved in since they started out five years ago. Over the past year, the company has co-directed Jack Parow and Freshlyground’s Army of One music video, in which Jan Bont (Jack Parow), the character which “Rambo and Terminator were based on”, according to the lyrics, saves Geldpenni (Freshlyground’s Zolani Mahola), James Bond style.

They did clean-ups on over 120 shots of the Hollywood blockbuster starring our own Charlize Theron in Mad Max: Fury Road and were solely responsible for smoothing out that thrilling chase scene at the end of the movie. They created all the visual interfaces and some of the visual effects for the Sacha Baron Cohen spy comedy The Brothers Grimsby. They created backdrops of Las Vegas 25 years into the future as well as digital versions of actors for the American cable channel Syfy’s successful angels-versus-humans series, Dominion. And Motif Studios won the best short film award for their short film Destination at the Miami Independent Film Festival in December 2015.

Craig Parker, who founded the company, feels that Motif Studios’ success lies in the company’s willingness to collaborate and share ideas with other artists.

Why did you start Motif Studios?

I worked as a graphic designer for a broadcast design company that specialised in branded commercials and TV channel adverts. The company won many awards – one that sticks in my mind is the PromaxBDA award for an M-Net TV commercial. After more than 10 years at the company, I felt I was not reaching my full potential. I felt isolated from other artists and what was going on in the industry.