This 6-metre tall beauty debuted at the 2005 Big Day Out Music Festival. With its ingenious portable design, the branded tower with 10 water stations kept festival-goers hydrated throughout the day-long event in the scorching summer heat. Perfectly positioned near the main arena and standing high above the masses, thousands would have had “Duracell” on their thirsty lips that day.
Besides hitting the demographic nail square on the head, the water tower was a functional dream because Big Kahuna designed it so that the huge unit could fold neatly down to sit on the back of a small truck for transportation. The client loved it so much, we re-branded it two years later for Bacardi Express.
From mammoth to miniature, Big Kahuna Imagineering developed several miniature camera devices that were truly mini-groundbreakers for the 2009 stop-motion animated feature film “9.99”. One of our such devices was an SLR digital still live video split that allowed the camera crew to see the movements of the stop-motion animation characters in real time as they were positioning before the next frame. This tiny little device averted the need for over-sized frame stores of digital, single-shot photos, making the filming process much smoother and economical for this adventurous, modern-day, Australian animation epic.
The Big Kahuna team got the chance to flex our artistic muscles when Motorola gave us full creative license to come up with something that would wow guests at the Good Charlotte performance they sponsored in 2007. We answered their request with a one-of-a-kind, internally-lit, 1.2m disco ball decorated with Motorola phones and CDs.
Hung from the ceiling of Paddington Town Hall with care, that glowing mirrorball was the shining centrepiece to the event. The value in this project was not so much in its commercial viability but its WOW factor and the contribution it made to the overall atmosphere of the event.
This behemoth of a propellor is “off-the-wall” because it didn’t scream, “CASCADE! CASCADE! CASCADE!” but still had everyone talking about, well, Cascade.
The Brief: To create a replica of an oversized propellor that would be used as the centrepiece of Cascade’s next TVC. The commercial spun the tale of Tasmanians planning to propel their chunk of Australia away from the mainland to save their delicious beer from greedy mainlanders. When we took on this project with only five days to finish, an industry compatriot of 25 years experience told us we were… well, let’s just say the word he used started with an “f” and ended with a “d”.
Ignoring the doubters and in true Big Kahuna fashion, we rose to the challenge and pulled off the project to an impeccable standard. The best part? Being able to stand in front of this propellor with its artistically-rendered exterior and let the visual deception convince you that it has survived five decades of hard service on the seas instead of five days in the Big Kahuna workshop.
This project was high-risk because so much had to be left to the last minute. The South Korean shipbuilding company STX asked Big Kahuna to create a scale model of an ice sheet that would realistically crush and break apart as a replica of an icebreaker ship forced its way through it.
With no opportunity for a trial run, the one-day shoot was pressure enough. But, of course, it kicked up a few thousand notches when on the day the motor propelling the ship wasn’t powerful enough to trigger the separation of the faux-ice jigsaw we had created. We sourced and couriered motor after motor until we eventually found and installed the one that worked. When we finally got that perfect shot, the room full of 40 over-excited Koreans erupted in what we could only assume was a cacophony of delight.
Children’s Charity The Touched By Olivia (TBO) Foundation is the force behind Livvi’s Place – the internationally-heralded, all-ability playground popping up in parks all over the country. With help from leading playground experts, disability specialists, architects and early childhood academics, Livvi’s Place was uniquely designed so that all children, regardless of their ability, can play side-by-side.
The TBO Foundation approached BKI during the construction of the first Livvi’s Place in Five Dock’s Timbrell Park, NSW. The brief was to create a one-of-a-kind sculpture to sit at the entry of the playground. Inspired by the extraordinary play space and the foundation’s butterfly logo, BKI created the Jewel in the Sky sculpture.
From many angles the sculpture appears disjointed and abstract, but when you come to one focal point in front of the five-planar assembly it transforms – the seemingly irrelevant pieces suddenly come together to form a beautiful butterfly that is flying amongst the green hills above a river bridged by a yellow brick road with colourful, dangling fruits cast from tinted, transparent resin.
Big or small the sculpture greets everyone who enters with a cheery burst of vibrant colour from its perch atop the entry gate of this magnificent playground.
This September, Livvi’s Place in Timbrell Park was named the best play space in the country by Parks and Leisure Australia. The original playground has just celebrated its first birthday last November and there are 29 more Livvi’s Places planned for parks around the country.
The original sculpture has been so well received that Big Kahuna has just sent off a second Jewel in the Sky for a Livvi’s Place located at Victoria Park in Dubbo, NSW. These projects were great opportunities to showcase Big Kahuna’s more artistic side and we can’t wait to do more!