EXCLUSIVE: Expat and founding partner of Droga5, Ben Nott, has made his way back to Australia. Sort of. He has set up a local arm of his production company World Wide Mind in Sydney.
Nott, who has been working overseas in Holland, the UK and London for the past two decades, will be spending almost a third of his time at home, if he has his way. The establishment of World Wide Mind Sydney was born out a desire to spend more time Sydney filming. He's based in Venice Beach in Los Angeles.
“There's really good creativity coming out of Australia,” Nott told AdNews. “There's also really good people there.”
World Wide Mind already has permanent staff in Sydney and has moved into offices in Surry Hills, right near his mate Will Alexander at Heckler. Nott teased he may be able to announce some other directors on his roster soon. While World Wide Mind also has an advertising division in the US, he pointed out, that is not the case in Australia, it's purely production at this stage.
He still keeps in touch with his colleagues at Droga5, where in addition to founding partner he was also a creative director, and has on occasion collaborated with them.
The first project Nott's worked on locally for his company is a Sanitarium campaign with BWM. The ad involved filming champion surfers Stephanie Gilmore and Mikey Wright riding the waves. Nott is quite the keen surfer himself, in fact, you might call it his passion. The ad was shot in Micronesia and converted to 3D in post-production for cinema.
Surfing aside, Nott is one of those creatives that believes in creativity, no matter how it's packaged or what medium it's executed on. “I love writing and directing stuff that's not just for TV screens, I find it really exciting. It's about the best ideas the best way possibly conveyed,” he said. “We're able to cross boundaries and that's what I'm excited about doing.”
The directing gig has been taking off for Nott who's also just premiered a feature film, Drift.
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