Nothing’s quite like going out on a ledge. Out of your comfort zone into the new, the unmapped, the uncertain or even, at times, the dangerous.
It might be a jungle expedition, an atoll surrounded by rising waters, a journey into the unsettling world of social inequities, maybe even a business leap of faith … ask the intrepid Caleb Plumridge and he’ll tell you launching into the unknown is how to do your best work.
With a thick catalogue of eye-watering colour, movement and sound creations, his claim is compelling. With arresting works with textures, landscape, liquid and light, stone and wood, industry, cellars, crisp produce and brooding skyscapes, it’s substantiated.
Not that everything is unknown. Caleb Plumridge honed his craft from a childhood fascination with moving pictures through commerce and management studies, and marketing, to an inevitable risky leap into career self-determination.
“I’d been shooting and editing videos, designing EDMs and writing blogs for the economic development unit at Geelong City,” he says.
“Eventually, I realised this could be a commercial thing that people would be willing to pay for. And I’d always had this desire to be in business.
“But it was sink or swim. I jumped back before video and social media was everywhere, when it was still in its infancy in terms of digital, and when I was young enough to give it a crack thinking the worst case scenario wasn’t that bad.
“Even so, it was a leap and it was pretty daunting. Every job I did felt like my livelihood hinged on it. The first year was successful and I began to wonder if I could out-earn what I was making before.”
No surprisingly, Caleb’s True South Film production company tackled everything it could – small businesses, not-for-profits, government agencies, profiles, websites, videos, product launches, events, raising the visibility of charities.
He threw himself into little-known spaces, documenting issues such as those faced by young carers supporting parents or siblings and overlooked and disadvantaged by the system. Think 14-year-olds tied to the home by pressing demands and unable to develop properly educationally or socially, and all the while crippled by uncertain finances.
He ventured off to the mid-Pacific’s Kiribati islands to record concerns and problems the republic faces with extreme climate events and the threat of rising sea levels. The result, by turns strikingly luminescent, disturbing and inspiring, is titled Three Metres – simply but shiveringly stressing the islands’ height above sea level.
“It’s going to become uninhabitable due to climate change, the highest point is just three metres above sea level,” says Caleb.
“They’re up the creek without a paddle. We spent 10 days guerilla film-making and it was the wildest time of my life. We had our passports confiscated, went with an ex-PM to where he sat with John Howard. Ridiculous things happened every day.”
True South Film partnered with Deakin University’s Faculty of Architecture to deliver its 35-minute Living Structures, an intriguing visual knockout plumbing of the innovative academic thinking on how our future suburbs and cities, and the human interactions within them, will look.
Filmed in the verdant and vertiginous Otway ranges, and other spectacular locations, it looks at how designers can invest themes found in nature into living structure designs. It’s an intriguing insight into what our young built environment thinkers are learning.
More recently, Caleb threw himself to the tender tropical mercies of New Guinea’s Owen Stanley Range to record a Geelong Youth Engagement 120km Kokoda trek with a couple of dozen teens, mentors and porters. The result is uplifting, the footage misty, mystical and moving.
If you want to see real polychromatic magic, one particular neon project by True South is just about the smartest, sassiest and colourful two minutes you’ll experience for some time.
Ten years under its belt now, Caleb’s True South Film is not only an archivist of Geelong region industry and enterprise but also a media repository of cultural and societal changes taking place across a wider field.
What’s the future hold?
“Technology is moving faster than we can keep up,” Caleb says. “The trick is not getting sidetracked by the latest toys and sticking to honing the craft, and remembering great stories rely on great storytelling, not gear.
“Social media changes just as quickly, so we work hard to understand where and how audiences spend their time watching content, and create to fit that need.”
This article appeared in Provincial Media’s Geelong & Surf Coast LIVING magazine winter 2024.
