Shutter 50 brings yet another professional string to Pattaya’s bow
If you go to Facebook -and doesn’t almost everyone these days!- and look for Shutter 50, scroll down their page and you’ll come across a quite incredible photo of Wongamat, as you’ve probably never seen it before.
The picture is taken from a point just off Wongamat beach and is tagged ‘Aerial Cam Teaser’. It shows one of the many major developments being constructed close to the waterfront, with the almost ubiquitous Sanctuary of Truth this time reduced to just a bit-part in the background. Click on the picture and the resulting video, almost two minutes long, results in a panoramic of the Wongamat area as well as some of the more rustic charms of Pattaya.
Shutter 50 is a television and cinema production company with offices in a nice environment called Suwatthana Garden in northern Pattaya. It’s the type of environment designed to get the creative juices flowing, created as it is to be more like a home away from home than a straitlaced office.
Shutter 50 is owned and operated by two German nationals, Joachim Walther and Michael Dumke. Walther is managing director, charged with co-ordinating what is a very diverse team of cinema and television professionals brought together from around the world.
Dumke is a technical director, soundman, and director of photography. He has worked with a vast array of European TV and cinema production companies.
Shutter 50 prides itself on being what they term a ‘one stop solution’ cinema and television production house within Asia, and especially within the southeast Asian region.
From pre-production, production to post-production, they bring an array of state-of-the-art equipment (which can also be hired) to combine with a professional and very experienced team (including stringers/fixers in Thailand, Laos, Myanmar, Cambodia, Vietnam, and elsewhere) to ensure every production is successful.
Shutter 50 produces full-length movies, infotainment-style programs, music videos, commercials, and documentaries. Their team has producers, directors, and film technicians with experience of working for the European, US, and Australian TV and film industries.
Among their topline staff are people such as Martin Schacht, a director and writer from Germany; Alain Cloude, a photographer; May Chinna, a professional fixer; Lou Petho, a director and cameraman with over 25 years experience; sound engineer Martin Geissman; Andreas Nebeling, a cameraman whose specialty is documentaries; Florian Bohm, a cameraman who divides his time between Thailand and Germany; and Thai-German national Daniel Meiner, a producer, soundman, technician, and fixer whose expertise is as a translator and mediator.
Perhaps one of Shutter 50’s greatest attractions is its remote controlled (RC) drone technology. Operated by Nick Wadman, recognized as one of the best RC multicopter pilots in Asia, their aerial camera drones are capable of lifting an eight-kilogram payload into the air. This gives Shutter 50 the ability to get the kinds of shots that were beyond the scope of all but the most cashed-up organisations in Asia.
In November 2012, Shutter 50 began moving into the Thai market, finding new concepts for TV programs, and adding a local flavor to their already lengthy list of achievements.
Back in the early 1980s the American singer-songwriter Boz Scaggs had a minor hit with a song entitled ‘Hollywood’. Its chorus line was ‘camera, action, do it again’ and it’s not hard to imagine this song being a more than appropriate theme for Shutter 50.
