Creative Directed & Produced by Hello Shovel’s Adam Connolly while at Visual Domain
Producer awards
Harvey Norman Producer Awards – Know Your Producer
Good food doesn’t happen by accident.
Behind every oyster, potatoe, farm and harvest is a lifetime of early mornings, hard decisions and people quietly obsessing over doing things properly. The Harvey Norman Producer Awards were created to celebrate the Australians shaping the future of sustainable food production not through shortcuts or scale, but through care, craft and years spent refining their work below the surface.
These films weren’t about products on a plate. They were about the people behind them.
About the project
Created for News Corp as part of the Harvey Norman Producer Awards, this documentary series celebrated award-winning food producers across New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, Western Australia and Tasmania, each with their own story, landscape and way of working.
As Creative Director and Creative Producer, Adam oversaw the development of a national documentary framework designed to feel cinematic and cohesive while still giving each producer space to sound like themselves. No forced performances. No scripted “brand moments.” Just real people talking about the work they’ve dedicated their lives to.
The series explored more than food production alone. It focused on obsession, craft, sustainability and the quiet pride that comes from doing something properly over a long period of time. Pork farmers. Cheese makers. Potato growers. Producers working in remote parts of the country most people never see, shaping industries from the ground up without asking for attention.
Filmed during COVID restrictions, the production relied on small local crews operating across multiple states under a shared visual brief and storytelling approach. Every crew was tasked with capturing the same thing: Honest interviews. Natural light. Real environments. Observational moments that couldn’t be staged if you tried.
Different crews. Different states. One story language tying it all together.
Result
The challenge wasn’t just filming Australia-wide during COVID. It was making five separate productions feel like one connected body of work.
To achieve that, we built a unified documentary framework across cinematography, pacing, interview style, sound design and editing rhythm — allowing each story to retain its own identity while still sitting naturally within the broader series.
The final films delivered a grounded and cinematic portrait of modern Australian food production, celebrating the people behind the industries. Built slowly. Told honestly.