Diary of Team Honest - Part 2

In celebration of the second print run of Diary of a Freelancer, six members (some past & present) of Team Honest — Holly, Vashti, Mary, Oli, Molly and Maddi — have reflected on their own freelancing journey and shared some stories with us. Celebrating everyone’s unique creative path is a vibrant cornerstone of The Honest Jones and hopefully something that gives you inspiration and encouragement in your living your dreams.

Conversation PART TWO —

What did your creative time with THJ / Amanda look like? Do you have a favourite job or stand out moment? Or any funny stories from working together?

VASHTI :

My creative time with The Honest Jones looked like many DIFFERENT things! The very first job I did with the honest Jones was as a set design assistant for a short film (titled ‘Penelope'). It wasn’t anything fancy for me, I literally held our brown woven tools basket while she called me for tape and scissors the whole day. But it was my first ever introduction to what set life looked like and the first time I ever saw the collaboration of creatives work in a space! It changed my life. Being on set and out with other creatives was great but what really  built my foundation as a creative in the creative industry was our time in the Jones Cave (our nick name for The Honest Jones studio) creating with no brief, no trend board, no agendas. Amanda taught me the art of play. Which is the only place I learnt this even after doing uni and tafe. And when I said my time looked like many different things with the Honest Jones, I don’t mean just the jobs we booked. Some days I was walking around the suburbs with a pair of scissors cutting greenery from neighbours yards and another day we were knee deep in the ocean getting hit by waves to get the shot for our very first music video client that made us promise ourselves to never make music videos again…unless for Solange.

MARY :

I have so many memories with Amanda. I had to go by bus to The Honest Jones Studio which is situated on a hill on the northern beaches. I usually took the same bus, walked a little bit, arrived at the studio, said hi to Amanda, and welcomed some of her funny dance. Then I had my little corner set up with my laptop ready to work. The atmosphere was so peaceful, with lovely music ( I rebuilt my full Spotify playlist with Amanda songs) ! Lunch time was outdoors with a view of the garden, I loved it. Working with Amanda was so easy - fun but always effective. I had a funny story, yes many. I guess the one time I missed my bus and decided to walk to the studio.. worst idea ever. We worked on many projects. I edited so much Amanda footage during the holidays in America. They were actually fun to watch and full of memories. Despite the (ginormous) quantity of files I still enjoyed it. One of my best jobs was when we flew to Byron Bay to shoot a campaign for a underwear brand in a super beautiful villa. Initially it was planned to be 2 days of shootings. I remember Amanda saying, “ okay, today we enjoyed it, we go to the beach and tomorrow we work” I thought alright ! That’s awesome. Another good memory was a project for Greenpeace, we had a huge budget to go buy stuff from the op shop. Damn It was so cool, we came back with a car full of props!

MOLLY :

I started off as an intern with Amanda, assisting on shoots, watching her work, brainstorming ideas and learning the ropes of the filmmaking process. After a while, I started editing and shooting and we worked together to build the “Sharp Shooter” role into what it is now. My favourite shoot we did was for Le Buns in Byron Bay. We flew up and stayed there for a couple of days while we were shooting their campaign and it was so much fun! there are always laughs when Amanda and I are together! Probably one of my favourite memories was when I was still a fresh intern and Amanda put the latest Haim album on just as I was about to leave and it was so good that I started dancing and then we both danced and Amanda couldn’t get me to leave.

HOLLY :

Creative time with Amanda was always fun and *out of the box*. I have fond memories of stealing plants and sourcing props from opp shops for jobs or photo shoots. Lots of photo taking in the backyard, infront of a hanging sheet, hand modelling, leaves in my hair, and this one time we did some set design in a car park in the CBD with a whole bunch of ikea catalogues for some reason? It’s still unclear what was happening there. But very fun.

MADDI :

It has been incredible. Nothing but kindness and encouragement. It’s like working with a friend. I have learned so much about the freelance world. I remember the first couple of shoots I went on with Amanda and Molly and just remembering how much fun it was. I knew that this is what I wanted to do for a living. 

OLI :

I came on board as a marketing intern with Amanda in about mid 2016 till the end of 2017. At the time she was taking One Minute Film to the world in its early forms. I was looking back on photos and I remember one of the earliest things we did was get a tonne of butchers paper and map out all our ideas, thoughts & inspirations about where OMF could go. ‘The Honest Marketing’ was on one of the centres of the brainstorms, ‘Dream Client Wishlist’ was on another & ‘Put yourself out there’. We sent so many cold emails & DMs, we took the traditional outreach model of writing in corporate language and turn it on its head. Brand films weren’t really a thing at the time and we wanted to make sure we came across as different as we were. These were the days where your Instagram could blow up with an explore feed feature, so much time was spent so trying to crack that code before they changed the algorithm on us. I would also like to credit Amanda with inventing the ‘boomerang’ (what an awful culturally appropriated name that is) she used to call them ‘loops’ (much better) & we were out there doing these in 2016. I remember the day we discovered the brand new looking and feeling GUCCI, and this sparkly thing called a fashion film (like brand films, fashion films also weren’t really a thing at the time). This was all not too long after Alessandro Michele started out as creative director. It really was A MOMENT. We watched the Pre-Fall 2017 campaign over and over and over again, totally dazzled by the sequined jackets and the high key aesthetic dance scenes. We looked at each other like what a time to be alive.

We had this way of doing what we needed to do all while having the best of fun, philosophising and spontaneously dancing at the same time, along with my fellow intern legendaros and insanely talented Mary & Molly. When I reached the one year mark, Amanda made me the most thoughtfilled scrap book, sprinkled with hand drawn notes, pictures of our time & painted swirls. She really knows how to celebrate people. I still have that book at home with me, it’s so so special & it cements so many memories crystallized in my mind of our time. Not not the best of times. Not not a double negative.

PS — all these women are incredible artists doing amazing creative things…I’ve linked their work so you can take a look!