Ryan Bradley and Hattie Adams are part of a trio which won the NZ on Air Best Music Video award at the Show Me Shorts Film Festival earlier this month.
The music video, for the song 'Tōtara' by husband-and-wife duo Aro, showed two siblings converge on their childhood home to reflect on what they have lost and still have.
So what goes into making an award-winning music video?
Bradley and Adams met at the New Zealand Broadcasting School in 2018, "and have been friends ever since," Adams said.
"I think the reason it works is because our friendship is our main priority, we communicate really well in order to protect that, and what comes out of that is just a really loving kaupapa," she told Susana Lei'ataua on RNZ's Labour Day special.
"It reflects in the work - the respect that we have behind the scenes."
At the recent Show Me Shorts Film Festival Hattie Adams, Ryan Bradley and Summer Vaha'akolo were awarded for for making the video Tōtara. Photo: Supplied / Facebook / NZ On Air
Bradley added he and Adams balance each other out.
"We find ways to fill in the gaps in each other's knowledge and each other's talents within the industry, whether that be post-production or production or managing money," he said.
"It's awesome having a duo, and having Hattie understand me in that way, and having me understand her.
"Years of knowing each other helps that, but also finding our little pockets to collaborate with and to create a new product that reflects both of us."
It was not the first time Bradley and Adams had created a music video for Aro, who introduce themselves as "a blend of stories in song expressing the people, the culture, and the heart of Aotearoa".
"We know Emily and Charles' music quite well, we've worked on three of their videos, so we always knew their style," Adams said.
In regards to the 'Tōtara' music video, Bradley said there is not a lot of time to tell a big story in four minutes - "So we kept it simple."
"Two siblings starting apart, and learning to come together through the memory of someone that they both once loved in their own way."
Adams said the waiata was "stunning", about grief and the loss of Charles' aunt.
"They played us the song, and then we went away and listened to it and just discussed what grief meant to us.
"We found that there was a lot of really universal themes and links, especially with our Māori background and then New Zealand as a whole, [which] I think, is always very family orientated.
"So we worked out basically a narrative that just told the privilege of knowing someone that you've lost, as opposed to the pain of losing them."
Photo: Screenshot / Youtube / Aro
The shoot itself only took two days - one day inside a studio inside a West Auckland house, half a day outside a rundown house in South Auckland suburb of Rosehill, and another half in Tōtara Park.
As for the award, Bradley said they were not expecting to win.
"We didn't quite know what to say."
"It's very nice to be recognised for these things, but we're both also very good at playing ourselves down a little bit, so we weren't expecting it."
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