Dave Kellogg and Brendan Madden have been living a double life. Kellogg (aka Brusie), a journalist whose craft has been seasoned by such assignments as the Iraq war and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, has found himself looking for an opportunity to capture the China story since he arrived in Qingdao in 2006. In that time, Madden (aka Seabass) has gone to great lengths to inject his own brand of high-octane joie-de-vivre into Qingdao’s languishing live music scene, most notoriously as a guitarist and vocalist with local rap-metal virtuosos The Dama Llamas. Both have a taste for adventure, and an inclination to put themselves to the test at every opportunity. Schoolteachers by day, the pair found their extraordinary talents galvanised earlier this year when Haier, the Qingdao-based electronics giant, tapped them to create a series of short films that would explore the breadth and intensity of China’s modernising efforts in the march to the 2008 Beijing Olympics. At the same time, they would put new faces (and trousers, for goodness sake) to the firm’s own twin marketing mascots, the Haier Brothers.

What followed was several weeks of planning and development, followed by a journey by train and then by bicycle from Qingdao, through Beijing and Lhasa, to their ultimate goal at China’s base camp on Mt. Everest. The boys proceeded to build a story with the sweat of their respective brows and their unique ability to interact with their fascinating surroundings, and are now poised to premier their project, called Higher and Higher, with a multimedia launch event at the redSTAR office on Friday, 23 November (see p.46). We caught up with them to talk about the antics, experiences and insights that come through in their films.

What were the early connections between what you guys had to offer and what Haier is hoping to accomplish?
Dave Kellogg (D): We were able to provide them with a story that carries their name along one of the most prominent events in modern Chinese history, the Beijing Olympics. They wanted people to see some of the scale and pace of what’s going on in China, partly to get a sense of the innovative products that are coming out of China. And the name recognition that we could develop with an idea like Higher and Higher was definitely valuable.
Brendan Madden (B): The first challenge they had with us was wondering how we would help them sell washing machines. But their slogans have always involved ideas like ‘Inspired Living’, and if that’s what they wanted to promote, we felt that our earlier videos went a long way to convey a lot of those ideas in a fresh way.
D: In some ways it ‘inspired’ us, too - they have an ongoing ‘Haier Happiness’ campaign, and knowing that we had to play to that in our documentary kind of forced us to stay upbeat if things were looking grim. Their support for our trip was conditional on us having a good time, and that helped us to focus and see a way through some of the challenges that came up.

What was the inspiration for the stops that you make along your journey?
B: We’ve travelled a lot in eastern China and in the north, and I’d wanted take a trip into Xinjiang and some of the western areas that I hadn’t experienced. Then we were going to come down to Lhasa, get bikes and ride to Mt. Everest. It was exciting to think that I could check Everest off of my list of places that I’ve reached.
D: Once Haier was committed, we had a set of themes to develop. The emphasis on the Olympics meant that we would need to go to Beijing and experience cultural sites like Summer Palace and Temple of Heaven to give viewers a sense of the city’s heritage, and then move from that to the massive construction and planning that’s taking place. We adapted our trip to coordinate with this year’s test Olympics.
B: So we didn’t get to Xinjiang... but it was a blast.

Right, but it must have been challenging to get away with filming and stunts at some of your locations.
D: We just had to do it. We carefully chose the spot for the Butch Cassidy-inspired leap into the ocean, because some of the water at the coast isn’t very deep. There were signs at the Summer Palace saying “No Swimming”... but we figured it wouldn’t hurt to jump in, if it was for the sake of art.
B: If someone asks you to stop filming them, you stop. But more often it’s a guard or an employee who wants to err on the side of repression and can’t offer a good reason why you should stop.
D: In Tibet we would avoid filming in places where it was discouraged (like groups of monks, or at temples), or pay the required fee. But in general, people who found themselves in our scenes would see that something spontaneous and fun was going on (like the paddle-boat race on Kunming Lake) and get right into it.

And did you ever feel like you were putting your lives on the line?
B: Maybe being on a road in Tibet, with nothing around, and seeing a blizzard coming in. We had our great sleeping bags, tent, high-altitude stove and other equipment, but those only offer so much comfort. We were going flat out at 30km/h, uphill and down, to stay ahead of the storm. It was scarier to tell my parents about the idea of riding mountain bikes to Everest - they thought we were crazy, and that it was way too dangerous.
D: Yeah, people think there’s an Everest monster throwing boulders at anyone who comes near. Honestly though, we didn’t know if we would get two kilometres out of Lhasa on our bikes and find that our lungs were bleeding. But it was harder to think about than to do.
B: And the hardest parts have made the most interesting story. There’s a great transformation between the character-driven, ‘acted’ sense at the beginning, into a very real sense of responding to the challenging environment at the end.

What were some of the brilliant moments that justified the challenges?
B: Coming into Gyantse was epic. You ride over Karo pass at 5,000m, and the city spreads out like a dream on the floor of the valley below. There’s an ancient castlestanding in the middle of it, which we found to contain artifacts that looked like they hadn’t been noticed for hundreds of years. We had the extra rush of that storm bearing down on us.
D: The guidebook had advised to take that leg in two days... but we were on a shooting schedule! It was worth getting there when we did.
B: In Beijing we caught the bike race. It was very different from watching it on TV. You wait, and then a few cars drive by, and then suddenly a mob of flashes as the athletes race past. It’s incredible.
D: Seeing Mt. Everest for the first time is the greatest example, but we were relieved even to see much smaller things happening according to the shooting schedule that we’d established, to get the images that we’d wanted from places where we’d never been. For example, we didn’t only happen to get a great view of Everest from the road - we were also coincidentally filming as we came around the corner and managed to capture that moment.
B: We were coming up a hill and Everest started peeking out the side of a hill. I had the camera out and was filming, and we couldn’t believe it when we saw it. We were speechless.

What are people going to take from the film, inside and outside of China?
D: Something we were reminded of in the editing is that China is big and mysterious on one hand, especially to foreigners, but it’s also extremely significant and inviting. It’s probably good branding for China, giving a sense of the amazing stuff that’s here and that’s being made here. And it’s timely, as a real world story with the Olympics, showing the massive scope of what’s going on in preparation. We went as far as the highway that will enable people to drive all the way up to Everest base camp. A Chinese athlete will carry the Olympic torch to the highest point on the face of the Earth, which is absolutely unprecedented. We hear a lot about preparations in Qingdao, but to see (from our bikes) what is going into that remote area was astounding.
B: Even people living here will certainly be surprised at the money that is being spent on and around the Games. $40bn are going into preparation of stadiums and venues, and they’re doing a lot to improve Beijing’s infrastructure; but a similar amount has been spent on the train linking Lhasa to other provinces in China.
D: So it’s a broad, overarching glimpse of the development that’s happening in China, from Qingdao to Beijing and to to the foot of Mt. Everest. It’s as simplistic and fun as we could make it, and we don’t get into the political or social issues, but viewers will get a sense of what’s going on here. B: And they’ll have a good time doing it. We certainly did.