UP A TIER creates researched, unscripted documentary interviews. The business matters. But the business is rarely the story. The person is.
For founders, individuals and families who want a person’s story documented with depth—so the audience meets a companion, not an entity.
FOUNDER PORTRAIT
For founders, owners, directors and senior leaders.
A business can tell you what it does. A Founder Portrait documents the person who built it — what shaped them, the decisions they've made, what they believe and how they think while they're still building it.
It isn't a scripted company video or an advertisement disguised as an interview. It's a researched, unscripted documentary interview made to stand on its own now and remain useful long after the business, career or person has changed.
A Founder Portrait gives clients, partners and future collaborators a way to understand who they’re dealing with. Your experience. Your judgement. Your reasons for doing the work. Use it on your website, LinkedIn or alongside a proposal when the person behind the business matters to the decision. Over time, it becomes a record of how you thought and what you were building.
A Founder Portrait introduces the person behind the business as a companion, not a corporate entity—building trust through experience, judgement and character.
LEGACY PORTRAIT
For individuals and families who want more than photographs and second-hand memories.
A Legacy Portrait documents someone as they are now. Their voice. Their humour. The stories they tell. What they remember. What they believe. The things their family knows about them and the things they may never have thought to ask.
A researched, unscripted documentary interview preserved for the people who come after them.
A Legacy Portrait gives your family something they can return to. Your voice telling the story, in your own words. It can be shared now and passed on later, giving people who may never have met you a chance to hear you and understand something of your life.
A Legacy Portrait keeps someone present as a companion: their voice, humour, perspective and presence, held in their own words.
Conversations with people still in the middle of becoming.
Josh Horneman
AI Regulation Is a Control Problem, Not a Safety Problem — Josh Horneman, HOWLL AI
Founder of HOWLL AI
Josh Horneman of HOWLL AI discusses AI regulation, control and safety.
Leti Fa'amausili
Leti Fa'amausili: Pacific Islander Identity, Religion, Sexual Abuse and Motherhood in Australia
Mother and Pacific Islander Australian
Leti Fa'amausili discusses Pacific Islander identity, religion, sexual abuse and motherhood in Australia.
Derick Pitt
Derick Pitt | Parenthood, Marriage, and the Autism Diagnosis that build his Real Estate Business
Real estate professional
Derick Pitt discusses parenthood, marriage, autism and building his real estate business.
Will Jobe
Suicide. Culture. And becoming the mentor he never had.
Strength & conditioning coach / youth mentor
Will Jobe discusses suicide, culture and becoming the mentor he never had.
Josh Horneman
Josh Horneman | Curiosity, Sovereignty & The AI Question Nobody Can Answer.
Entrepreneur & AI founder
Josh Horneman discusses curiosity, sovereignty and the questions AI cannot answer.
From the first conversation to the completed Portrait.
01 — THE FIRST CONVERSATION
Tell us who you want to interview and why you want to document them.
02 — THE PROPOSAL
You receive a written proposal covering the Portrait, agreed shorts and reels, location, review process, usage rights and price.
03 — RESEARCH
We research the person and the background to their story.
04 — THE INTERVIEW
The conversation is guided but not scripted. The subject answers in their own words.
05 — THE EDIT
The Portrait is edited, sound-treated and colour graded. The agreed shorts and reels are also prepared.
06 — REVIEW AND DELIVERY
The client reviews the finished work and has final approval before delivery or publication.
Standard delivery is within 8 business days of filming.
Most stories are told after the outcome is known. Uncertainty becomes hindsight. Contradictions are cleaned up. Difficult decisions are reduced to lessons.
UP A TIER documents people before that happens.
We create cinematic documentary interviews centred on the people behind businesses, organisations, families, careers and ideas. Each story captures character in real time—what someone believes, what they are building, what is testing them and what they have not yet figured out.
The result is more than content. It is an interview with commercial value today and archival value tomorrow.
Every UP A TIER interview is structured around elements designed to document the person as they are now—not the simplified version created by hindsight.
The conversation is researched and shaped around the subject, but they are never coached towards predetermined answers. The purpose is to create enough direction for a story to emerge—and enough space for the person to reveal themselves. The idea is to separate the person from the brand and create a relationship between the guest and an audience built on trust.
At the end of every portrait, the goal is have the guest seen as a companion opposed to an entity.
Notes From the Middle Grey is the written side of UP A TIER. Essays and field notes about character, contradiction, ambition, pressure and the parts of a person’s story that remain unresolved. No manufactured certainty. No lessons forced before they have been lived. Just honest thinking from inside the work.
MIDDLE GREY ESSAYS — Ideas about character, pressure, contradiction and the stories people tell about themselves.
FIELD NOTES — Observations from inside the conversations and the process of documenting people.
THE UNRESOLVED — Questions and tensions that do not arrive at a clean conclusion.
Tell us who you want to document and what you want to make.