With a background as an artist in technical design and visual content creation since 2011, Mads is a Māori filmmaker and emerging cinematographer based out of Christchurch. 

With strong family ties to both Ngāi Tahu and the Cook Islands, Mads grew up on the road with his mum and brother where he developed a love for film, photography and art. After binging heaps of anime and smashing a degree in 2014, he bootstrapped a startup with two long time friends and Māui Studios was born. 

Today Māui operates as a creative powerhouse, where he runs a tight knit film production team as creative director. They deliver end to end content solutions in the realm of digital creation, talent discovery and tech exploration so they can give back to the communities and organisations that helped raise them. 

Mads has been blessed with opportunities to travel through film as a DP on a range of different productions; leading an expedition of Ngāi Tahu youth across Silicon Valley, spontaneous haka on the great wall of China, eating fire ramen in Japan, surviving twenty days across the pacific ocean aboard celestial waka Fa’afaite in the Land of Voyagers and shooting 70+ short stories of indigenous social entrepreneurship in the whānau ora space for Te Waipounamu.

With aspirations to write and direct his own screenplays and business ambitions to facilitate more productions being led in the South Island, Mads and the team at Māui are launching a Virtual Production Studio right now. They have their LED volume in place and are refining acoustics that will be ready for action any second!  All of which are means to provide innovative and accessible solutions for local and international filmmakers seeking space to shoot their own productions.

You can check some of Mads work here.