A researched, unscripted documentary interview, filmed and edited by UP A TIER.
FOUNDER PORTRAIT
A Founder Portrait documents the person behind the business — the decisions they’ve made, what shaped them and how they think while they’re still building it.
LEGACY PORTRAIT
A Legacy Portrait records a person’s voice, mannerisms, humour, memories and beliefs. The completed Portrait can be shared with family or kept privately.
Conversations with people still in the middle of becoming.
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.