DMS takes us on one journey of many
Not Just Any’s Brian Williams takes a personal approach to travel filmmaking in Indonesia.
)
What happens when you leave the conventional travel-film playbook behind and let the journey tell
the story?
For Not Just Any director Brian Williams, the answer was a deeply personal film shot over three weeks in Indonesia, blending family adventure, visual experimentation and a fresh perspective on travel filmmaking.
Created for Indonesian travel company DMS, the film grew out of a long-standing family connection rather than a conventional commercial brief. Williams’ wife is half Danish and half Indonesian, and although the family had spent years connecting with relatives in Indonesia over Zoom, they had never visited together. When the opportunity arose to celebrate his mother-in-law’s 70th birthday, Williams contacted Dadan, a family member who runs DMS, to see if he was interested in collaborating.
The response was simple: make the film about the journey. What followed was an opportunity to approach travel filmmaking on his own terms, with no prescribed itinerary of must-see landmarks and no conventional production set-up.
Credits
View on-
- Production Company Not Just Any
- Director Brian Williams
-
-
Unlock full credits and more with a shots membership
Credits
View on- Production Company Not Just Any
- Director Brian Williams
- Post Production Super 68
Explore full credits, grab hi-res stills and more on shots Vault
Credits
powered by- Production Company Not Just Any
- Director Brian Williams
- Post Production Super 68
“The temptation to show every temple, volcano and white-sand beach in a travel film can be overwhelming,” says Williams. “But you can miss all the textures and images flashing by as you travel through a country. I wanted to explore what a travel film might look like from one perspective, and how you shoot it. The answer was to shoot it for real, from that perspective, and make the actual journey part of the story.”
Over three weeks, Williams filmed as the family travelled, allowing the concept to evolve organically along the way. His wife and seven-year-old son became his impromptu crew, helping capture the experience as it unfolded. The arrangement was very much a family affair: his son was paid in Lego, while his wife received some distinctly Indonesian Batik finds.
The approach was as flexible as the journey itself. Williams shot on a combination of equipment, including his new Nikon | RED Cinema ZR camera, Leica Q343, DJI drone and iPhone, using ProRes Log and a compact magnetic external drive to capture footage in the water. Rather than building a production around a predetermined shot list, he embraced the opportunities that presented themselves along the way.
Back home, Williams brought the film together at Studio 68, handling the edit, CG, music and colour grade. The result is a travel film rooted in personal experience, favouring the details, textures and fleeting moments of a real journey over a conventional showcase of destinations.
The film has already begun to deliver tangible benefits for DMS, with the company now developing a new website and receiving additional promotional support from a Danish company. It demonstrates how a more personal, creatively driven approach to branded content can give a business a distinctive story to tell, without necessarily relying on the traditional production model.
For Williams, the project was an opportunity to combine family, travel and filmmaking in a way that felt entirely natural. For DMS, it offered a fresh way to introduce Indonesia to European travellers, through the eyes of someone discovering a part of his family’s world for the first time.
