Into the Library with Slim

Whether he’s coaxing poetry from physical theatre or building a bar that transforms into an office in-camera, Slim is a filmmaker who thrives in the details. A multidisciplinary artist based in Cape Town, Slim’s background in design and art direction informs every frame – he’s as obsessed with visual clarity as he is with concept. His films often blur the line between music, movement, and narrative, using rhythm-driven choreography as a form of expression, while also creating heartfelt ensemble pieces, and surreal visual play.

But for Slim, it always begins with people. “People watching is my fascination,” he says—and that instinct comes through in every character-driven piece he creates. When he’s not directing, he’s making art for skateboards or finding strange beauty in Cape Town's architectural relics. We caught up with Slim to talk creative chaos, emotional wrap days, and why filming in post-apocalyptic Jo’burg sometimes makes for the best kind of magic.

Investec - Mirror

The last few years I have seen an influx of dance or choreographed movement boards for some reason. Until this happened, I had never realised just how much I love combining movement, edit and music to create these singular flowing narratives.

The challenge of this piece was that the client and agency didn’t want a music video based on any particular form of dance. Our phenomenal choreographers Eugene Baloyi and Zoyi Lindiwe Muendane investigated physical theatre, where expressive movement helped to deliver the narration. Rather than casting trained dancers, we decided to go with actors who had incredible – and sometimes hidden – physical abilities. Enter Danica Tamaryn De La Rey (who at the time was undergoing rigorous training for intensely choreographed fight scenes in a feature and is married to an old-school B-boy) and Nyaniso Dzedze (who has a background in gymnastics and martial arts).

For me, the real joy in this process was getting completely lost in the collaboration nature of choreography. Rehearsals involved just us in a studio for hours, completely immersed, focussed and finding everything hilarious. Our cast really pushed their limits as we only had a single shoot day – where they unrelentingly gave us perfection on every single take.

The location had to reflect the tone of the brand, which is why we were hunting down an old architectural building to use, eventually settling on Pretoria’s old Palace of Justice court building. These heritage locations are like hen’s teeth to find in South Africa because so many of them are either completely derelict or impossible to access. But our weeks of pestering the owners finally paid off – just days before the shoot.

MTN - RWC Silent Choir

‘Silent Choir’ was a continuation of MTN’s sponsorship of the Springboks for the 2023 Rugby World Cup. The creative team conceived the idea when they heard that Sign language was set to become the 12th official language of South Africa – just months ahead of the tournament.

‘Singing’ the national anthem in Sign language by hearing-impaired performers became the perfect symbol – the icing on the cake – of how South Africans use their voices to to get behind the Springboks. The World Cup has become one of our strongest national unifiers and this piece captured that spirit.

Choreographers Zoyi and Eugene collaborated with teachers from St Vincents School for the Deaf to transform the song’s lyrics into signed movement. A simple, powerful beat replaced the lyrical rhythm, to guide the signing and the choreography. Our cast was made up of 200 students, who carefully rehearsed to move in sync with the performance.

Of course we had some last-minute hiccups just days before the shoot: we lost our location and the school withdrew the 200 students for bizarre reasons. Production went into overdrive – securing a new location site, recruiting another 200 students and pulling off intense rehearsals with just 48 hours to go. To top it off, our producer broke her ankle on location the day before filming.

Despite the setbacks, being involved in this piece was unimaginably rewarding. Watching the hearing impaired cast master choreography through visual cues and signing was incredible to watch. It was the most emotional shoot wrap we’ve ever experienced with the cast surprising the agency and client with handmade gifts and heartfelt speeches, thanking us for giving their community national recognition. There wasn’t a dry eye in the room. And, as if by fate, the Springboks won the World Cup.

KFC - #Eat Chicken For Breakfast

This project was a never-ending escalation of events – what began as a small-scale social campaign quickly snowballed into a full-blown epic production.

When I first treated on the script, there was a passing mention of casting a local celebrity or influencer in the lead role. Deep into production, that suddenly turned into a full-on search for someone with real star power. It escalated fast with names like Will Smith floating around – before the client finally landed on Trevor Noah. He’d just wrapped The Daily Show and was heading back to South Africa for a while.

From that moment, the project escalated from an online conspiracy idea to various TVCs, social content and print. Treatments were rewritten, scenes reimagined, locations swapped, cast found and scripts updated right up to the final hour. The creative team were literally reworking dialogue on the fly and handing it over to me as Trevor walked onto set – totally game to play a self-deprecating conspiracy theorist.

Briefing him in his green room minutes before cameras rolled was intense. You could literally see his brain doing quantum physics – analysing every word of dialogue, adapting and improving the lines on the spot. And then he killed every single take, effortlessly cutting through the chaos and tension with pure precision.

On the flip-side, shooting the conspiracy elements gave us total creative freedom – we recreated faux-archival footage using early AI, filmed on old 8mm cameras (with film processed by a local crackpot in his bath-tub) and even dragged out my ancient DV camera which our DIT somehow managed to revive.

Chicken Licken - SoulSister

This was one of the first projects where I got to fully immerse myself in the choreography and build scenes directly with a phenomenal cast. The beauty of this piece started in the casting process – we opened it up to self-submitted videos before holding physical auditions. Watching them felt like sifting through a season of America’s Got Talent – the most unexpected, everyday people pulled out the most surprising, unforgettable moves. It was the gift that kept on giving.

It was also my first time working with my now go-to choreographers, Eugene and Zoyi. They really empowered the cast to develop their own characters, which we built the story around. We even rigged a few of them in select scenes to add a subtle layer of magic realism to the story.

Everyone had their hearts set on one track – ‘Soy Yo’ by Bomba Estéreo. It best matched the story and the energy of the choreography, so we committed to rehearsing with it for weeks… despite not actually having the rights yet. After various rounds of negotiation (and many sleepless nights), we finally got word – while we were mid shoot – that the track was secured. #neveragain

KFC x NBA - Now we balling

This was a really exciting and rare collaboration between KFC and the NBA. Beyond getting to shoot basketball action, what really stayed with me was the experience of filming in downtown Johannesburg in the aftermath of Covid – and right in the middle of intense load-shedding (which is scheduled and unscheduled blackouts across entire areas, for hours on end, to prevent a total collapse on the national grid.)

The story called for urban locations in the dead of night, so we scouted Jo’burg inner city after dark – already a risky move at the best of times. But under these conditions, the city felt completely surreal. The Jo’Burg I grew up in – usually vibrant and alive – felt like an abandoned post-apocalyptic film set. The only sources of light were our car headlights and the occasional brazier glowing on a street corner. I couldn’t even document it – there just wasn’t enough light to capture anything.

We eventually re-scouted by day and planned to light everything ourselves. But even then, on our shoot nights, the power cuts caught us off guard. We’d just finished setting up a street scene when we got word that load-shedding would hit our area—and affect all our remaining locations.

Our lighting crew were absolute heroes. They rolled with it, adapted quickly, and made it work with a handful of lights. Looking back, the chaos actually pushed us to reinvent the visual approach. It forced us into a new creative space—one we wouldn’t have found otherwise.

MTN - Feet

This project marked the beginning of a new-found passion for integrating rhythm and visual movement. The concept was deceptively simple: create a piece around dynamic footwork, synced to a driving, infectious beat – which in execution, proved more complex.

As a (very bad) drummer back in the day, I knew that this idea hinged on finding the right track. After a month-long search, we landed on it – and from the moment we played it to the agency and client and agency, they were hooked. It had that primal, pounding bass drum. That tribal beat that feels like it’s wired into us from birth. This spot wasn’t about selling a product. It was about selling an attitude – a belief in human potential – and to do that, it had to be felt, for it to work.

Each scene required us to recreate various brand-affiliated countries across Africa, all filmed in and around Johannesburg.

GUINNESS ARMSTRONG - Undercover Bar

This was such a great idea for a Ghanaian brand that the only way to approach it was to dive head-first into the scary challenge of practical, in-camera effects. We spent a week in Accra researching local bars and casting the lead characters, before finally shooting in Johannesburg.

Creating the evolution of the bar into an office space was the best part, working with the most dedicated art director and his phenomenal team of set-builders. After finding the right location to build in, it just became the most involved, hands-on process: creating a small cardboard maquette of the space with moving parts, then designing, building and testing the various mechanisms with the set-builders – until they finally trucked all the elements into the location.

The most insane part is that the team had built and rigged everything so seamlessly, we could have run the entire bar evolution in a single take, in under 30 seconds. But we would have lost a lot of the memorable character moments. Totally should have done a behind-the -scenes for this one.

Garmin - War/Triathlon

This spot is still my favourite project ever. It started as the most over-ambitious treatment on a small budget and somehow turned into the most rewarding, stressful, chaotic and awesome experience of my career.

There’s almost too much to say about it, but every single crew and cast member threw themselves into the process – we were all figuring it out as we went. The Snorricam approach was key to immersing the viewer in the lead character’s experience, but it also solved a huge practical challenge: we couldn’t afford to reset explosions for multiple camera angles.

It was right at the moment when digital was starting to take over the industry and film was basically redundant locally – before decent DSLRs or good-quality GoPro’s. My producer eventually tracked down a tiny, lightweight digital Phantom – the only one in the country, normally used in a university scientific lab. The other camera was some Sony model (I honestly can’t even remember) that had to be tethered to a laptop, meaning our DIT was sprinting his ass off alongside the rigged cast in some scenes.

Our incredible scout somehow found these old, derelict mining buildings just outside Johannesburg where we could cheat the period aesthetic – and basically do whatever the hell we wanted. I’d never had the opportunity to blow shit up before, and the effects guys were having such a blast (pun apologies) that they started throwing in extra explosions for free. We did have one soldier character run straight into an explosion (he was fine), despite multiple safety briefings and carefully choreographed stunts.

The spot is 95% in-camera effects, with some post work to add scale and drama – like enhancing explosion debris, the Zeppelins and muzzle flashes.

Looking back, I still have no idea how we pulled it off. But a huge part of it came down to the complete and utter trust we had from the agency and client. They were on board from day one and had our backs the whole way through. The client in particular showed what real leadership looks like – he was 100% invested and took full responsibility for the project, even when the board panicked and wanted to pull it. He never backed down. That kind of belief in the work made us all push harder – because he’d essentially put his career on the line for it.

CIPLA - Life Lost

This project was really special – it was one of the last times we really got to experiment with film to tell a classic story. I love digital, but there’s a craft and unpredictability I miss when working with film. The medium naturally lends itself to shaping the narrative. So much goes into the prep, testing and learning – compared to just cycling through a never-ending library of LUTs.

To capture the period story, we referenced 1900’s Russian movies and tested multiple film stocks and exposures on location before the shoot. Each stock was then pushed and processed in various ways. We ended up radically under-exposing and bleach-bypassing a 16mm stock. The look defined itself and the grade was just about tweaking and matching shots for continuity. It was a massive commitment with no turning back, but at least everyone had seen and approved the look before we rolled a single take.

There’s something about generative AI that excites me in a similar way – where, for now, you don’t really have full control over the final outcome. I’m learning to lean into that unpredictability and embrace what the medium offers.

Powerade - Ice Rugby

This spot came early in my career and was a real challenge, as the idea required us to shoot internationally. We based ourselves in Prague, and finding the location turned into an epic adventure – we ended up scouting frozen mountain lakes in Slovakia. The only way to access them was via snow mobiles and each lake was buried under feet of snow. After much back and forth about getting crew to these remote areas and clearing a football-field-sized area of snow (plus my producer slipping on ice and tearing a ligament – his kneecap was literally sitting in his thigh), we opted to find somewhere closer to Prague.

One of our scouts eventually found an abandoned quarry that became our location. It gave the story a much grittier setting. Finding the right cast was easier than we expected – we sought out local pro ice hockey players, some of whom had rugby experience. Together with a Czech rugby coach, we choreographed the sequences in an ice rink.
Our saving grace on set was our hard-as-nails cast. We shot in -18 degrees, out on a frozen lake, with them wearing nothing but skimpy rugby kits. It got so bad that when the guys clenched their fists, the skin on their knuckles would tear and bleed. But not a single one of them complained. It was mental.