Producer & Art buyer.

Hi, I’m Raine Grunau.

I graduated with my Honours bursary in Television Production from AFDA. A daughter of a Make up Artist & Martial Artist/ Stunt man, I had no idea what to expect from this industry, but I knew I was resilient and smart enough to fake it till I made it.

I started out as a fresh-faced twenty-something interning at a major feature company in Cape Town. Beginning with long-form projects that stretched over 50+ shoot days was a slow but solid way to learn the ropes. Reporting to fierce, heavyweight Producers, it was very much sink or swim. From the start, I found myself doing everything from jump-starting a Porsche in the pouring rain at night, to pricking my finger 20 times in an ADR sound booth to capture the perfect foley, to scrambling for signal in the middle of the Karoo desert, to spending a night shoot in an abandoned psychiatric hospital. I pretty much covered all the unexpected.

My career then took me from movies and finally, I sunk my teeth into TV Commercials- what a ride. It was everything that movies were, but with a faster turnaround and longer hours to make up for limited time. I learned how to smile after only one hour of sleep and still power through an 18-hour shoot day.

Afterward, I wanted to “slow down” and began taking longer contracts as a Stock Producer. But it wasn’t all corporate and lens flares- we went to Brazil and shot for an entire month straight. By the end, I was completely stocked out. 

From there, my journey led me to Woolworths as a Producer and Art Buyer for their food shoots, organizing work for both food imaging and Taste magazine. Sadly, Covid hit and that chapter was cut short, but a few months into lockdown, as the industry thawed out, I returned to the madness that always called me back: motion.

I joined an agency run by the incredible director Dan Mace, where I learned everything about making a plan last-minute, white-knuckling through the wild ride of working with a creative genius, and getting a post-production masterclass I’ll never forget. When I say I’m trained to spot banding or an issue in the export, I mean it. Managing the young and talented Post team was no easy feat, and after the long nights I earned a promotion to 'Chief of Staff'  to wear in honour alongside my Producer hat.

One of my proudest moments was being not only the Producer- but sole production person on the Checkers Sixty60 ad Dan directed. I got to work with Dan, Discovery Channel, Casey Neistat, and MrBeast. We ran the Beast Philanthropy channel, which took us on missions to shoot charity projects; building schools in Cameroon, bringing electricity to an orphanage in Zambia, constructing wells in Zimbabwe, and supporting food-sharing projects in New York and Philadelphia. Another epic moment was Dan trusting me to write a script for a short- the video took us up to 4 million views despite not even knowing much about content copy or  what a CTA was.

From there, I saw an opportunity to try something new: Stills. I freelanced, bouncing between agency producing and various photography shoots, learning about the artful style of photography and the teams that make it happen, and the exceptional attention to detail that goes into campaign images.

Thirteen years in, I could fill endless web pages with production stories. All of this has led me to become co-owner of the production company Life Size Replica. I’m still freelancing, still gaining XP as a Producer, and the best is yet to come.