On the 15 of October I flew to Shanghai to begin production on a new TVC for Minute Maid Juice. This time we would be working on a short 15 second script created by ECD Kelly Pon and shepherded by Agency TV producer Julienne Wu from BBH Shanghai. Having worked closely with Kelly before, I really felt comfortable in knowing what she wanted to achieve in this Chinese New Year special. Once again we would film Eason Chan in Hong Kong but this time we would employ the magic of a 3D dragon to bring to life a fantasy tale especially for Chinese New Year 2012.

Production House Producer Geok Lem, arranged for my visas into China and after several face to face meetings with the Client and Agency, we flew to Hong Kong on the 19th of October to organise the shoot. We stayed at the newly opened East hotel, which I want to point out as very special. A truly remarkable hotel for Hong Kong with lots of space and great design virtues! Enough of the free plugs and more on the production process.

Several days of preproduction followed with casting and wardrobe calls, meetings with my Art Director on the set design etc. I was reunited with most of my usual Hong Kong crew which was great. This time “Elvis” was my 1st AD While Ben Sum and his team had furniture built, dealt with several cast changes and a multitude of wardrobe options.

On Sunday the 23rd of October we began production in the studio. We shot everything we could using a double for Eason, including cutaways, reaction shots and technical stuff the 3D dragon would require to interact with. Including the cast and crew, the studio was filled with people and even though we were only producing one single 15 sec commercial, our day was completely full of activity. My Cinematographer this time round was legendary Hong Kong based DOP Oceanic. He’s a long standing professional, who is deeply respected by the local crew which definitely made my life easier. His eye for lighting was similar in style to my own which made conversation easy. Of note is that I asked him to employ smoke on set. I did this because I’m often concerned about how sharp and clear the RED’s 4K output makes things. By using smoke sparingly, we would be able to add contrast in Post Production without having such a strong harsh look.

Monday the 24th of October, we filmed an 8 hour day with our Cast and Celebrity, Eason Chan. Once again it was great to work with him. He’s a highly experienced entertainer with followers in the millions all over the world, so he’s definitely not shy! However he is gracious, patient and very supportive, especially of our younger cast members. He actively helped to make the young boy featured in the TVC, to feel relaxed and have fun!

As with many of my Commercials, the complexity of the shoot involved wrangling people’s eye lines so that Post Production could integrate a 3D character with real life. This was no easy feat! It involved a Dragon forming (made from pulp) and dancing around them.  We ended up having crew members holding sticks, toy dragon’s on booms and clap queues to help the cast to look in the right direction at the right time. I did think of using a quad copter at one stage but that would have moved to slowly, been too dangerous considering our young child actor and Eason (given his celebrity status). In addition to that, we had curtains being swept by the Dragon, a Woman’s hair being blown by the dragon and lots of confetti raining down – all synchronised with the actions of the 3D character. Off course all of this had to be timed to fit into a 15 second TVC!

Tuesday 25th of October I flew to Shanghai to begin the Offline Post Production! Cutting the RED One footage at Attic Post, Terence Manuel was my editor. Fitting everything in and imagining where the Dragon would exist was our main concerns at that time. Terence did a lovely job, helping the Client to see where the Dragon would be by animating a “lens flare” around the screen to simulate the flight path of the Dragon. We got approval for the Edit on Friday the 28th of October and went straight to Final Grade at Shanghai’s PO (Post Office). Michael Jaing graded the images beautifully, including adding a lot of contrast to arrive at a strong “look”. Because we had shot with smoke, the image did not end up fiercely sharp looking, and instead had in my opinion more falloff between colours and contrasty areas. After the grade my job was done for a while! It would be a few weeks before I would fly from Melbourne to Singapore to complete the TVC at Blackmagic Design!

The Dragon design was another important element. We actively tried to create a Dragon that was constructed from as little “Pulp” as possible. Minute Maid is China’s no.1 selling orange juice and the “pulp” is a reference to the product. In previous TVC’s the pulp “comes alive” and display character, creating a kind of mischief and playfulness around Eason as he drinks. This time, in an effort to cheer up a young boy, Eason conjures a Dragon made only of “pulp elements”. The 3D team at Blackmagic Design in Singapore were responsible for bringing this to life. Kelly and I were pretty resolved in creating a “Pulp Dragon” with as little pulp as possible. We wanted to avoid a very complex 3D, which would be difficult to animate and to help make the communication clear – not look like a hornets nest of activity etc! And yet it had to easily communicate as a Dragon. BMD rose to the occasion and designed a fantastic Dragon for us. Led by Senior FX artist Ronnie Chin, a hand full of animators worked for a couple of weeks, tracking, animating and incorporating the Pulp Dragon into our live action photography.

Music was again another key ingredient. Utilising Singapore’s Song Zu Recording Studio, Composer Lindsay Jehan created an energetic and fun track, underscoring the images perfectly. Further sound design elements were added also by Sound Designer Damien Waddell.

Meanwhile back at Blackmagic Design, Damien Yang oversaw the compositing side of things. He had to correct a few eye-lines from errant cast members, retie a few things here and there but mostly the images were clean and easy to work with. Damien as usual did an amazing job of coordinating his team and managing client changes. On the 25th of November we concluded the project successfully and I flew on directly to my next assignment in Shanghai China. Once again I have so many people to thank. I should quickly say thank you to Producer Geok Lim, who did an amazing job calmly, Kelly Pon for working so collaboratively, Damien Yang for being so dam reliable and the whole Hong Kong Production team. There are so many others not singled out here, but rest assured you are not forgotten. A link to the TVC can be found below:

On the 19th of April I received an invitation to take part in a con call with BBH Shanghai for an up coming Minute Maid Commercial. After a quick round of discussions with both key creatives Kelly Pon and Production Producer Geok Lem, I headed for Hong Kong!

Minute Maid is China’s biggest selling Orange Juice and is one of Coca Cola’s line of products. Their current campaign had featured Eason Chan and this TVC was going to continue that tradition. Eason is extremely well known all over the world and has a large following in Asia and many Western Countries including Australia, England etc. He grew up in the UK so not only was he easy to work with but he had a larrikin sense of humour as well!

With very little preproduction time, we scoured Hong Kong for locations, eventually arriving at a spot near Clear Water Bay. A couple of days later we began production, filming the TVC with the REDOne camera. My Cinematographer was a guy I had worked with before – Atong had participated on one of my Canon TVC’s with Daniel Wu a couple of years before. This time he was in charge of all things photographic while I concentrated on Directing.

The shoot schedule was spread over two days with all of Eason’s involvement concentrated on one day. Additionally, we had a second cast member. Her name was Ella Chen – A Taiwanese pop star from a band called S.H.E!  Luckily Ella was available both days so we could overlap Eason and Ella on screen. But there were a few shots we had to use doubles!

CD Kelly Pon and Writer Jay Qian were great to work with, as were the rest of the BBH team! BBH TV Producer Bernice Wong kept things on track and coordinated a very tricky production and post production process. My Producer Geok Lem, was also coordinating a large Hong Kong crew, Australian Director, South African Post house, Singaporeans, Malaysians, Chinese and the list goes on! Our Client, Craig is American but had lived in Japan so it was fair to say that this was a multinational production!

Key to the process was Post House Black Ginger from Cape Town South Africa. VFX Producer and part owner of Black Ginger, Marc Bloch, flew to join us in Hong Kong for the shoot. He was terrific to work with and Kelly, myself and Marc would talk endlessly about the job, photography and other cool stuff! Definitely had fun with those guys!

The first day of the shoot went well but we did have rain and sun in the same day. That made life tricky for the grade. Eason and Ella were fun to work with and I had great time wrangling their performances and eyeline’s towards mythical “pulp” that would be added by the South African effects team later! Keeping people interested and focused is always a battle in a technical environment such as this but like troupers, they pulled through with the goods! The Hong Kong crew worked tirelessly to provide all the necessary art direction, set dressings and construction. The location looked amazing after they removed rubbish, high grass, trees, and planted a white picket fence, bushes and fresh green grass along the roadside. They had to build a bus shelter to help remove an ugly council waist disposal area! This was all done overnight due to the quickness of the production! When it started to rain, the Hong Kong team ordered a tanker to conduct “wet downs” for the remaining part of the shoot so that we could maintain continuity. While that slowed production down a bit, I think that the wet downs really helped the look of the Commercial.

The second day of the shoot was with Ella only. She was truly fantastic to work with. Very helpful, super nice! We shot all the wide shots of her, the car approaching and all her closeups on that day. Occasionally we had to resort to using a body double for Eason but I tried to do that sparingly. The day ended up being sunny with a bright blue sky, which was a bit unfortunate for continuity. However, we ended the shoot very positively and headed into town for celebrations.

Flying to Shanghai, China, we continued the Post Production there. Firstly was Offline at the Production House. My editor, Kathrin Schmoll ( known as Schmolly to her friends), was flown in from Germany by Kjell Kunde, EP of Tribe! She was great & we cut several options for the 30sec & a 15sec variants. I can say that Schmolly is truly a great editor and anyone lucky enough to work with her will discover this.

2 days later, we presented the Offline edits to Client on the 28th at BBH Shanghai. That went very well. The life of a freelancer is sometimes complex! I also had to cope with a Skype con call with Jakarta & Singapore for my Nippon Paint TVC “Vinilex” at the same time!! That went for 2 hours but ended with a very good result also! So I was on a high!

On the 29th, I got up early & walked around the Bund in Shanghai City! Then on to post at the Post Production Office (PO) where Colourist Kit (from Hong Kong) graded the DPX’s using Baselight. After the grade, we went to a Night Market & the Hyatt where I shot some night vistas of Shanghai! I had some time to play tourist for a few days before heading home to Australia briefly. The next stage to this saga was a long flight to Cape Town South Africa. I’ll leave that for another Blog entry soon!

On the 22nd of February I jumped ship from another project to resume work on a Canon TVC. This commercial was shot in Hong Kong right on New Years Eve December 2009. After production had concluded, I remained in Hong Kong for the New Years Eve celebrations and then traveled to Singapore for the Offline. Over the next few days, VHQ Singapore looked after the Offline edit through editor Corrine Yong, and One-Light/ Final Grade with Corey Spykerman. The Offline was then presented to Client via ECD Hiroshi Yoda (Dentsu Beijing)  back in Beijing.

A break in works commenced as I began work on a documentary project and for the next month, VHQ began to slowly Online the TVC in my absence.

On the 22nd of Feb, we re-grouped in Singapore to finnish the TVC. Swee Aik  Khor was my Online Compositor, who slowly replaced the Hong Kong skyline with mountains and a more appropriate vista! The 3D team headed by Eric Gambini, created a 3D EOS 5DMKII Camera and a Canon Legria HM31 Camcorder plus hundreds of photo frames that represent the high quality image sequence that the camcorder can produce using the same technology that’s found inside it’s professional EOS stills cameras. Over that week, VHQ worked pretty hard to meet our deadline, which meant delivering a Master by Sunday the 28th of Feb. On the 27th of February, we stepped into AMX Studios, off Bukit Paso Rd Singapore. and David Ong mixed and Engineered Jonathan Lim’s Score.

Shooting Gallery Producers Freddie Kee & Leollyne Teng put together the shoot in Hong Kong in record time. Daniel Wu was only available for a certain amount of time before he began production of a major motion picture film in China with Kevin Spacey. That meant that the shoot had to occur with very little preproduction lead up. Amazingly, directly after Christmas, we shot the commercial. Daniel was fantatsic to work with again. I had previously worked with him on another Canon TVC shot almost a year earlier. That time I had suspended Daniel from wires, using a Hong Kong Wire stunt team. This time, we were asking him to ride a horse at high speed! Luckily for me, he’s a great guy and doesn’t mind mucking it out! Because the weather was a constant threat and it was the height of winter, the shoot had to be quick. That meant fast setups, lots of fast rigging and plenty of large scale movement across a large disused land fill site. We quickly changed from dolly shots, to hand held (using an easy rig) on a tracking vehicle chasing Daniel riding his horse. Then back to static camera shooting Green Screen shots. The day was action packed and we had to complete everything before the light fell or it started to rain! Adding to the complication were all the special effect requirements. The sequence of images that form on one particular shot involved a complicated locked off camera shot. Daniel and the Horse would then ride through at high speed. The Camera was then released from the lock-off and traveled on an arc through the line of imaginary images left behind Daniel. The ground was so rough here that it was almost impossible to get a smooth track with what we had and the given time. Still the idea is strong and I think it works.

The Hong Kong production team were really excellent again. Mostly they were the same team I had worked with a year a go, so I felt very comfortable working with them again. The combination of the locals and the small Shooting Gallery Team from Singapore were very efficient. In addition to the film crew, we also had horse wranglers, two horses, tracking vehicle department, and a large Agency team. Actually one of them, John, took it upon himself to act as the rain guardian and spent quite a bit of time directing the clouds with his arms! Luckily we completed the shoot and made it safely back to Singapore.

Back in Singapore, the filming continued. In the Shooting Gallery Studio, we completed the product shots on a purpose built S board. Raman is an in house set constructor and all round “fix it” guy who is just amazing to work with. His brain is wired to think logically and cleverly solve production problems, using anything available to him. On this job, his task was relatively easy but he did it with incredible speed and flare!

After a long day on the 28th, we “Mastered” the TVC and it was done! All in all, I’m happy with the outcome. There were many limitations placed on us while making this TVC. Firstly we had to film everything in Hong Kong – there aren’t too many places you can recreate the wild west in Hong Kong! Secondly, the weather was not in our favour! All things aside, I think we managed to produce an interesting spot for Canon.

The TVC can be viewed here. A making of video can be seen on Vimeo here . Enjoy!

After finally making it back home for a couple of weeks, back in Melbourne, I have been able to catchup with family and friends but also process many of the images I have captured around the world.

When ever I get the time, I try to do some time lapse photography. I’m not entirely sure why, I just felt that it would be a good idea to do a little here and there to form a collection of sequences that could be used on commercial projects etc. Lately I have been thinking that it’s a shame these images aren’t out in the open for people to see. So I started to collate them onto a timeline in Final Cut Pro. With no real theme or purpose, I started to formulate an edit based on a music video style approach and realised that a theme did exist – The World in Motion. For what it’s worth, here is my short film, made entirely out of time lapse I shot on my 5DMKII, using a 24mm Shift & Tilt Lens, 50mm f1.4 Canon Lens, 24-105mm Canon zoom & a 15mm Canon wide angle lens. I used a Canon TC-80N3 Intervalometer to control the camera. The camera was nearly always mounted to my Manfrotto Tripod. I say nearly always because rarely I did do some time lapse with the camera sitting on a box or chair etc.

I use MPEG Streamclip by Squared 5 to assemble the images into a Quicktime movie. Generally I use Apple Prores 422(HQ) as the codec. I then edit the footage inside Apples Final Cut Pro. I will make a note though, when ever possible, I try to shoot with a ND8 filter on so that I can set my exposure time to something close to half a second. It depends what the subject is but generally I try to shoot some where between 1/8th – 3/4′s of a second. This is because I generally don’t like the crisp, sharp time lapse that creates a very rigid staccato movement. This video unfortunately has quite a lot of this which works OK but generally I prefer the softer look of the blurred movement. Knowing what level of blur is acceptable is really the key to doing great Time Lapse work.

This is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of the footage I’ve shot, however in the future I might consider editing the rest into another short. Incidentally, the music is composed in Garageband by yours truly. Mostly loops with a smattering of Midi instruments. Finally, all the images you see in this edit were shot in 2010 from January through to March. Hope you enjoy it.

To watch the movie see it on Vimeo.com here or click any of the above images.

I wanted to do something with the 5DMKII footage I shot in Hong Kong over New Years Eve and decided earlier to sit down and edit it. However, like all creative processes, the job always seems easier at first and then grows exponentially! Copyright free music was my problem. So I launched Logic and started composing a piece of music especially for this short video. But what genre of music? Which instruments would sound right? Luckily I had recently bought a few discs worth of samples so I spent the next few hours creating a soundtrack for my short film. Finally I could actually start editing. I knew already that I wanted to edit in a Music Video Clip style, so I began to cut the images to the beat of the music. The footage I had shot was all shot in one night – New Years Eve 2009/2010, in Central, Hong Kong. I didn’t actually know where the fireworks was going to take place and had taken a MTR to Causeway Bay. There I walked along the shoreline towards Central, where I chanced upon the perfect spot to film the event! There were easily half a million people around the Harbour, maybe even more as the fireworks exploded overhead. Although the fireworks display was quite short (around 15 minutes), the display was spectacular!

The 5D MKII’s strength is definitely it’s low light capabilities when shooting HD Video. It’s still recording in 30FPS which is annoying to me, however hopefully in February we may see a firmware update that will solve this. I also used my brand new 50mm f1.4 lens, which afforded me 2 more stops of light I wouldn’t have had otherwise! This lens is amazing. Very sharp and and at f1.4, produces the most perfect Bokeh. As well as shooting HD Video at 1920 x 1080, I shot quite a lot of stills in RAW mode. Later I combined these stills using QuickTime7 (on Mac OSX 10.6, it’s buried in the Utilities folder for some reason). I also shot several Time Lapse sequences using a Canon TC-80N3 controller. All the sequences including the 5D HD Video footage was converted to the XDCam (1920 x 1080, 30fps 35mb/sec VBR) codec. This made editing a lot more pleasant in Final Cut Pro. I didn’t spend any time on a Grade, so the final images you see in the video (minus the effects of re-compression) are as they were shot! In a perfect world, I would spend more time with my setups when shooting, but given I only had a few hours to film the event, I’m happy with the result. Enjoy! The video is uploaded to my Vimeo account. You can access it by clicking on the image above or navigating to http://vimeo.com/user735977

While I was working on a new Campaign for Canon in Hong Kong, I became aware of a “Making Of” video that was constructed from our last adventure with Daniel Wu. That Commercial entitled “Smart Choice” featured Daniel Wu running across the pages of a “flipping book”. Shot in a studio in Hong Kong almost exactly a year ago, the commercial utilised specialist Hong Kong Wire stunt experts, who hoisted Daniel to great heights in the studio. The production Company was “The Shooting Gallery Asia” and Post was taken care of by “Blackmagic Design” in Singapore. They carefully removed all the Green Screen elements and wire rigs, compositing the final images into a hybrid 3D/2D environment. You can read more about what Blackmagic Design did for this TVC here. The Commercial can be found here.

Here is the Making Of, kindly supplied by Dentsu Beijing. A quick note, this Making Of is one of the most watched “Making’s Of” for a television commercial in China!

On boxing day 2009, I boarded a flight to Hong Kong, headed towards a new Television Commercial project. 2009 was one of those strange years for me that hummed along quietly & occasionly faulted! What I mean by that is work simply stopped! So my motivation to rip myself away from my family & go directly back to work so soon after Christmas was fuelled by my desire to start the new decade off with a bang! We actually shot the commercial two days later which is amazing! With two horses, a famous Hong Kong TV star & a day of pretending we were out on the badlands of the wild west, we filmed action sequences that looked pretty cool! More on that in a future blog entry!

Regional Group EP Shooting Gallery Asia - Freddy Kee

Because my Post Production started four days later in Singapore, I decide to stay in Hong Kong for New Years Eve rather then face 16 hours of flying to and from Australia! Having no idea where to go for New Years Eve in Hong Kong, I decided that the harbour area would surely have a fireworks display and a countdown?! Google didn’t really offer to many clues where and Hong Kong Harbour is pretty big! Any case, I ended up down at Causeway Bay and walked along the shoreline towards Central. Amazingly I arrived at the Exhibition Centre, just at the mouth of the bay at Central to find the perfect position. By 11pm, the place was so full of people that you couldn’t move around. Somehow I lucked it in and found the perfect position. There, I watched an amazing countdown and fireworks display to herald the new decade!

TV Producer for Shooting Gallery Asia - Leollyne Teng

I’m now in Singapore Post Producing the TVC. This will take about a week, departing Singapore on the 10th of January. A crazy schedule will follow a short stay in Melbourne though. I have just signed up for another massive road trip that will take a small crew round the globe! This will commence on February the 1st and end on the 1st of March!

Hong Kong City Skyline

Recently, I was in Hong Kong to Direct a television Commercial. While I was there, I took some time with my friends from Shooting Gallery Asia (Singapore), Freddy and Rachel Kee, and wondered around Hong Kong. On the 2nd of Feb, we explored Lantau Peak at the far end of Hong Kong Island. There, we took a Gondola to the top of the Mountain where a huge Buddha has been erected. While the scene is very commercial, and dense with tourists, it’s still interesting to go and see. The Gondola also allows you to see the huge Airport that has been built to service Hong Kong.

We wondered through countless streets lined with billboards and signage. It’s hard to believe that any of these signs are at all effective! Shopping is very cheap in Hong Kong. Even though the worldwide recession is ringing in our ears, there are plenty of shoppers combing the stores stalls for bargains! I had to visit the Computer Center known as the Golden Computer Arcade which had very cheap CF cards for cameras and very cheap portable drives. Clothing is also incredibly cheap. A found a jacket that costs $4000 Australian for sale for just $150!

We also visited an area known as “the Peak”. The famous Cable Car tram ride takes you to the top of the Peak, or you can drive up as we did. Here there is a spectacular vista of Hong Kong. It’s truly breathtaking how large Hong Kong is from here. While I wasn’t able to do so, I believe it’s the place to spend a Dusk/Night for an amazing photographic experience. Here are a few shots from our visit.

On the 3rd of February, I shot a new Commercial in Hong Kong. While I can’t say for what, the shoot involved filming Actor Daniel Wu, performing amazing physical acts with the aid of a Hong Kong wire stunt team. For me, having shot these types of physical effects before with my friends in Melbourne, it was very cool to now shoot in Hong Kong with the real deal!

The team from Shooting Gallery Asia traveled with me from Singapore with all their equipment (camera, lenses etc). The local Hong Kong team consisted of Elvis Cheong (line producer), Tony Lam (Production), Ah Tong (Gaffer), Little Four (Stunt Coordinator), and a bunch of others – I’m sorry I don’t have their full names. In total, the crew was quite large in the end. I think their were at least 5 stunt crew! In any case, the crew was fantastic to work with and very efficient considering that many had never worked together before.

Daniel Wu was fantastic to work with also. A consummate professional and a dam good bloke! We spoke at length about technology and camera equipment so there was plenty of common ground. He handled everything I asked for perfectly and enjoyed all the stunt action also! The wire team were great in assisting him where needed. Several of the shots required him to jump so high that he nearly touched the Studio ceiling!

Completed in under eight hours, the shoot was very smooth and lots of fun. The Shooting Gallery team and I spent a small amount of time looking around Hong Kong which was cool. It’s a huge town if you have to work in it. It’s busy, noisy and smelly at times but has a fantastic atmosphere. The shopping is outrageously good – some of the cheapest clothing and electronic goods I have seen anywhere! Off course you need to be careful with Quality Control but that’s to be expected. I will write a Blog entry on the tourist stuff later! Enjoy!

Like everyone I guess, I’m concerned about the recession that has rocked the financial world recently. With a young family to feed, being a filmmaker these days doesn’t seem to be the best business decision one could make, however miracles do happen and January 2009 has proven to be an exceptional anomaly!
After a fantastic break up at Daylesford in country Victoria, I rushed back to work on the 4th of January. For the next two weeks, Artisan Films produced a special project for the Australian Navy. On Friday the 16th of Jan, I witnessed the master for that project go to HDCam. By Saturday afternoon, I was on a flight to Singapore. The 8 hour trip meant I arrived after midnight Singapore time. 6AM Sunday the 18th, I was up and ready to travel to Hong Kong for a quick business meeting. The meeting took place in a hotel in downtown Hong Kong and lasted for about an hour! Then it was time to board a return trip back to Singapore. That flight took 4 hours! I’m now writing this back in my Singaporean friends house, knowing I need to be up at 6am this morning to have yet another business meeting here in Singapore. Later today, I will board a flight back to Melbourne, where I will see the family for a few hours before boarding yet another flight to Christchurch New Zealand! Yep it has to be the most crazy schedule I have ever witnessed! I will update this blog along the way, however for now, I need some sleep!