As promised here is Part Two on the making of Carex. Part One can be reached here. This article will deal with the post production stage.

After completing the shoot in Jakarta and some basic Post Production at RedCine Jakarta, I flew to Bangkok, to go work with Mike Parsons at Chateau Post. Owned by Tony Morias, Chateau Post is a small boutique facility that offers Flame, Nuke and Shake services as well as some 3D. I had met Mike quite a few years beforehand in Melbourne and later in Singapore, where he worked at Blackmagic design. He’s a legend when it comes to Post Production, having been involved in the industry at a very early age. He’s a veteran of Flame, Flint and inferno as well as many of the now retired technologies like Henry, Shotlister and Chyron (to mention a few).

Carex offered a few interesting Post Production challenges and Mike was definitely perfectly suited to solve those problems. A boutique facility like Chateau Post is often best suited for these kinds of jobs, because they can afford more personalised time to the preproduction stage as well as assisting with the Production stage. In this instance, like other work I have Directed for HP, we produced a timing guide in the form of an animatic. This animatic had to be perfect in terms of screen time for the various 3D objects, that would be added in Post Production. Mike and I worked over the internet sending Shake Scripts at first to each other and then finally mpegs of the guide animation. This was then used during Production, to send to a large LCD that hung over the Camera. The Actress was then able to follow along with her image half mixed with the Animatic via a vision mixer. As she followed the animation along, not only were her hands in the right place, but she was kept to time, guaranteeing that the TVC wouldn’t exceed 30 seconds.

For the first week of our Online, the guys in the back rooms tracked all the footage, rotoscoped her hands and generally cleaned up stuff! I briefed Eric, a French 3D animator living in Bangkok, who then proceeded to model and animate many of the objects. During preproduction, I had taken orthographic views of Jakarta based Buses, to provide not only a guide for the creation of a 3D model version of the bus but also the textures. Eric produced a fantastic 3D bus for us using those images. The product was also turned into a 3D object. For that, Pong, the in-house After Effects and 3D Studio Max guru produced all the packs in 3D. He also designed and constructed a Manuka Flower which was animated into the end shot with the packs. Pong is a specialist when it comes to “fixing hair problems” on the many Thai Hair commercials. His work on removing stray strands is absolutely amazing. However his “pack” work was also impeccable.

Mike Parsons at this stage was compositing elements in Flame. Using an array of tricks, he helped produce the smooth transition from one effect to the next, by cleverly merging 3D and 2D layers. While we spent a fair amount of effort grading the images at CineRed, more work was necessary to produce the final colour grade. The RED camera (build 21 at the time of writing, using a Generation 1 sensor) is still pretty noisy in the RED channel. We did use an IR Cut filter to help keep the skin tone from clipping early, but I found that digital noise persisted. Mike ended up “washing” the skin of our actress almost entirely. This laborious task took time but was necessary to produce both a pleasing skin tone colour and repair the noise damage.

Music is always an important part of the post process. Imaginex Studios Jakarta had been involved at an earlier stage but due to our composers ill health, Imaginex Studios KL office took over. Mike Bloomfield (expat from Australia) took on the Composers roll and we had several Skype calls to go over what was required. Mike is awesome. He worked up a track that hit the mark and we only made small adjustments to the instrumentation. Luckily for me, McCan’s Art Director, Paul Grezoux is an ex drummer from a sydney based band. So he was able to contribute on the music post in a very positive way.

In the final week, the Agency/Client team arrived in Bangkok and we showed progressive updates to the work. Bangkok is an amazing city to work in and we made full use of it along the way. The team went out on several occasions to have dinner at the many incredible restaurants in own. During our days off, I spent some time photographing some of the many Buddhist Temples that exist in the middle of Bangkok. If your interested, you can see an earlier blog entry I wrote on this subject here. Off course we all went shopping to various shopping markets. I spent some time as I normally do at Pantib Plaza and Bahn Moh.

After several hard working weeks, the Carex TVC was complete. We presented to a happy Client and departed Thailand for our respective home countries. For me it’s always gratifying when a job ends as smoothly as it starts. This job was no exception.

The Commercial can be viewed Here.

On the 22nd of January, I flew to Jakarta via Denpasar Bali! My Garuda flight from Melbourne terminated there and from there in, I had to clear customs and collect my luggage. Next a one and a half hour wait ensued, before my domestic flight to Jakarta. Slightly bored by this stage I jumped onto Twitter & asked the Community what I should do! A quick Bintang beer later and five minutes later, some one tweeted that I should take a cab ride to Kuta Beach! So I did!

Finally I arrived in Jakarta & caught up with Producer David Hewitt from Kemistry. It’s always a pleasure catching up with both David & his wife, Producer Rini Susanti. After a few drinks and an awesome Indonesian meal at a restaurant in Kemang called Payon, I finally hit the sack!

Next day was a huge day spent at the Office at Kemistry, performing hair and make-up tests on our Cast. They are all “real” people who have won a competition through our Client, a beauty product manufacturer! My make-up artist is a Malaysian named Fendi, and he’s really good! He was able to design several looks for each winner. I shot over 22Gig of photos which is not normal for me. However the girls looked amazing, transformed into models, and I took advantage of the moment to breakdown their apprehension towards the camera! By doing this we got to know each other, and I think that when I come back in March to shoot the commercial, we will be in a great shape.

Sunday was spent with good friend & Driver at Kemistry, Fais. He drove me out to the “Old Dutch Port” in Jakarta again. I wanted to shoot video this time, and the weather was sunny! I can’t express strongly enough how incredible this place is for any photographer. We then drove to Mangga Dua, an electronics mega centre in Jakarta’s CBD.

After some shopping, I asked Fais to drive me to see the Railway Station. It’s old and rundown which I’ve already photographed once before. This time I was more interested in the rear, closed off section. We finally found a way in, and I think both of us were amazed at the size of the community that lived along the tracks! We played with kids on a home made trolley that ran on bearings along the tracks! A marvel of invention, it was so smooth that I used it as a Camera Dolly for a shot along the tracks!

Note the bent over nails holding the bearings onto the timber axle!

I’m going to post a video of the days adventures when I get the opportunity to edit the footage. To see images I shot of the Old Dutch Port in Jakarta from my last trip, here is the link.

Today is my last full day in Jakarta and for the most part it will be filled with meetings & presentations for both Agency and Client. I’m sitting here in the Kemistry Office drawing storyboards with an Artist, finalising everything with our team, so they can work on their own for the next few weeks.

For now though, this will be it, until I return in March. More preparations will take pace between then and now but I will be jumping to another project for 22 days straight in the mean time. More to come on that soon!

Here is a photo Gallery of yesterdays pics! Enjoy

]]> http://www.karlvonmoller.com/blog/2010/01/26/a-quick-trip-to-jakarta-indonesia/feed/ 0 http://www.karlvonmoller.com/blog/2010/01/15/carex-tvc-shoot-jakarta-indonesia/#utm_source=feed&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=feed http://www.karlvonmoller.com/blog/2010/01/15/carex-tvc-shoot-jakarta-indonesia/#comments Fri, 15 Jan 2010 01:09:05 +0000 Karl von Moller http://www.karlvonmoller.com/blog/?p=2657

I don’t often write about a job in as much detail as I have here. That’s because mostly I film in places that are familiar to me and perhaps the small details don’t really mean much. However this time around, I wanted to describe an experience in more detail, to record a more complete picture of my working life. Not that it’s that exciting but I wanted share what lengths we go to – to make a Television Commercial. This is part one of a two part series.

I arrived in Jakarta, after a flight from Melbourne, through Singapore, late on the 20th of October 2009. In the days proceeding, David Hewitt from Kemistry in Jakarta Indonesia had contacted me to see if I would be interested in Directing a TVC for Cussons Carex – A soap product. The Script had some similarities to some of my HP work and I felt that as long as I could make it different, the hands technique could work very well for the Cussons product also.

Directly after landing, I was whisked through immigration by an official who greeted me at the gate. I was sped through and released to a driver from Kemistry, who drove me through some pretty thick late night traffic in Jakarta for about an hour. On reaching the hotel, I had 30 minutes to get ready for an informal meet and greet plus a mini preproduction meeting in the lobby. There I met expat from Australia, David Hewitt, for the first time. After a quick meeting with some of the production staff, I finally got to sleep at about 11.30pm Jakarta time!

The next day, we hit the ground running by firstly checking out equipment at the local Camera Rental Facility CineRed. There I met another expat from Australia, creative consultant Peter Aquilina, who took us through a guided tour of his facility, which included the Camera Rental department, Post Production Facilities including Offline, Online and Grading using Scratch. After a very nice Javanese style lunch, we rushed to Kemistry’s office in Jakarta and began the process of Casting callbacks. I watched 9 girls present themselves which was in the end quite draining but necessary experience.

Day 2 started with me getting up very early to try and complete a massive pre production document for the PPM (Pre-Production Meeting) that afternoon. I spent quite a few days searching the net, scouring books and collaborating with Post Production Compositor Mike Parsons, from Chateau Post in Bangkok Thailand. By the afternoon, I had reviewed the Cast and made my recommendations, and produced a massive 50 slide Keynote presentation for the Client/Agency meeting at 5pm that day. That meeting went very well and that evening David and I went to have a drink at a local club in Kemang. There I met a group from various Agencies celebrating. I found it remarkable how many expats from Australia had settled in Jakarta and raved about how it is Asia’s best kept secret. To some degree, I think they were right!

Day3 was again full of preproduction madness. One unusual thing that happened was that I was requested by immigration to go down to their office and be fingerprinted, photographed etc I’m working in Indonesia with a proper work Visa so I have already gone through much of this in Melbourne at the Indonesian Embassy. Anyway, I turned up at the immigration office with David and waited inline with thousands of others in what looked like a scene from a movie. Ceiling fans churned the air slowly in the depressingly hot, public space of the immigration hall. A guy popped out of the crowd carrying my passport and warmly greeted me. I had never met him but I guess he had all my details including pictures of me! Taken into a back room, I waited with 10 or so others before being called by an immigration officer and summerly fingerprinted! If it wasn’t for some good company, I would definitely have found this process highly intimidating.

Next few days were spent working out our onset anamatic. For that I was in constant contact with Mike Parsons in Bangkok. He and I exchanged files over the internet, which for me was quite hard. Bandwidth in Jakarta gets very heavily bogged down during the day. With 240 million people, there is a lot of sharing of spaces, including of bandwidth to the internet. The roads are another major hazard. It’s relatively safe, but during the day the traffic builds up so thick that it flows like water around any obstacle or grinds to a halt. This includes sharing the footpath with millions of motorbike users and even cars, who skirt snarls in the traffic by driving on the footpath. Here’s a little clip shot on my 5DMKII.

Another comment about the footpaths in Indonesia – they are the worst I have seen anywhere. As an avid photographer, I like walking around taking photos. However in Jakarta, you need to be extremely careful that you don’t trip over rubbish on the ground, disappear into god knows what via massive holes in the ground or be impacted by a speeding motorbike.

After presenting our final preproduction items to the Client and Agency, everything was set in place for the production to take place. We shot at a small studio based in Mampang Jakarta. The crew were excellent and very efficiently setup the RED camera, Lighting and a huge video village. I often use vision mixers etc to incorporate 3D work by playing back guide animations from a DVD player. This time it was no exception. So we had a crew of guys handling the playback vision mixing requirements, proving a live image to an LCD screen hanging above the Camera. This was to allow our Cast, Amanda, to see herself relative to the guide animation. There were also the guys that handled the downloading of all the RED files and backing them up to multiple hard drives.

The shooting of this Commercial was made much easier by our Cast selection. I had chosen what I believed to be a very talented and pretty girl named Amanda. She appeared to take direction really well and understood the importance of the small details. However, even I was blown away by just how amazing this girl was. All day we practiced and improved her performance and gradually we began to film a few takes. By take 19, we were done. Her memory skills and subtleties of performance was astounding. The agency were also very impressed. The crew from McCan Jakarta were also really great to work with. I think they realised how technical the Commercial was to film and let me be for the most part. Constructively, they added value to the Clients concerns and supported me during presentation to Client. The day ended with the filming of references of the Products, some High Dynamic Range photography (HDRI) and some other textures. A very successful day.

Next day, straight into Offline. Eric (Offline editor) from CineRed had sent me the cut overnight! It was nearly perfect. Because we had shot on RED, the edit was simple to prepare. I did go through all my options but settled on what was obviously a great take. Based on this we cutdown a 15 sec and 5 sec version also. Client and Agency presentation followed in the afternoon and all were pretty happy. The following day was an early start again at Imaginex Studios Jakarta. I briefed the Composer for the design of the soundtrack then headed back to CineRed to conduct a final Grade of the RED images using Scratch. With our mission complete in Jakarta, it was time to pack the bags once more and fly to Bangkok Thailand, where the Online was to take place. This will feature in a separate article, soon to come. My final word for now is that although Jakarta is like a rough diamond, it’s a powerhouse of creative energy, fun people and an awesome place to film. I truly enjoyed my time there and hope to return soon.

The Finished Carex Commercial can be viewed here:

Over the years that I have been working throughout Asia, for some reason there are places I seem to skirt or overfly, not because I don’t want to go there, just simply because the opportunities had never eventuated. Recently, I had an occasion to work in Indonesia. Amazingly, Indonesia was one of those places that somehow stayed off my radar. So I was pretty keen to go visit.

I arrived in Jakarta, after a flight from Melbourne, through Singapore, late on the 20th of October 2009. The job (which is incomplete at this stage so I won’t mention it just yet) started straight away with preproduction meetings in the foyer of the hotel the same evening.

The next day, we hit the ground running by firstly checking out equipment at the local Camera Rental Facility CineRed. There I met an expat from Australia, creative consultant Peter Aquilina, who took us through a guided tour of his facility, which included the Camera Rental department, Post Production Facilities including Offline, Online and Grading using Scratch. Several days of Casting, Props and Wardrobe tests etc followed and my days were spent mostly on my laptop ensuring that all our post requirements were met. After about a week of hard work, we were ready to shoot in a small studio in Jakarta. I will write a full article later when the job has been cleared, about the process, which I think will be interesting to people. Overall, the Indonesian crews were excellent and the result of our efforts look awesome.

It wasn’t all hard work though. The local production Company, Kemistry, run by expat Aussie David Hewitt and his partner Rinni, sent me on a journey through West Java, with the help of their driver. I took my 5DMKII Canon stills camera and went berserk shooting the amazing landscape and people. Here are some of the images from that trip. The slide show below has many more.

I also visited some of the historical places within Jakarta itself. A former Dutch Colony, Jakarta still has many building around the old Port area, which mark their rule many years ago. They lie mostly as wrecked shells of their former glory but still possess some amazing beauty. The old dutch port area is still in use today. I travelled down to the Port and was amazed at the large, tall ships being loaded with cargo, as if from a scene from a Robert Louis Stevenson book! They were real tall ships, built with Masts, and planks of timber!! You have to see and feel this place to believe the image below. Simply amazing!

I can’t speak more highly about my experience in Indonesia. It baffles me why I haven’t been there before, even as a tourist. I think Australians in general have been conditioned to think “not favourably” about Indonesia as a holiday destination. That’s a huge shame but at the same time, Indonesia is one of Asia’s best kept secrets as a result. It’s still cheap, unspoilt from foreign development and hugely diverse. On the negative side, it’s infrastructure is quite poor in some cases. Many sidewalks for instance have huge holes in them, and you generally share the pavement with other Cars and Motorbikes. Speaking of Cars and Bikes, the crush of traffic in Jakarta was quite possibly the worst I have ever seen! So if you are disadvantaged physically or need to push a Pram, then maybe think differently when moving around Indonesia. The internet was dreadfully slow everywhere I went, with the best speeds approaching dialup rates. So yes there are a few things to consider, however generally I have to say, Indonesians are amazingly friendly, willing to welcome you where ever you go and help you at a drop of a hat. The visual spectacle of Indonesia is also unbelievable exciting. I visited so many interesting places in a short time, including the Pulaubuhan Ratu area of West Java, where I walked on amazing volcanic beaches, Hot Springs with Geysers, Markets in small towns and villages plus drove through countryside that was nothing short of spectacular – Rubber, Cocoanut Oil and Tea plantations lined the steep mountain roads for miles.

In summing up, I loved my experience in Indonesia. I hope I have inspired you to go and experience it for yourself. Enjoy!