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 Machete Maidens concluded in Singapore, I stayed on while the rest of the crew headed back to Melbourne. While I can’t divulge what exactly I was working on, other then that it was for Canon, there wasn’t any spare time between the two jobs. The next morning was spent re-familiarising myself with the footage and approving work created by VHQ in Singapore. The process of working on television commercials is just so different to long form projects, it’s always a bit of a culture shock to me when I swap between the two styles of filmmaking! A week of intense Post Production activities past and at the end of it, I think we produced a pretty amazing commercial. I will certainly blog about the experience when the time is right.

In true fashion, the TVC was completed on a Sunday night, after the last official day of the Chinese New Year Celebrations ended! Actually, I went down to Chinatown to witness the fireworks display and street theatre that took place in Singapore. Quite a cool experience. However, on Monday the 1st of March, I flew to Jakarta to start my next job. As it turned out, again there was no break between the projects! After landing I went straight into preproduction meetings at the office before finally crashing in my hotel room!

I’m now deeply intrenched into the preproduction stage of that job, with filming to start on the 8th of March and conclude on the 9th!

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!

On January 22nd, we began the production of the Canon “Grass Ski” Television Commercial, at the foothills of Mt Hutt, New Zealand. While I did blogabout the trip I couldn’t go into any details at the time. Shooting Gallery Asia had flown us all to New Zealand the day before. A quick location survey, a meeting with the property owner, farmer Ben and we were off! Situated at the foothills of Mt Hutt, the landscape surrounding us was unbelievable beautiful. The last traces of snow/ice were still present in the shadowy areas of the mountains. In the foreground, we had selected a green paddock to serve as the site for our “Grass Tobogganing” location. Local Kiwi Cinematographer and part time line producer, Rolland Carati organised the location in conjunction with Freddie Kee. The farmer had also made available an ATV (4×4 bike) and a farmhand named Collin. Collin was absolutely fantastic assistance and pretty much acted as the Grip on the shoot. I think he really enjoyed himself during the course of the shoot, driving the ATV and a 4×4 Ute for us.

Traveling from Singapore was Freddie Kee, Leollyne Teng, Sham – Stills, Raman – props, Eiren the focus puller and the Client/Agency team. I had been in Singapore the day before also for the final preproduction but had flown home to Melbourne for the day before landing in Christchurch, New Zealand. It was a lot of flying! The Cast were all from New Zealand and consisted of Japanese Immigrants to New Zealand. They were great I have to say. The beginning of the shoot day was not good for weather. The sky was completely blanketed in high level cloud. It looked dire and while I tried to remain optimistic about our chances, it didn’t look good. The Cast entertained themselves and we waited! During this time, we tested the Toboggan’s and the ATV Camera rig. Suddenly by midday, the Sun revealed itself.

Shooting began in ernest. Using Shooting Galleries Arri III, we shot all the components needed for post involving the Toboggan race in profile first. This meant that the poor crew, Raman and Freddie had to run up and down the mountainside many times assisting the Toboggan’s with towropes! After several takes, Rolland and Collin took over as Freddie and Raman collapsed in exhaustion. Where possible, we changed to the ATV, using it to pull the toboggan’s down the hill in a controlled manner. The rig that Raman had built on the back was fantastic and allowed me to achieve a very low angle shot from the front of the Tobogganer’s.

After a big day that ended with us all roasting in 32 degrees C in the Sun, we filmed the final shots. These were originally scheduled as Morning silhouette shots but through fate became stunning end of day shots looking out over the valley. The scene really looks magical.   Overnighting in Methven, a ski tourist town about 20 minutes away from the farm, the crew, shattered and exhausted from running up and down the hills all day, enjoyed a quite dinner. The next day the Singaporean crew flew back home for Chinese New Year. I chose to stay on for a couple more days.   A few days later, I flew from Melbourne Australia back to Singapore, where we began the offline. VHQ handled the post in Singapore and my Offline editor, Caryne put together a lovely edit that was fun to watch. Abishek Nair was VHQ’s post supervisor and handled the 3D and Online process beautifully. It’s to his credit for staying on top of all our demands and keeping the show on track because the TVC looks great! The Online editor Ian managed to remove wires and rigs, multiple cows, subtract Cows, while putting in clouds in the background etc. The Audio work was conducted at AMX Singapore and Engineer Mun Wai placed sound effects and music to help amplify the “Fun” aspect of the TVC.   After a final presentation to the Agency and Client, it was time to say goodbye. They love it. The TVC is naive and fun. Hope you enjoy it also. Cheers

The day started by building a rig around one of the farms ATV’s. Raman from the Shooting Gallery built a fantastic rig for me that worked a treat! In the meantime, the entire team worked hard to clear weeds and haul gear up and down the slopes. For now, here are a few shots from the shoot itself. More to come later.

Ginny and Joe wanted to put new life into the basic “hands” concept by being more dynamic while still retaining the magic. I too wanted a new challenge and this version certainly provided me with lots to think about. Firstly, I studied every Commercial I could find that had already explored the “Cloth Changing” effect in the past. There were some blog articles that scared my when they outlined that they had “weeks of preproduction”, with people studying various physical methods of changing the clothing etc. I simply didn’t have such a time frame to work with. At best I had a couple of days in Singapore to prep the production. I quickly shot a test using a mini dv camera in the location we had found. Handheld, I got my DP to walk backwards with the camera while my production assistant Jocelyn acted out the clothing change. We repeated the same camera move three times and with each occasion Jocelyn had a different clothing combination on. Handing the test footage over to Damien at Blackmagic Design Singapore, he set about trying to composite the test for me.

I flew back to Melbourne and spent some time with my family for a week before returning to Singapore. Damien had worked his magic and to my pleasant surprise the technique worked! The test proved that a shaky handheld camera could indeed be used like a motion control unit and with very careful choreography, we could have our actress walking towards camera while changing clothing.

Next, I wanted to have our actress change clothing so that it was more obvious that she wasn’t simply wearing it under thicker and bigger outfits. So I spent some time shopping with my designer Ashley in various shopping malls around Singapore. The brief was street wear so we hung out in all sorts of strange punk, skate and street themed shops. Once we had chosen a range of outfits, mixed and matched them, it was time to sequence them so that they matched “her thoughts”. My criteria of having clothing changes that were obvious was also applied. Once they were approved by the Client, I presented them to Blackmagic for a technical review.

HP had sent over the new mini 1000 to us, so that we could model it in 3D. Blackmagic produced an amazing 3D rendition of it and the 3D team commenced modeling and construction of the other 3D props.

Leollyne Teng (the Shooting Gallery Asia) and I scouted for many locations that had a more international feel to them. The Agency wanted us to make the TVC for the Asia Pacific Region, so we had to make sure that it didn’t look like Singapore. There were not many locations that had the street feel I was after. Graffiti, tipped over rubbish bins and back alley kids are not that easy to find in Singapore so we set about transforming a lane way near Arab St into a culturally rich cesspool of pop culture! It’s kind of a blend of street party meets “hang out” zone for skateboarders, Bikers and Buskers. My colour tone references were influenced by Cuban images of old cars and buildings. Again, Singapore doesn’t allow older vehicles to be on the road without considerable cost to the owner, so we struggled to find many vintage vehicles. A yellow mini with the Union Jack on it was found which was great. A blue BMW was also found. To inject warm colours into the scene, we placed a hot dog stand with an umbrella into the lane way. Other props included benches that the skateboarders could use as a rail, dented and spray painted rubbish bins and Graffiti on the pillars and walls.

Casting was also a major issue. We needed quite a few people (nearly thirty in the end) to populate the lane way alone. They had to be a mix of Anglo saxon, African, and Asian cast. Shooting Gallery conducted a huge hunt across Singapore to  “Street Cast” the whole show. They eventually hired some really talented hip hop dancers, a bunch of BMX bikers, Skateboarders and others.

Next – The shoot! This time around, I felt there was enough to think about so I decided to enlist the help of a very talented DOP. The Shooting Gallery has on staff, a really great DP named Sham. He shot my Asus TVC also. He’s a veteran of many commercials shot on 35mm. However this time I was keen to employ the RED camera system. Because we were going to zoom up our image to a very large extent at times, I was aware of the risk of seeing artifacts such as Grain, Blocking etc so I was keen to film using RED’s 4K capabilities. Every image that we would film would involve compositing. With Asia having a predominantly smoggy or overcast sky, RED is actually a very good choice for TVC’s and since so much post work would be involved, RED seemed to me to be the right choice. Additionally, we had an extremely tight post schedule also. Everyday counted, so to save a day on Processing and Telecine was huge! Blackmagic embraced the RED concept also. It was their first foray using images shot with the RED One camera. They elected to send an onset editor, Tammy Quay to cut as we shot to save time during our offline. This was truly a massive benefit I have to say. Another benefit using the RED system was the fact that each clothing change involved three different shots. A shot with the first Clothing then a shot with the first clothing over the top of the new clothing. Then the last shot with the new clothing only! So that meant a massive saving in film stock costs plus no fear of running out halfway through the shoot! I just had to convince Sham. Luckily for me, he embraced it also.

To assist post, I really wanted to shoot the whole TVC using a steadycam. By choosing RED, the savings allowed Shooting Gallery to fly in from Indonesia a very talented Steadicam operator. He had flown the RED a few times before so I knew his rig could handle it. As it turned out, he was an excellent operator, with really good sense of timing and precision. Damien, my lead compositor from Blackmagic was I think very thankful. His team would have to take every shot and rotoscope the lead actress out of the scene to enable him to blend the clothing changes. The steadicam eliminated minor tremors and shaky camera movement from each shot. In fact, Blackmagic sent the 3D team to take pictures for texturing and environment maps, Damien the compositor, Tammy the Editor and a partridge and a pear tree! It was wonderful to see so many of them out on set.

Our lead actress, Fabi was cast in Singapore. She is Brazilian and I think initially she was dreadfully scared of the task before her. So it was my job to make her feel comfortable and support her through all the technically difficult shots. In the end I think she enjoyed herself and the crew treated her very well. There were so many difficult moments to explain to her. One scene involved her to walk through a wall into a cafe while quickly changing her clothing. She was then to pick up a milkshake, take a sip while still walking! Then she was to jettison the Milkshake as we transits to the next scene! And everything was synched to a click track to maintain her rhythm. And as before, she had to perform this three times with three different clothing combinations! This sort of thing was common to every scene. Very, very complex.

Post production was a massive undertaking also. We had only two weeks to deliver the finished TVC. That’s not a great deal of time when you consider the amount of rotoscoping, 3D modeling, 3D tracking and compositing of other 3D props. The offline was viewed by the Client on set. The final scene shot at the university allowed Tammy to edit, using Finalcut pro on a laptop, and present the first cut to myself and the Agency/Client team. So the next day after shooting, we were able to present the Offline for final review before the online commenced. Using simple dissolves, the offline effectively conveyed our intentions and we were allowed to continue to the next stage.

A local Singaporean Audio house, the Gunnery, was approached to compose the music. The music was extremely important to me, to sound cool and funky and drive the pace of the commercial. The track the Gunnery composed literally blew me away. They delivered a track that was totally on brief and so much cooler then I had hoped for. Using the same beat that we had set for Fabi to walk to, the Gunnery were able to musically synchronise to the visuals.

I could definitely write a bigger article on the experience of directing this commercial. It was amazing that we were able to put such a complex thing together so quickly and I think to a very high standard. There were so many variables that could have gone wrong and thankfully didn’t! New camera systems, new crew members, highly ambitious post production techniques, large outdoor shoot in blisteringly hot Singaporean weather, etc etc. All in all, I am thankful to the entire crew, the extended crew and the post production team that helped put this commercial together. Thank you. You can now see the TVC Online, here on this blog. Just navigate to the Reel Page above

I took the opportunity to do some location scouting with Leollyne and Jocelyn from Shooting Gallery. We have found some pretty cool places to shoot. Along the way, as I usually do, I found some interesting places to shoot some photos – simply for personal interest sake. Enjoy!