Part of being a good filmmaker, I believe, is to constantly try new things. For me that includes equipment, new technology, different Crew members, new Clients & new Ideas etc. Recently I had the pleasure of working on a new Campaign that forced me to think about my own “filmmaking process” in a different way. That project was a Television Commercial (TVC) for Ponds, a beauty product.

For me this particular project was different because it was a beauty Ad! It was different because the process of making this TVC was different to other work I have been involved with. I suppose on a filmmaking level, the nuts and bolts is the same, just the interaction with the Agency & Client was quite different. As you may be aware, many of my Commercials involve the heavy integration of 3D. This Commercial was no different. The balance here was to create a “Beauty Spot” which involved a “high concept idea” of pages from a magazine flipping helping us to tell a story, but remained soft, feminine and playful.

It all started back in January, when Kemistry Films in Jakarta Indonesia contacted me to have a look at a concept for a TVC involving pages flipping. I had previously created a TVC for Canon that involved a “Flip book” style and I guess once you have done one, you get calls for more (hopefully?). Any case there was enough of a difference for me to be interested in the project. The opportunity to extend my repertoire to include beauty products was enough of a lure.

On the 1st of March, I flew to Jakarta from Singapore, having just completed a Canon Commercial for China. In fact, we were still finalising the Online that Sunday for Canon and by Monday afternoon I was attending preproduction meetings for Ponds in Jakarta! The TVC was written by Ad Agency Ogilvy & Mather in Jakarta by creatives Dinah Sumantri and Dewi Putri. Both are young, very considered, super thoughtful and I’m not just saying that because I was working for them! They were incredibly cool to work with. Both had produced many beauty spots in the past for Ponds but had not had a huge amount of 3D integration experience. Nor had the Client. So finally, after months of preproduction work, I finally met with everyone in Jakarta to discuss how we were going to make this TVC. Creative Director Dewantarie Hadikoesoemo helped walk the Client through the process and if there is one thing I could stress the most is the importance of “Managing peoples expectations”. It’s absolutely critical on these types of of jobs. It’s also fantastic when the Agency is so supportive in this regard and Ogilvy & Mather rose to the occasion.

This Ponds TVC is built around a competition involving three winners. I spent several days putting most of the winners through, not only make-up and wardrobe tests, but also a photo shoot. I used this opportunity to break them into the weird world of advertising. I always like to rehearse whenever I can to eliminate much of the initial folly that can take place. That way we can concentrate on making the best possible TVC with the most fluid, tightly integrated 3D and post production effects etc. Importantly though, it gives me the confidence to mould their performances in the best way I can.

On the 7th of March, Goh spent the day pre-lighting the sets for the shoot. He is a true gentleman to work with. A quiet achiever with a real flare for lighting which I really appreciated. Actually my entire crew was fantastic. Rini had recommended a brilliant Production Designer from Malaysia called Malek Prada. He came up with some pretty awesome designs and Set pieces which was great. Fendi, the make-up artist, was another very creative individual who sculpted our girls “looks” and really brought out their best. Wardrobe stylist Imelda Untoro was yet another vital ingredient to the overall success of the “look” of the TVC and her gracious and understanding manner made her a pleasure to interact with. Others I had worked with before included 1st AD Eugenea Agnes, who was not only an absolute pleasure to work with but conscientious and diligent while always being fun spirited. What more could anyone ask for! Rini had assembled quite an amazing international crew as well as provided a very solid and capable local Indonesian crew, which as awesome!

On that day we tested for as many scenarios as we could before finalising for the shoot. I place a lot of value in rehearsing Actors before any shoot. Keep in mind all our Girls were “civilians” not actors! None of them had any experience at all on screen. They all had a speaking roll to play as well as look glamorous on screen and to their credit, performed magnificently.

On the 8th of March we started filming. The two day shoot was actually quite involved, requiring everyone to imagine a 3D world around them. Quite a number of elements were required to be filmed including a huge list of high resolution images to be used as textures for 3D. Having Damien there on set was absolutely fantastic. He’s a very creative person and it’s great bouncing ideas off him while actually still on set – a process that I really enjoy. Finally with the 2 day shoot behind us, it was time for Post. The guys from BMD flew back to Singapore while I continued on at VHQ Jakarta to oversee the Telecine with Goh Meng. Rushes looked great and I finally met my Offline editor, Zaki Marican. He is a freelance editor who edits on his Macbook Pro and an external monitor. It’s an ever growing trend for editors to be completely independent from Post Houses. Zaki was great. On the 11th of March, he cut the TVC in a small amount of time using the rough 3D animations created on set by Chachoon and Damien Yang. The TVC was actually quite polished even at this stage. Later that afternoon, Rini and her assistant Producer Elle brought in a Composer to receive a brief from me. We talked about musical styles and I handed him a few references. At the end of the day, I felt like a lot had been achieved and good work had taken place!

The 12th of March, we presented first to the Agency and then later to Client. They loved it! On the 13th, I finally flew back to Singapore to handover the Rushes, Edit Decision List etc to Damian at BMD. With that, I left Singapore for home – something I hadn’t done for almost 3 months due to all these back to back projects! The next two weeks, Damien and the gang at BMD spent enormous amounts of time creating and rendering amazing 3D content. They were sending me mpegs to approve along the way. Derri NG (BMD Producer) and I sent each other quite a few emails back and forth, fine tuning things.

On the 30th of March, it was time to fly back to Singapore for the last leg. Over the next week, we rendered out each of the scenes. The Client and Agency arrived in Singapore on the 4th of April and we presented for them a work in progress. The purpose of these final Client/Agency meetings is to make sure that we are all on the same page and are moving forward in the right direction. It affords some minor changes at this point, if the Client wants something corrected by giving the 3D team some time to effect the change. The last couple of days are fixed in stone though. It’s merely a process from then on to finish the TVC. That’s exactly what we did. Hours before I was due to fly back to Australia, I was still overseeing the last renders in the timeline. Lead animator at BMD, Vincent Yoe, spent a few days glued to his seat, continuously! He is one of the most gifted animators I know with a style that I really enjoy. Off course there are others working with him who are equally talented and I thank them all for their help on this project. Damien weaved an incredible amount of compositing magic, blending the 3D with the live action shots and once again proved that he is an exceptionally talented compositor! The Girls all look fantastic and the 3D is very fluid and beautiful to watch in my opinion. Damien is incredible person and a very trusted and dear friend of mine. I always enjoy catching up.

Just as a side note, many of the images you see on this blog entry were shot for the Commercial also. They were used as part of the content of the flipping magazine, although much of that was reduced by me in the final version. I took hundreds of shots of all our cast & crew, including the Agency to be able to fill a magazine full of images etc. This in itself was a big task. As usual, this type of job is a huge collaborative effort. From the resourceful crew at Kemistry Films, to the clever gang at Ogilvy & Mather to the persistent & talented tribe at Blackmagic-Design, I think we created a nice spot for Ponds. The three winning Girls all look great and have a light and feminine touch to their personalities. I would like to thank the patient crew of the shoot for helping me to create this TVC. Hope you enjoy it also. Cheers!

]]> http://www.karlvonmoller.com/blog/2010/05/06/ponds/feed/ 1 http://www.karlvonmoller.com/blog/2010/03/29/the-world-in-motion/#utm_source=feed&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=feed http://www.karlvonmoller.com/blog/2010/03/29/the-world-in-motion/#comments Sun, 28 Mar 2010 14:16:52 +0000 Karl von Moller http://www.karlvonmoller.com/blog/?p=2981

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.

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 the 15th of February, the Machete Maiden’s Team flew from London’s Heathrow Airport to Manila via Singapore. The massively long and boring flight was also apparently our day off according to the schedule! That’s a whole other issue, our days off have been far too few considering the time zone changes etc but I wont linger on this. Otherwise, the production has been going very well.

Back in London, after our whirlwind tour of Paris, the Team moved from our hotel in Acton North, to Ealing Studios. Talk about amazing. The historically important film studios of Ealing are legendary. Unfortunately, the place is falling apart by the seems and rotting to pieces! We were based at the back of the Studios in a former ADR studio. This had been guttered and while usable for what we were doing, the studio was in bad repair. On the walls were photographs of past productions which certainly reminded us of the importance of this place in film history! Rushing to setup, we interviewed three filmmakers before rushing to pack our gear up for a massive travel!

At the last minute, an interview with John Landis was made possible! Unfortunately for us, he was shooting his new movie in Kent that day, so we drove for an hour and a half through traffic. John is shooting a period film at a historic manner which was dressed with hundreds of extras, horses and a courtyard filled with period furnishings that just looked amazing! We were rushed past the enormous unit base, through the grounds of the historic building to an upstairs room the size of shoe box! In fact, considering where we were filming, our interview took place in a bland and boring environment which was a shame! The interview it self was amazing! John is a very knowledgeable and incredibly articulate man.

Arriving back at our hotel very late, we just made it to dinner at the pub across the road (The Castle) before returning to our rooms to pack up! At around midnight, I finished packing down all my gear ready for the flight to Manila. The flight required us to leave the hotel at 6AM which was hard. Finally we took off from 0ºC that morning in London to +30ºC in Manila! Only 2 days ago we had been in -3ºC in Paris so not only are we dealing with the time zone differences but the massive shift in climatic conditions. Arriving at the hotel in Manila at around 5PM local time, we checked in and had only a 20 minute walk around before collapsing at a Chinese restaurant for a feed. Then back to our rooms where I barely remember hitting the pillow!

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

Today, I took a break from the hectic pace of shopping centers and busy city life and headed for the tiny island of Pulau Ubin. Just within Singapore’s grasp, the Island is easy to get to via a ferry from Changi Village. One note, the ferry captains or “Bumboat” Captains are crazy! I took some amazing video of them cutting each other off, overtaking and jostling for position at the Jetty! My Bumboat Captain stopped the motor half way to collect the fair which, if you remember the song – I paid the ferryman $2.50 Singaporean and he delivered me safely to the other side!

Once on the island, you kind-of walk back into time! The last remaining old Singapore style buildings can be found clustered in the small township. They are known as “Kampongs”. Many of them are used as restaurants and Bicycle Hire venues. I hired a bike for the princely sum of $2 Singaporean for the entire day! Setting off I literally traveled across the entire island. Despite the hot humid temperature, the ride was fun. I carried my pack with my 5D MKII onboard and a tripod, and used the bikes basket at the front to store all my loose bits. There are many interesting places to visit, including several old Quarries which have been flooded to form very picturesque lakes. The wetland areas known as “Chek Jawa” were very interesting. During low tide, you can walk along a boardwalk and look down onto the mudflats, which are full of sea life. Mudskippers, small crabs, Seahorse etc. Near this same area, I was sitting down, resting when a monkey strolled out of the jungle. Not long after a tribe of wild boar crossed the road. Other wildlife a did see but wasn’t quick enough to capture on camera include a local Rooster that is an ancestor to the modern day Rooster. There were other birds I observed but I have no idea what they were called. Needless to say, there were plenty of opportunities to photograph wildlife and natural settings – Something I didn’t think was possible in Singapore.

Couple of notes for anyone planning to visit wetlands and mangrove swamps anywhere around the world. Take precautions and protect yourself from Mosquitoes. Dengue Fever is prevalent in many of these sorts of places and is known to exist in Singapore. Malaria is another hazard. Drink plenty of water. The Island has many places you can buy chilled water, so you don’t have to bring it from the mainland. Take a hat! It gets hot in the sun and there are many roads which are in the open. Back in the township, you can buy a cheap lunch at one of the many Seafood restaurants. I spent $13 dollars on my meal which included Hong Kong Noodles, mixed veggies and Black Pepper Crab – Awesome!

So if your in Singapore and need to getaway from the shopping experience, I can highly recommend taking a visit to Pulau Ubin.

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!

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