On the morning of Sunday the 14th of August I flew from Melbourne to Kuala Lumpur Malaysia, to work on a TVC for Malaysia’s Celcom, a telecommunications company. They were looking to create an exciting, visually interesting Commercial for their Xpax brand, which is geared towards young users between the age of 18-25 years old.

The TVC required shooting for 3D integration however the time frame for this job was extremely tight. With careful consideration with production house Carrot Films, I took the decision to develop all the 3D animation sequences early and have them ready before we had even shot a frame of the live action. Local post house Pixel Post KL was tasked to come up with 3D, “chewing gum style”, “Speech bubbles”, that when popped would rain gifts/prizes to their owners! That meant pre conceiving how we were going to shoot the commercial to a much higher degree of accuracy! The style of all of the previous Xpax TVC’s is MTV inspired – Music video techniques, fast cutting and moving scenes with young people, using the product in energetic ways! The colour grading on all the previous Commercials were heavily rinsed with their corporate colours of Purple & Orange.

Day one was “hit the ground running”! An early wakeup and we were off to look at various “House” locations around Kuala Lumpur! We ended up seeing four or so locations before heading back to the production office to review Casting, brief a Storyboard Artist and meet Carrot Films Producers Jefferi Tik and Lani Layali.

Day 3 was a continuation of Day one, with more location surveys. Luckily the days efforts revealed an amazing house with a very minimalistic feel and plenty of space to work in. Returning back to the office, we continued Casting, Wardrobe and Propping for the rest of the day.

On the morning of the 17th of August, I took some time to go see the Batu Caves and Temples just 30 minutes outside of KL. That was an amazing experience. I was the first person there, other then Tamil practitioners at the Temple. Before the lights were even switched on I had climbed the 1000 odd steps to the top, entered the Caves and explored the Temples inside the Caves themselves. Only Monkeys, Doves and Bats accompanied me for about an hour! Quite magical and special I think?! I spent some time taking HDR images of the subterranean world lit only by an ocular in the roof of the Cave! I witnessed a private religious event as three women rolled themselves along the floor and then had water poured on their heads. I’m not sure of it’s significance but it was quite amazing to witness!

I also drove out to see the Electronic Shops out at Jalan Pasar and several ITC Malls. In the afternoon, I returned to the Production office to go over more Casting and Set design. The Agency arrived later for an official Preproduction meeting. It was great to finally meet them.

Day4 – August 18 was D-Day for much of the preproduction work with a Client Presentation scheduled for later in the afternoon. However there was not much I could do at that point. So I decided to go with Moga, the driver, back to Jalan Pasar to explore more of that street with electronic component shops on it. We had missed a huge section of it on our original visit. Despite the electronics scene being relegated to “extreme hobbyists” there definitely is a presence of “Hackers”, “Makers” and even Professional Engineering in the air. That afternoon we presented what we had to the Client at Celcom’s head Office in KL. The meeting went very well although a murmur of change was brewing!

Day5 started with some challenges! The Client made some changes which slightly changed everything! I was handed the news and went straight away into battle station mode. In all fairness the Agency and Production House were incredibly supportive and explained that “this is how it is” with a big smile on their faces! New Cast was called for, we scrapped locations within the house, set dressings and started looking for city skyline views of KL. Although much of the original script had changed, in many ways it hadn’t! I realised this as I was working through my shot list. Much of our preproduction was still relevant. However, the Casting was a battle. Out of four original cast requirements, we had reduced it to just one! The Client approved a young Girl by the name of Chrissy but she was based in Bangkok Thailand and had to be flown in!

Day6 – Saturday the 20th – I awoke very early and was picked up from my hotel in Mid Valley and driven to Set. We began production that day with Chrissy, who had arrived at 2AM the same day, from Bangkok. After meeting her &  the Crew, Arn (my 1st AD) and I reworked our plans to accommodate the new situation. I was hugely relieved to discover that Chrissy was not only vivacious and gorgeous but very accomplished as an actress. I had no problems chatting with her and trying out different performance ideas on camera! She was incredibly energetic given her very early morning arrival into Malaysia! Eric Yeong, my Cinematographer, helped out here by lighting her beautifully and playing the role of the calm observer! The shoot went very smoothly, helped by a fantastic team from DraftFCB Malaysia, the Carrot Films Crew and importantly, the team from Pixel Post who had sent their effects supervisor along for the day.

Day7 – Sunday 21st – Again waking at 4AM, I was picked up from the hotel and driven into the centre of KL. There we transported ourselves to a helipad on the 29th floor of a city building. From this vantage point, we filmed time lapse and realtime footage of the sun dawning across Kuala Lumpur. For that we had no less then two Canon 5Dmk2′s, the ARRI Alexa from the previous day and my DOP Eric brought his brand new RED EPIC M along for its first official engagement! It was kind of crazy but we shot the “crap” out of it! Sadly none of that footage made it into the final TVC although it looked amazing! The RED Epic is so small and the low light performance is clearly a major selling point!

Day8 – Monday 22nd – At 10am, I was whisked to go see Pixel Post – the post production company handling the Offline/Online as well as the 3D requirements. Having slept for most of the previous day, after our vigorous shoot on the Helipad, I was pretty rested and keen to see the rough cut. Editor Billy, had created several versions and I was pleasantly surprised that it all worked and fitted into a 30sec TVC nicely. We spent a few hours working on it together before I had to go to the Grade! That’s right, a final grade before we had even finished the offline! The timing of this TVC was so short that I had to travel to APV (Asia Pacific Video lab) in KL to setup the look of the TVC. We were never going to be able to come back with finished pictures because we were grading the data files shot from ARRI’s Alexa and RED’s Epic directly in Lustre. The Colourist did a very nice job! After the grade, it was back to Pixel Post for more Offline before our Agency presentation at 8PM! We had a few discussions about which version to present but finally at 9PM we presented our offline’s to the Client. We were still shifting the edit during that session to fix timings with the music, find best performance etc it was so organic! We arrived at an approved offline at around 11PM that evening! I think the Creatives Richard, Brian and Dave from DraftFCB and importantly TV Producer Brandon Chai helped enormously in getting the TVC across the line successfully.

Day 9 – Tuesday 23rd – Pixel Post continued on with the task of finishing the TVC. I took a trip into the centre of KL and walked around the Petaling Street Market. Later I filmed some Time Lapse footage of the Petronas Towers transitioning from day into night before getting an early nights sleep!

Day10 – Wednesday 24th – Popping my head into Pixel Post at 2PM there was still quite a lot to be done. The grade was done, including all the new shots we added during the Client Presentation! that looked very nice. Much of the 3D was in various state of rending but I could tell it was coming together. Despite the incredible speed of the job, changes in concept and quest to stay flexible, I could see the light at the end of the tunnel. I should take a moment to thank the team at Pixel Post for their enormous effort. Producer Kenny looked after the project so well but their were quite  a few involved from their office.

Day11- 25th of August -  12pm I again popped into Pixel Post. Thankfully a lot of work had taken place overnight. The TVC was really starting to feel finished which was amazing. The team had worked very hard to clean up the images shot on the ARRI Alexa as well as render finals for the 3D “Speech Bubbles”. Online editor, Kitson, rushed through all the composting tasks with flare. The Agency arrived at 7PM while we were still finishing the TVC. By 10PM it was all done and the job was complete! I need to thank so many as usual but especially this time! We had so little time and this TVC was effectively produced in 4 days which is incredible! Incredible because it has interactive 3D, great production design by Leslie, fantastically coordinated by Connie and Arn my 1st AD and supported by a two excellent Production Producers. It made use of new technology like the RED EPIC M and Arri Alexa! The entire production team worked very hard but made it seem easy and pleasant – so thank you for your effort guys, much appreciated – Especially since the entire process happened during the Muslim fasting period of Ramadan!

Day13 – Malaka – got up early and drove with my driver Moga to Malaka, about 2 hours out of KL. Staying overnight, I enjoyed seeing the sights, photographing old Portuguese Forts, churches, the local food and generally touring around Melaka. A huge thank you to Moga for making that trip so easy!

On my second day in Malacca I ran into a group of young guys playing around with their cameras. They were part of a photographic club, experimenting and learning about photography with a model. I asked if I could join in and for about an hour I had a bit of fun using my strobe gear. The model was really excellent and generously gave me a few poses.

At 4PM the next day, it was time to head back to KL. After a meal at the Petronas Towers,  I quickly packed up my stuff for an early morning flight to Singapore the next morning. Touching down in Singapore, I caught up with Damien Yang from Blackmagic Design and Leollyne Teng from Shooting Gallery Asia about various up coming projects. I also managed to catchup briefly with good friend Bruce Watt for a quick social get together. After visiting a few Time Lapse locations, ITC malls I headed out for the airport again. Making a comfy nest in my airplane chair, I fell into a deep sleep and relaxed for the first time in ages!

On the 1st of September I landed in my home town of Melbourne.

The TVC can be viewed by clicking the below image:

On the 2nd and 3rd of April 2011, I began production of a Television Commercial for Nippon Paint in Indonesia. The product called “Vinilex” is a popular household paint which was due for a new marketing campaign. The Agency, Dentsu Jakarta, wanted to explore a bit of digital alchemy, some visual magic with their idea. Key creatives ECD Rostina P (Tina for short) and Art Director Edhya Listiani wanted to play with the “magic of colour” by creating a world where a fresh coat of paint could create joy, excitement and perhaps a dash of dare!

Working with Kemistry Films in Jakarta again, I was reunited with Producer Rini Hewitt and her core team. They included 1st AD Agnes, Production coordinator Anita Sandrayanti, Costume Designer Imelda, and Art Director Malek Prada! I had previously worked with all of them on other TVC’s in Jakarta so it was great to reunite! New to the group was DOP Ipul & Editor Ravi both of whom were really great to work with.

The TVC required a location shoot but what we wanted was quite exotic. At first I was thinking “Set Design” and a Studio based shoot but soon learnt that wasn’t going to be possible. A location scout returned with many photos from various galleries and public spaces around Jakarta but one set stood out immediately. In Jakarta, there is a tourist destination called Taman Mini Indonesia Indah. It’s a massive park filled with examples of every type of building construction found throughout the 1000+ islands of Indonesia! If your into Architecture then this is a great spot to go and visit. Deep within the complex is a science centre for schools and people interested in science and engineering. Its a huge round building with a very futuristic look and feel. It’s not well frequented by the public so they had a vast section unused which we could take advantage of.

So off we all went and visited the site! On looking around, Malek and I immediately came up with an awesome plan to build a small section of set. He drew the plans that afternoon and construction begun the next day! It was a “Guggenheim inspired” Gallery set out like a giant colour wheel! Panels would stand in spoked sections of the “wheel like” space! A curved, highly reflective door would lead audiences into a cathedral styled room that a studio set design simply would never have afforded! I loved the design and was so happy when the Agency and Client agreed to it.

Key to this Commercial was Blackmagic Design in Singapore. Lead compositor Damien Yang and his assistant Chia Choon flew to Jakarta to supervise the extensive 3D and 2D effects. In the region, I’ve come to depend on the Blackmagic Design team for not only excellent workmanship but their friendship. Damien is a master compositor par excellence! His strong sense of design and technical skill are incredibly valuable to me but its his flexibility when it comes to Client/Agency changes (and even my own) that is truly exceptional. He deals with it all so well. This job was a joy however as we had such a great on set team. Malek’s Art department team had built all sorts of rigs and tricks to help make the 3D magic go smoothly. He built “Paint Splattering Machines”, a water ramp that could dump a large amount of water onto our cast via a curved piece of Perspex to form a massive wave, painting dripping rigs, etc etc. All in all we had a lot of rigs and tricks to play with!

Casting was a huge deal for me on this TVC. We were looking for an unknown who could pull off all the technical requirements as well as carry off the humorous and fun moments. Luckily we found it in a young man called ‘Boy”. His understanding of English was limited but we were still able to communicate effectively. He had never performed before on a TVC so he had a lot to learn!

Shot on 35mm Kodak film, Ipul, my very young DOP, had a lot of cool elements to play with! The overhead domed glass ceiling would pose somewhat of a challenge to him as the sun became full strength at times! In an unconventional manner, Jakarta’s sky cleared of its drab grey clouds and spilled harsh sunlight through the very impressive ceiling! Sadly day two didn’t follow suit and we did have to rebalance shots later in Telecine. However Ipul did an amazing job dealing with the scale of the shoot and the vast space of the location.

At the end of Day Two, the main Cast had been completed and we moved on to filming many elements for 3D. Damien and Chachoon oversaw the filming of paint splats, drips, dunks, water spray etc, all shot in high speed 35mm film! It was actually quite fun to watch!

I shot the pack shot as a time-lapse sequence using my 5DMK2 in stills mode. An artist painted the Pack Shot for me on a canvas while the camera recorded each stroke as a time lapse event. Later we removed any reference to the artist so that the Pack Shot could be seen to self animate on screen!

So after a fun packed 2.5 day shoot, we progressed to Post Production in Jakarta. Robert Cook at VHQ Jakarta had graded the one light rushes for us and freelance FCP editor Ravi brought his laptop down to the Grand Kemang Hotel, where we cut the offline edits over the 5th and 6th of April. We cut a 60, 45, 30 and a 15 second which we presented to the Agency and Client on the 7th at the Cutshop Jakarta. That went very well. In fact as a result, the Client bought the 45 second TVC!

With picture locked off, the final Grade occurred on the 8th of April at VHQ with Robert Cook again. His grade was very nice and with that, we headed off to our own worlds for a couple of weeks! I briefed in the Music to KL based Composer Mike Bloemendal who’s company Imaginex was handling the Audio Post Production. The images left Jakarta and headed to Singapore for cleanup and 3D at Blackmagic Design while I headed home for a very short break.

I didn’t rest for long. As the 3D team were hard at work in Singapore, I rushed off to Hong Kong to shoot another TVC. Following the conclusion of that shoot and subsequent offline in Shanghai, I returned back to Singapore to oversee the Online of Vinilex. The team at BMD had been in constant contact with me while I was away (via Skype and email) so I was fully aware of progress. Now that I was back, we began the serious task of compositing all the elements. I arrived on the 5th of May via Hong Kong. By Monday the 9th, we presented to the Agency and mostly we were in good shape. Mike Bloemendal sent through his track of music and blew me away with his “accurate to the reference” composition! He was able to add his own elements to it but it retained the spirit and feeling of the reference track! He also managed to rope in a good mate from the USA to do the vocals which was awesome! Damien and his team at BMD had pulled off yet another miracle in cleaning up vast areas of the images, removing stray public, messy backgrounds, and conflicting colours. In a few sections, the set had to be extended or repaired thanks to our rigs. Chia Choon and the 3D team built Cars, Oranges and water elements while Damien composited them into their respective scenes. There were still some elements needing completion but by Wednesday the 11th, we presented to the Client.

The Vinilex TVC was a fun experience for me. I think I was lucky to not only work with so many very talented people, many of whom I consider great personal friends, but a fantastic agency team as well. There are quite a few names I should be mentioning here from the Agency side but shamefully I don’t have them written down anywhere! I use my blog to record, pay respect and say thank you for an otherwise thankless world in advertising. Since no credits roll at the end of a TVC I want to take the opportunity to say thank you to the Agency, the Crew, Kemistry Films, Rini Hewitt, Imaginex and the Blackmagic Team for a fantastic effort.

To watch the TVC press the following image! Enjoy!

On the 13th of May, I flew to the Gold Coast Queensland to start production of a Commercial for The Natural Confectionary Company via Production Company Chocolate Studios in Melbourne. While still overseas, I was contacted by EP Dave Ellis, about possibly directing a TV Commercial for them and, in only a few weeks, we developed a really nice treatment.

This job reconnected me with quite a few different people in Melbourne, including former Micronite Producer Barry Cail, who came onboard as a freelance Producer for this TVC. After having worked overseas for an extended period it was refreshing to be able to work locally again. Unfortunately we weren’t shooting in Melbourne but rather sunny Queensland, on the Gold Coast! When I say unfortunately I mean that in the nicest possible way, as I haven’t shot in my own home town for such a long time. Coincidentally, I used to live on the Gold Coast. I had worked at the Warner Movie World Studios for several years on such shows as “Mission Impossible” (the TV series), “Time Trax1&2″, and several “Movie of the week” projects. But that’s digressing!

Australian productions differ substantially from my OS work, in that they are always bound up in some sort of “Australianism” or colloquial detail that makes either the idea or the execution difficult for my overseas clients to understand. Typically a good understanding of both our slang and football is a prerequisite for good comprehension of the message to occur (generalisation but you get the idea). Mostly, I am in the belief that Australian advertising is meant for Australians only and is largely inaccessible to overseas markets which is a shame. I think even in Australia, many of the commercials are not aimed at new immigrants, tourists, business travellers or people who do not care for football, popular culture and trends. That’s a big sector of the community that is left out from targeted advertising. This commercial however was different. That’s why this project was fun to work on. Yes it does still involve some background history if you truly want to fully understand the TVC, however you could completely miss that and still enjoy the Ad!

Through advertising agency, The Ross Partnership in Melbourne, the Commercial was designed to be a parody of the “Action” style of TVC’s made in the early 1980′s, featuring legendary Australian Sportsmen and Woman. It was written by Meg Sorenson for TNCC in an ongoing campaign.I think the TVC is accessible to anyone because it pokes fun at a style that is ubiquitous across the planet in one form or another!

OK enough of the “thoughts behind the Ad”. This TVC was fun to make – pure and simple! We had a glorious sunny day to film the TVC on and a brilliant athlete to feature. Emma Snowsill is a remarkable person, with an amazing focus on her career. You can read more about her here to find out about her amazing achievements. I have never seen a person swim as fast as she could – Quite incredible! Emma is an Olympian gold medalist triathlete (Beijing 2008)! So I had my work cutout keeping up with her all day! The schedule was reasonably gruelling also with a huge list of shots to get in one day. This included shots of her swimming, running and cycling. We filmed the TVC at a popular Gold Coast beach at Currumbin heads. I’ve actually shot there on several occasions and it probably was used in many of those early “Action” sports TVC’s I spoke of earlier, which made it even more perfect! When I was asked by the production staff at Chocolate as to which crew I wanted for this job, I immediately wanted to regroup my usual crew from Queensland. Sadly my frequency is way down these days but mostly they are still all around. I had last worked with the majority of them on “Drop the Bomb” with Hammish & Andy (for a Carlton Draught stunt) which was only a year before I guess. Our Sound Recordist was Craig Walmsley, Camera Assistant was again David Cordell and Keygrip was Leigh Tait. Additionally we had Gaffer Glen Jones and his 2nd join us also. From Melbourne, EP Dave Ellis & Sara De Maria, Makeup Artist Selena Pertzel and Data Wrangler Kevin Wetdewich also joined the production. There were a few others and I’m sorry I haven’t mentioned your names here. Needless to say, it wasn’t a huge crew but a very effective one!

The commercial was shot using both the RED One camera and a combination of Canon DSLR (5DMK2) and GoPro HD cameras. This was really what I would call the secret recipe for this TVC as using traditional film camera gear would have been far too cumbersome and to heavy to deal with for these kinds of activities. In fact, even the RED was too big really. Leigh built a fantastic rig to dolly the RED camera easily across sand dunes as well as providing a nifty trailer (for a Quad bike) for the RED to film low angle, running shots. Mostly though, we used the 5DMK2 for some of the more spectacular shots, such as a really low angle shot of Emma swimming over the camera. That was actually filmed from the bottom of the ocean (about 20 feet down) looking straight up at the sun as Emma powered through the waves. I had Leigh (a licensed PADI diver) shoot that shot for me while I had Dave Cordell film from the beach using the RED camera, a 25-250mm Angenaux zoom lens with a doubler! My game plan for the day revolved around the quick change over from one camera system to the next. So all the land based shots that required sound or were relatively simple to get with our rigs were shot on the RED camera. The rest were shot either on the 5D or Go Pro cameras! This included most of the swimming shots and several of the biking angles.

We did run out of light eventually. During the filming of the bike sequences the light did become a problem. That scene was again largely filmed on the RED One and a few shots from the GoPro camera. There is a low angle shot looking past Emma’s handlebar that was only possible to film using the GoPro as well as a shot of her head as she looks up while riding! Given the limited time we had, I honestly don’t know how else I would have filmed those shots?! After an incredibly successful fun day, we said goodbye to the crew and headed back to Melbourne the next day.

Post production took place at Chocolate Studios in Melbourne. It’s a very beautifully appointed Post Production centre with all the latest gear, including it’s own audio facility. On the 16th of May, we recorded a guide voice over track and then began sifting through a sizeable amount of rushes with my Offline/Online editor Marty. We actually decided that we would take the offline offshore so to speak and for a few days we cut the commercial on a private yacht in Williamstown Melbourne. This would have to be one of the more exotic locations I’ve conducted Post Production but was a lot of fun! The only thing we had to get used to was the unexpected wave action of passing boats in the harbour, which rocked us back and forth, but luckily I’m OK with boats! Any case, I tweeted about my experience and and got quite a strong reaction from many on Twitter! We actually did some pretty amazing work on that boat, despite all the distractions. For those that want to know about the tech side of things, we used Final Cut Pro on a laptop, some raid drives and made use of the onboard HDTV LCD screen!

The final leg of the TNCC journey involved audio Post Production with Paul McCosh at Chocolate, who created a fantastic track out of bits and pieces while the colour grading took place at By Deluxe Melbourne, with colourist Stanley Lopuszanski. We graded all formats from a single file in Scratch, giving each scene a distinctive look. Mostly again the “Looks” were heavily inspired by some of “those” TVC’s from the 80′s & 90′s and Stanley did a fantastic job recreating that experience. While I had the chance, I put the 5DMK2 material against the RED One footage and was amazed how good the 5D looked. It’s not the RED is bad, it’s just if you shoot carefully, using a narrow depth of field, the 5D is an amazing camera. However, Stanley was quick to point out it’s limitation with respect to dynamic range. The 5D does suffer from jagged edges on high contrast lines & detail. Still, it looks great in our TVC and most of the shots wouldn’t have been possible with any other camera system, without more money, time and effort! The Online was a relatively straight forward affair back in Chocolate Studios in Avid DS.

In closing, I have to say this was one of the most fun jobs I’ve shot in recent years. It was a pleasure to work on because the Agency was great, the Client was incredible and the Cast and Crew were absolutely amazing. Add sunshine and surf and you have yourself the perfect mix for a great job!

Here is the Commercial

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/2010/04/15/canon-horse-ride-featuring-daniel-wu/#utm_source=feed&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=feed http://www.karlvonmoller.com/blog/2010/04/15/canon-horse-ride-featuring-daniel-wu/#comments Thu, 15 Apr 2010 12:02:52 +0000 Karl von Moller http://www.karlvonmoller.com/blog/?p=3057

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!

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.

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!

]]> http://www.karlvonmoller.com/blog/2010/01/18/canon-smart-choice-making-of/feed/ 1 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:

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!