TVCs in China have found a new mantra for success- making use of the country’s stunning and diverse landscape. It is no mystery that China offers a bit of something for everyone. Depending on one’s requirements, it can be easily transformed from a dustswept Western town to an ethereal mist-covered lover’s lake. It helps that China-based advertising agencies and production companies are bagging top international projects. With its immense creative talent and ethereal locales, it won’t be surprising if China becomes a mainstay on the location map of regional and international TVCs.

New Honda Accord shoot

The TVC for the new Honda Accord, filmed at two locations, Jade Dragon Snow Mountain at Li Jiang, Yunnan province, and Shanghai City, offers a visual spectacle through its stunning terrain. The RMB 3.7 million (US$460) commercial was commissioned to Simple Films by Hakuhudo Guangzhou, on behalf of its client, Honda Guangzhou (China).

“The client wanted a location with lush greenery and a springtime look and feel. Since most parts of China had already entered into the winter season, we decided to film in Yunnan, which is the southernmost part of the country and where the weather is most stable,” says Colin Lai, executive producer, Simple Films â€" the production company enlisted for the TVC shoot.

In the ad, a car breaks all speed limits and charges through seven steel arches. Each A-shaped arch symbolizes a successful year for the car model. The shifting landscapes morph from the glass-concrete modernity of the city to the giant foliage of a rainforest. The visual imagery of “forging ahead with great aspirations” â€" the ad’s underlying theme â€" is depicted by the car’s racing finesse negotiating around difficult mountainous terrains. This high-speed action is set against the fleeting but breathtaking wide-angled views of the silhouette peaks, while egged on by pulsating grooves.

To pull off a convincing torque display by the saloon car, the team at Simple Films was faced with a logistical challenge. They had to transport a camera car â€" a special type of vehicle from which to shoot cars in motion â€" and specialized equipment including camera rigs, mounts and a Libra head gyrost abilizer to the Yunnan location by land, which took them five days.

Korean director, Sin Sang Soon, was picked for the project because he specializes in directing car ads. With a car shooting portfolio that includes models such as Hyundai’s Sonata and Daewoo’s Chairman, Sin is a consummate artist who has shot all over Europe. His exacting demands for locations prompted no less than four location hunts across China, at the initial scouting stage.

Shooting on Super 35mm format, the two cameras used for the main photography were an Arri 435 and Arri III. For the aerial shoots, the Flying-Cam system from Belgium was utilized, and shot on 35mm. On the weather conditions encountered during the location shoots, Colin recounts, “We were shooting 3500 meters above sea level in the mountains at an average temperature of 8 to 15 degrees Celsius. Due to the high altitude, the Flying-Cam system had to be equipped with an additional stabilizer.”

01-05: The stunning locations contributed immensely to the ad’s visual appeal.

He adds, “We had a lighting issue at the Shanghai city location. Since the weather was hazy and foggy, the director could only do touch up during the telecine sessions using the Spirit system.”

Capturing shots from a moving vehicle was no mean feat, either. The Libra head system from South Africa and its operator, Director of Photography (DP) Tim Pike, made sure that jerky shots were kept to a minimum, despite the less than perfect roads in China. Colin praises his professional colleagues for rising to the occasion, “Kudos to Tim and the stunt drivers for ensuring a smooth shoot for the difficult two car shooting sequences.”

The team managed to meet the tight deadline and wrapped up by December 2005, which meant having to rush pre-production by a week to make way for an earlier shoot. Post-production for the Honda commercial took three weeks to complete, and was carried out at the Vixen Post in Seoul. Color-correction was done at Hollywood, Seoul.

Sony Bravia LCD TV shoot

The second TVC, for Sony Bravia LCD televisions, was intended to take its targeted Singapore viewers on a trip down memory lane. The result was an amazing era-hopping ad â€" from the 60s to the present â€" that shows how Sony’s television sets have evolved over the years and grown with its Singapore consumers. The irony, of course, is that the TVC was entirely shot in China.

The TVC begins with a small boy who runs excitedly in a marketplace to join a crowd milling outside a provision shop. Set in the 60s, the opening scene harks back to the good old days where a television was a prized possession and still attracted a huge passing crowd. Like the others, the boy is engrossed in a black-and-white coverage of the first moon landing, shown on the original version of the Sony Trinitron. Then comes the 80s, where the boy â€" now all grown up â€" watches a local drama serial on the Kirara Brasso TV with his girlfriend. In the 90s sequence, the same adult character balances a baby on one arm, while waving in jubilation with the other, cheering on a soccer match shown on an updated version of the Trinitron. Finally in the present, the baby becomes a toddler and joins his parents watching a program on the Bravia.

Spunk Pictures was commissioned by Grey Worldwide Singapore, to bring to life, the company’s creative concept conceived by Koh Hwee Peng and Justin Tan. Once again, the location of the shoots and set designs played a pivotal role in presenting the various period settings with credibility.

The opening scene in which the little boy runs through a marketplace involved a two-day outdoor shoot in Shanghai. It is almost uncanny in how the place captured on screen actually resembles Singapore in the post-war, industrializing years. Asked about the striking similarities, Davis Koh, executive producer, Spunk Films explains, “First of all, Raymond Lau, the other Singaporean executive producer, was instrumental in explaining the look and feel of what he had envisioned of an olden-day Singapore. It also helped that we had very competent art directors who tailored the sets to his precise descriptions.”

“I guess, in the end, it also helped that both Singapore and China share a lot of intrinsic similarities since both places have been largely populated by Chinese people,” he adds.

Asked about his decision to base his office in Shanghai, despite his roots in Singapore, Davis says, “I think that there is a wealth of talent in the film-making community here in Shanghai. Of course, we have a pool of very good talent back in Singapore but I personally feel that the training offered to filmmakers in China is more rounded and based on a much longer history of film-making experience.”

“Obviously in terms of shooting locations, China is almost like a one-stop location for all your filming budgets and requirements,” he says.

The indoor sequences were filmed at the Wuyue Studio in Shanghai. Six studio sets had to be constructed to depict the different periods. Director Xiao Wei Hong, who doubled as the DP, shot on an Arri 435 and 35mm format. Davis called the photography equipment “the best camera for the moment”, be for e adding: “The only drawback is that unlike the older version it is electronically assembled. This may increase the risk for breakdown during the colder winter seasons, but we did not face this problem.”

A lover of the film medium, Davis talks about his loyalty to the time-honored format, “Nothing beats film! Film provides the depth and color saturation that HD and video cannot. It is like comparing a digital print portrait to an oil painting. Even for the worst budget we are given, we will shoot on film.”

In the Bravia ad, set decorations, color grading, and clever lighting techniques worked hand in hand, to accomplish the final effect of depicting the images according to the timelines. Using popular references to explain how it was done, Davis reveals, “For the 60s look, the colorist John Galvin of the Oriental Post added grain into the shots and balanced the PEC. We referenced the 80s look to Wong Kar Wai’s Days of Being Wild and Peter Chan’s Comrades, Almost a Love Story. The 90s look is based on what I refer to as the “Ikea” look â€" which is basically saturated colours with a sharp quality in the images. I likened it to print ads of the furniture company “Ikea” because the ads are usually simple in styling yet rich in color tones. The current era is depicted by a very clean and whitish look, that gives it a Zen-like quality very popular amongst the modern types.”

A Beijing film school graduate, Xiao had skillfully captured the mood and expressions of the talents, with a subtle combination of soft lighting and unobtrusive camerawork. Edited offline by Lawrence Ang on his Avid media composer at Infinite Frameworks in Singapore, the post-production took seven days to be completed. That includes John’s tonal input on his Spirit Data Cine and the Da Vinci 2K Color corrector. The full grade rushes were transferred to HD format for conforming and compositing, both of which were completed in three days on the Discreet Smoke machine.

The final images in the ad are as compelling as the character portrayals. It is touching to see the 30-second piece that stirs nostalgia in a familiar way.

Saint Angelo Men’s fashion Apparel shoot

Spunk Pictures was also commissioned by EA Advertising Shanghai to market local brand Saint Angelo Men’s fashion apparels. Targeted at the Chinese market, the project involved filming a 30-second TVC and a seven-minute music video both starring China-born celebrity Richie Ren.

The surrealistic story begins with Richie, who plays himself, walking in a desert. He spots a bird soaring across the desert and decides to chase it. While chasing, Richie comes across a herd of horses that appear out of nowhere and gallop in the same direction as him. The chase ends at the high plains, where the hero slows his steps and begins to take stock of the awe-inspiring surroundings he is in. With a slight grin and outstretched arms, he assumes a portrait of calm, as you would expect from someone having attained some form of nirvana.

01-06: The hilly terrain of Inner Mongolia made for a surrealistic backdrop to this men’s apparel ad.

And for good measure, a golden sun appears at this time and envelops him from behind. The tagline is effusive: “As high as I can fly”. Incidentally, the logo for the men’s apparel line is that of a bird.

Working without a storyboard but only a script provided by the agency, Director Xiao and DP Jeffrey Ang went for the larger than life imagery, capitalizing on the wide, open spaces afforded by the location in Inner Mongolia. The expanse of bluish skies and golden stretches of parched dry land were considerations for the director in picking this hilly terrain. The location itself sets the premise for the ad and its central theme of freedom, since most people associate the term with a sense of openness and abandonment. Metaphorically or otherwise, the wild horses are affectations that further perpetuate these notions.

For all its beauty, Inner Mongolia posed some problems for the crew. Davis remembers, “The biggest difficulty of shooting in such a remote area is obviously the traveling. Vehicles were unable to travel anywhere near to the set, so the entire team had to walk up the mountains with the equipment.”

The equipment included the ARRI SR 3, which was used throughout the shoot. Davis says the reason why it was shot on 16mm was because of its longer filming time as compared to 35mm. The three day shoot required much more footage than a 35mm roll could capture. A roll of 16mm film stock measuring 400 feet captures about 11 minutes worth of footage, as compared to four minutes on 35mm. The trekking necessary to reach the location also required the crew to travel light, which is part of the reason for choosing the relatively portable SR3. Even the bulky lighting equipment was ditched. Xiao and Jeffrey had decided that they wanted a bit of ‘rawness’ to the film, and felt that natural lighting was the way to go. That decision came with a price, as Davis enthuses, “Since we were depending on the sunlight all the time, it was a tough three days mostly waiting for the sun to do its job!”

In the end, to compensate for lack of sunlight at all times, different lens and film stock were used to control the grain and consistency levels. At the telecine stage, the color was corrected to balance the exposure and colors between the footages. Telecine grading was carried out at the Shanghai TV station, while offline and final online editing was completed at the RAD post-production house in Shanghai.

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