Fireman Jack answers a call of duty. As a routine, he takes EXTRA JOSS B7, an energy drink, before he springs into action. At the fire scene, he tries to rescue people inside a burning restaurant. To his exasperation, he finds that the owner of the eatery refuses to part with her belongings, especially that of a tin can. Nevertheless, the heroic Jack manages to pull the woman away from her possessions and the engulfing flames. As a last ditch effort to help the woman, Jack fastens a rope to the window grill and ties the other end to a jeepney (Philippine version of a jeep), which he drives in the opposite direction. Finally, Jack climbs through the opening left by the twisted grill, and comes out with the tin can. The owner opens toreveal the contents - a hundred or moresachets of EXTRA JOSS B7 that the happy owner will be using to enter the promo and win one million pesos!

Not exactly the stuff that inspires Cannes Lions juries, but costing US $35,000 for production and post, the ad titled La Cash Tama, certainly has its share of difficulties in terms of execution. In this case, the responsibility to flesh out the client's brief, all the way from acquisition through to post, falls almost squarely on the shoulders of Cris Mojica.

Film director and owner of Wide Angle Digital (WAD) Post Manila, Mojica is one of few production heads in the Philippines who straddles the role of director and that of a boss of a post outfit. That means that once the creative concept for the energy drink ad was handed over by the agency Catalytx, it was left to Mojica and his respective crews at Zoom Film production and WAD to see to its final delivery.

Safety First

Any fire scene that involves actual fire and the use of corrosives or pyrotechnics obviously demands careful deliberation and exacting concentration on the set. This is no exception, as Mojica points out: "As the director I wanted to ensure that the safety of my crew is at the forefront of our objectives aside from getting the look that we wanted, and we were blessed to have found this abandoned bus terminal in the middle of the city - a perfect locale to set a bungalow on fire!

"We also needed a crowded neighborhood, now this is the tricky part-we had to set up a makeshift fire just behind our camera set up in a crowded street. The street was barely a 2-way street so a lot of wide angle lenses were used to make it look wide enough, but in reality everything was almost at arms length."

Large industrial fans blew smoke and fire debris all across the street as huge fireballs were being released through LPG tanks. For added safety, three fire truck tankers were stationed at each end of the street.

Despite the battery of safety procedures to consider, there were the endless permits to obtain before the crew proved that they were able to contain the fire within designated areas. Adding to the danger were the crisscrossing electrical wires that hung overhead. Mojica highlights the potential hazards the wires posed, saying:

"They were built before the Second World War so you can almost imagine how brittle and how dangerously close they were to our scaffoldings."

As if this wasn't nerve-wrecking enough, Mojica reckoned he would raise the ante by making the fire and explosion scene more realistic. This meant setting the walls and surrounding props on fire while rigging the ceiling with small explosives to mimic an electrical burst! Mojica recounts with a chuckle:

"Of course 'small' eventually became much larger and entire ceilings collapsed in many of the shots, which gave the scenes its most appealing moments.

"The intermittent rains and occasional strong winds made even more precarious the situation on the sets.

"It made most of our jobs terribly burdensome, most particularly my lighting and set department. If time pressure was too much to contend with, wind and rain just made crew and set movements close to impossible.

"Logistically, lighting the sets proved a gargantuan undertaking. The 12K HMI lights became less mobile, and cabling a more tedious exercise with every downpour.

"We manage to house each of the three 12Ks safely under waterproof covers during each shot and devised a system whereby three crew members were assigned to hold up the temporary shelters for each take."

Since most of the interior scenes involved physical fire, the extreme heat conditions were something to reckon with. Not only did the blaze affect key lighting positions, it made photographing the fire scenes more daunting than usual.

"It was so hot behind the camera that we had to dock for cover at each take!"

HDV camera no sweat for fire scenes

It not only helped to have a gutsy DOP behind the lens, in this case Robert De Vera, but too a robust camera for the job.

La Cash Tama is one of the installments in a series of ads themed as Heroes. As the earlier installment, also named Heroes, was shot on 35mm, the client wanted to retain the same look and feel but gave a decidedly shorter time frame of barely a month.

"After weighing the odds we decided to go HDV and met the deadline with plenty of time to spare."

Recalling happy experiences with the Panasonic HVX200 P2 HDV solid state camera with PS technique film lens adapter, Mojica decided on the same acquisition approach for this ad.

With his wealth of experience in controlled lighting during video shoots, the photography for the night and interior scenes went extremely well, Mojica says, before hastening to add: "Taking into consideration the critical aperture differences we had to adjust for when using prime film lenses."

"My simple formula is to keep your HDV openings to 5.6 and make 'gutfeel' adjustments on your film lenses - normally about two stops under the optimum aperture - depending on how much black you need."

To bring out the richer contrasts, De Vera shot most of the scenes at high shutter speeds, while careful to compensate through measured lighting, with aid from the 12K HMIs.

The only splinter in Mojica's shoe as he steps into HDV has to do with the viewfinder.

"Personally I am accustomed to operating my own camera work and with film I could immediately view my framing and (exposure) through the camera lens, but with HDV like any other e-cameras I am not very comfortable viewing actions on small LCD monitors.

"Mojica admits that it is a small price to pay in view of overall cost effectiveness that goes along with digital photography.

"As the production industry rapidly evolves we can clearly see the role of technology in its development. Who would think that a camera this size could cover so much latitude and record in solid state at 1080i? I can only imagine what intense visuals we can produce in the coming year with the advent of the cinema RED one in 4K - now that is a fantastic opportunity.

"Over at WAD - where the ad was composited and assembled - Mojica's team fired up the editing suites for the second part of the job.

WAD is equipped with two tangent online editing bays that are powered by both Mac and PC. There are two Macpros boasting QUAD XEON processors, with 16 gig memory. Also on the other bay are two powerful PCs dedicated to AVID Express Pro HD and Grass Valley Edius 4 Broadcast. Combustion was used during composition while Final Cut HD, through BlackMagic Extreme, did most of the assembly.

Most of the effects were physical and done in actual shoot while post enhanced the scenes through color adjustments and compositing. For the explosion, compositor Jon Bautista had to build bits and pieces of flying debris in 3D to make sure that the pieces look close to the ones that were blown off by the actual blasting.

The entire post process took 12 days. Happy with the results, Mojica praised his editors and attributes the smooth rollout to his well-designed workflow: "Remarkably, the native HD signals remain dedicated from acquisition to final product.

"Kudos to my editors and post team for a remarkable job!"

As for himself, directing the harrowing "fire scenes" must have redefined his concept of what it means to be "in the hot seat". Given the difficulties involved on the set, perhaps Mojica could have used an energy drink or two himself!

The TV spot La Cash Tama airs locally in the Philippines from June to August 2007.

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