(Day 8-9) Do you remember that thing…?

10/10/2022 – 11/10/2022

I was under the impression that advertising would entail working on a project for a few months then moving on to another once the first project was finished or nearing completion. I was wrong.

Projects came and went quite randomly with no insight beforehand. We would attend a briefing for a new project then have it get discontinued indeterminably or handed over to a different team, which was the fate of the first two projects I had seen on my first week.

This was my first time attending a briefing for a food brand, in this case a sports drink that was popular among old people. They wanted two different different presenters – a famous footballer and a Thai actor that was currently popular with young women. My team was immediately apprehensive – what did this guy have to do with the brand? How would they justify using him? How do we connect these two wildly different people?

I witnessed starting a project from scratch, and it involved a lot of mental power.

Do you remember that ad from four years ago?

A lot of the earlier brainstorming was finding references for the possible different directions the project could take, which mostly involved my boss trying to recall the many ads he had seen over the years and me looking for them online.

An issue with the client, as told by one of the copywriters in the team, was that they could be quite conservative with the ideas, not wanting to try out different ways to market their product and leaning more towards the old conventional way.

(Day 10) Adapting

15/10/2022

Everything felt like they were blending together at this point with another briefing while at a post-production house of another project. Three projects were being juggled together at this point and it became blurry at times when trying to develop ideas for one and work out the script for the other.

With the fashion project closer to its completion now, every stage had to be presented and approved by the client. Due to scheduling conflicts and the main client being absent most of the time, not everything was able to reach the client before moving on to the next stage. Another slightly frustrating aspect was that working with a client was essentially working with someone who didn’t share the same creative vision and whose main goal was to sell things. This lead to a few tense feedback sessions where the client would request changes, the studio making those changes, and the client not liking the changes.

On a lighter note, as the day wasn’t as hectic, I was shown the example of what files with the subtitles should look like which helped immensely in me understanding what I was supposed to do, and I didn’t feel as clueless as I was innitially.

(Day 11) Trying to keep up

17/10/2022

Pre-production was broken down into several stages. Everyone did their own individual research and presented their ideas to the rest of the team, where ideas were then merged or dropped into a few strong directions. These are then presented to the team leader who would go over to refine every direction as well as find more references to make the visual aspect of each idea clearer. The early draft of the presentation would then be shown to the internal account executive team who would give feedback according to their knowledge of the client. During this, visual elements such as graphics for the presentation and storyboard were made before it was time to present to the client. For the sports drink project, we were currently at the early stage of presenting to the team leader one morning at another production house for lighting and color for the fashion project.

The day was focused on those two projects. The team would go in to check if the lighting and colors were according to what the client had asked for, then they would come back out to work on the sports drink project while they waited for the production house to make those changes. As one of the art directors were absent, I had to crack down on making subtitles for every version and ratio of the commercial. As I was getting the hang of the program, it wasn’t too much stress, and I was glad I was able to contribute to the project even though I hadn’t been here from the beginning.

(Day 12)

18/10/2022

• developing ideas for a new project, finding the appeal of the presenters and justifying why they’re chosen other than appealing to gen z

Throughout the production process and visiting many different studios, I managed to get glimpses of what it was like working in specific fields, be it video editing or coloring, with some programs that I recognized but mostly didn’t.

At a studio for editing images, I was given the chance to sit right next to the editor as he retouched the photos from the photoshoot last week, answering all the questions I had. He was using Adobe Photoshop which I was familiar with, and simply monitoring him helped me learn a lot about the program. I enjoyed this little moment of observation a lot – it was great to be able to ask questions freely as well as see how a program I use is used professionally.

The project came with a lot of struggles, be it time restraints, absent clients, or an overall uncertainty on how the client would react. Now was no different when the editor became very baffled at the information that the client hadn’t seen the photos beforehand. It was likely that his finished product here would have to be revised. Flustered, he said something along the lines of “That’s like cooking them white rice and they ask for sticky rice. What do you do then? Just tell them we don’t have that.”

One of the producers who had dealt with this client before said grimly, “You tell them you do and it’s cooking right now.”

Especially with this project in particular, a lot of pressure is put on those in charge of visual aspects. The editor was given a lot of strange requests, one being notably, “Make this black stool white.”

I was tasked with working on subtitles and additionally the small disclaimers commercials are legally obligated to have at the bottom of the screen. It wasn’t the most daunting thing I had ever done, but I found value in spending more time working in a program I wasn’t familiar with and understanding the post-production process.

(Day 13)

19/10/2022

• overdelivering/showing enthusiasm and passion to clients via side projects
• photoshoot @ siam
• another briefing for new project at 4pm (L’Oreal)
• going about things you’re unfamiliar with for a client

(Day 14)

20/10/2022

• at montage again
• things are heating up as the end is approaching
• rushing to get this done but also don’t forget about starting other projects
• missing one person in the team and the work load seems as if it’s doubled
• initial presenter has fallen short, gets someone else instead, have to revise the entire script/story to fit the new one