The art of doing nothing and everything

4/10/2022

The art of doing nothing and everything, a crash course into the industry and talking to strangers

I could only imagine what production was like, and only generally with barely any specific detail. I had no idea how things worked and couldn’t get a full grasp of it in the research I had done.

The team deliberately kept details from me until the morning of that day, giving me the duty of that day, giving me the duty of filming behind the scenes and interviewing the stylist as the project was related to fashion and has over 40 looks prepared for the shoot. Both tasks were things I had heard of and seen online, though have never really done by myself, and let alone do it without doing any research the day before.

When considering creative direction, I always thought that the work just ended at selling the client the final idea. However, they also had to be present throughout the entire production and post-production process to ensure that the actual product actually matched what they had planned as well as taking in clients’ comment/criticisms to make adjustments as well as coming up with solutions to any problem that would arise. This duty included being there during the entire shooting of the commercial.

At the film shoot, a majority of the time was spent sat down and looking at the monitor of what was being filmed, and an even greater time was spent waiting for sets and actors to be changed; it was a lot of nothing and everything at the same time.

There, I was fascinated by the inner-workings of a production, observing in detail how everything operated with each other- the client made requests to the AE manager, who would then relay it to the creative directors, who had to figure out a solution and present that to the manager or producer who would then relay it to the director/production staff to make these changes.

A role that really captured my attention was the live editor who put the filmed videos together in real time or replaced green screens with backgrounds within minutes of it being shot so that the clients could see the finished look right there and decide if they were happy with it or not without having to imagine what anything would look like after post-production days later.

Being there was a completely foreign experience, especially when I had to walk around trying to take videos on my phone without being in anyone’s way. It was stranger – I was approved to film yet I felt a constant anxiety of being questioned by strangers that I was technically working with. I tried my best to be as polite and non-invasive as possible, though some staff members were also nervous about being filmed.

I utilized my skills in being an overachiever in class to try and come up with questions that would incite insightful answers, minutely worried that the questions were too shallow or not worth asking. The stylist was very open and slightly nervous and found one of the questions difficult to answer.

I came to the studio at 7am and left somewhere close to midnight – again, not because they had finished but because the manager thought I looked tired and arranged for a van to drive me home first. I couldn’t imagine being the main model who had to be in every scene, was already filming when I arrived and was still filming by the time I was in bed, with another schedule tomorrow for a photoshoot.

The day had been hectic yet slow, though it managed to wear me out anyway, and I was plunged into experiencing the industry firsthand.

Doing it all again the next day

5/10/2022

As though I had not gone to sleep at one in the morning last night, I was up and in another studio specifically for photography ten hours later. I felt a certain awe seeing the same model from yesterday, working as though she had gotten eight hours of sleep.

The role of the art director was more active this time, with my senior on his feet checking over the positioning of each model (this was a fashion-related project for an online shopping app), carefully considering groupings and poses. There was an issue with the client that day that had resulted in him having to redo the layout that were planned days prior right there on set while the models were being photographed.

As though that wasn’t hectic enough by itself, the copywriter, who told me at the start of the day that it would be a “chill” day for her as today’s work was purely visual, was called over by the client and told that they didn’t like the storyboard from yesterday’s commercial shooting as the storyline wasn’t clear.

How do you fix something that has already been filmed?

It was all on her to fix the film now, redoing the voiceovers and writing on the graphics as the client had wished, being sure to keep the word ‘girlboss’ like they had requested as that was a ‘gen z-savvy’ term.

I spent the day observing the art directors discussing the layout, though as things grew tense on both sides, I sat back and edited the behind footage from yesterday until they told me I could go home. I left at 8pm, the main model was scheduled to finish at 9pm, though the shoot finished around midnight.

In the evening, one of the copywriters in the team called me to talk about a project she was participating in as part of a competition hosted by the Cannes Lions Award. It was a crowdfunding website with projects founded by young cancer patients at the Great Ormond Street Hospital and she thought I could help by creating an animation advertising one of the products.

This was the sketch given to me:

The deadline took me aback slightly – she wanted it by Thursday evening, which was less than 24 hours from that moment. Nevertheless, it sounded like a great opportunity and the style shouldn’t be too difficult, so I agreed.

Finally animating

6/10/2022 – 7/10/2022

I fully accepted that working in a creative direction team wouldn’t require animating as I believed that the skills learned from this internship would still have elements that could contribute to my ability as an animator. With that said, I was happy to open my drawing programs and sketched out scenes according to the script and voiceover I was sent.

The script I was given wasn’t exactly a detailed script, though more of a list of things that had to happen according to the voiceover. I was doubtful about how much creative control I had, though I couldn’t help but give it my own spin to make it more fun.

I sent the animatic according to the script and another version where I added my own details, such as a little demonstration segment similar to old infomercials.

Fortunately, she preferred my version!

I saw myself as a bit of a perfectionist, and sometimes my ambition-to-timeframe ratio wasn’t exactly equal. I had a lot of ideas that I wanted to try out, such as animating everything traditionally with paper and crayons to mimic children’s art styles, or boiling every frame to make the film more dynamic. I was pressed for time, however, and I handed in a version I wasn’t completely satisfied with but had everything that was asked for.

The next morning, I received another request: they wanted the final scene to be the camera pulling out from the girl to an overview of the Great Ormond Street Hospital, drawn by another child.

This meant that I had until the next morning to add a scene and refine the animation, which still wasn’t a lot of time but I would take anything at that point.

To save time on animating what was practically a dolly shot, and to stay fateful to the original drawing, I created a quick mock-up of this on a multiplane environment on Adobe After Effects to assure that this was the camera movement they wanted.

Once I got the approval, I traced each frame by hand to create a more consistent animated final product and, since I saved quite a bit of time with this, I went back to boil the frames as I had wanted, fix up some of the rigid animation I had done in a rush, create a smoother colour gradient, and added a small animated sequence of the project’s logo. I also overlayed everything with a rough paper texture to further emulate traditional children’s drawings.

Considering the time I was given to work on this, I was just glad that I had managed to do as much as I did and finished it in time.

WEEK 2

Maybe it’s good that I’m not getting paid

8/10/2022

The fact that I was doing an unpaid internship came with a lot of concern from friends and family. I didn’t mind it much – I was happy to be given the opportunity, and I was living at home so my monthly expenses are quite low. And I didn’t think that I was being overworked while given nothing in return – the catering at these different studios are pretty awesome. All snacks, drinks, and meals were covered by the company, and I took complete advantage of this.

It had been interesting visiting different studios that specialized in different aspects of a project. This was the third studio I had visited for the same project, specializing in video editing.

It was almost comforting to know that the first draft was never the best, but only the starting point. The rough cut of the commercial felt off, especially with the pacing. I watched as everyone gave different pointers to different versions of the commercial (to which there were many, customized for different devices and platforms) to improve the film before showing them to the client. The director took these notes and sat with the editor to make adjustments. It was the same long waiting period again, waiting to be called back in to review, make comments, repeat. Things felt rather slow until one of the clients dropped a bomb: they needed at least the main film done and ready to be sent for review before midnight, as their boss was boarding a flight.

Chaos ensued. Everyone suddenly had far too many things to do. The art directors who had been editing graphics to be superimposed in the film were rushing, and I was suddenly given a task:

Can you make subtitles on Adobe Illustrator?

…Could I make subtitles for a film on Adobe Illustrator?

I was stunned by this question for far longer than I should’ve. A very quick new thing I learned at that moment: the editing team only put in elements that were sent to them. They don’t make any of the elements by themself, including subtitles, which they needed as an Adobe Illustrator file.

The number of times I had ever opened the Adobe Illustrator software on my laptop amounted to a single digit number, and a great percentage of that was me opening it on accident. I was given the briefest tutorial by a very distracted art director constituting of art boards, what font to use, and shortcuts.

I stumbled through this process panickedly and cluelessly, not knowing if I was doing it right or what it was supposed to look like as everyone was busy. In the end, there wasn’t enough time to add the subtitles. Nevertheless, I appreciate the simulation. And I definitely needed to watch a few Youtube videos at home.

At my question of when we would finish up today, the account executive laughed. Things were too unpredictable for that. When I was told that I could go home early again, I expressed that I felt slightly guilty for not staying for the entire work day and receiving the full experience, and perhaps that would make me a bad intern. My boss quickly dismissed this, saying that I shouldn’t burden myself and take whatever I needed from this experience, for all I needed was something to show for it, which I didn’t need to go home at midnight in order to get them.

I was also told that I was lucky to be assigned to this team who did let me experience every stage of the production process and give me tasks that would help develop useful skills. “Your intern experience shouldn’t be sitting in a cold office pushing a pen and going home at 4pm.”

I was touched by how accommodating the team was, and though I left work that day at 11pm, I was starting to believe that maybe it was really good that I wasn’t getting paid. I imagined that having a salary, even just a small one, would add more pressure to everything I did. I wouldn’t have felt comfortable working on anything I was given knowing that there was an expectation to live up to and that I owed them a certain level of expertise which I didn’t have, and I definitely wouldn’t have felt comfortable leaving early when the day was far from over.

The unlimited free drinks and snacks are enough.

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.

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 initially.

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.

I was quite excited to see the post-production process; it was done in a dark room to monitor the exact color of everything onscreen, and extra lighting could be added to different angles. A notable comment from the client was that the night club scene at the end was too dimly lit and should be brighter and well-lit, which many people thought was odd.

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.

The whole thing required a bit of multitasking. The team was working on the fashion project while still brainstorming ideas for the sports drink project. Like many other advertisers, the brand wanted a young male actor famous among young women as one of the presenters, though the main issue was that despite some of them being in their twenties, no one in the team held any particular fondness of him with reasons ranging from them not being familiar with any of his work to him being notoriously difficult to work with onset. Though I was part of the target audience and was a fan of other male celebrities, I wasn’t entirely familiar with him either. It was a challenge to create something that would put a person you didn’t like in a good, inspiring, and admirable position.

A handful of questions were thrown at me, trying to understand the general appeal of male celebrities to young women and what fans are particularly interested in. It was clear that there was a general stigma against young male celebrities, be it actors or boyband members, or any male figure with a large young female fanbase, though I tried my best to put things in perspective and compared this fan culture to that of football fans which are seen to be male-dominated. With the similarities pointed out, this sparked an idea for another direction where parallels are shown between the two presenters.

The anecdote about rice

18/10/2022

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.”

The company values

19/10/2022

One of Ogilvy’s five company values is to be pervasively creative. This may include showing enthusiasm and passion to clients by overdelivering or taking the initiative to create fun side projects for the main project. As the fashion project is about one person being able to express themself in many different ways, one side project was to encourage employees of the company to submit photos of them before and after a fashion makeover. To create a few examples, the team and some other employees they knew went out to take photos for the project, which I found to be a fun break from the usual routine of working in the office or at a studio.

Speaking of usual routine, there was another briefing for another makeup brand launching a powder product that was successful in the west in Thailand for the first time. The target audience was slightly different this time as it was aimed at more mature women who want to save as much time getting ready as possible, but also have marketing that could be geared toward Gen Z, as always.

My boss was a 39-year-old man with a kindergartener son and was nowhere near the target audience nor was he familiar with the product; the account executive team had to explain a woman’s typical makeup routine and some of the issues/inconveniences surrounding it to him for a while. I was curious; he had been in charge of multiple successful makeup and beauty campaigns in the past with big clients like Maybelline New York, yet he had no interest in these products himself. How was he able to sell things he had no use for and show their appeal?

He was particularly perceptive of things; after hearing testimonies from different women, he began to make statements himself to see if it resonated with them and verified that he was on the right track, then suggested ideas based on that. ‘Relentless Curiosity’ was another one of Ogilvy’s company values, and I didn’t truly understand it until I saw it reflected in him and his process.

Pretending to be a football fan

20/10/2022

The end of the fashion project was approaching with only two working days left and everything had to pick up its pace. During this, the other projects couldn’t be overlooked either.

As I had found out, the initial footballer chosen as one of the presenters for the sports brand was actually a tentative proposal which had fallen through and replaced with a different footballer, though still tentative as well. This posed multiple problems immediately – as the team wanted to create a TV commercial that was able to sell and have artistic value, a lot of effort was put into justifying the presenters chosen which involved a in-depth study of their lives and career in order to convey a story unique to them. The young Norwegian footballer with fan edits on Twitter was replaced by an older British footballer with three children who failed to transfer teams and had just lost a match the night before, making his online presence at that moment ridiculed by football fans. A great part of the script had to be scrapped.

I had no interest in football whatsoever, though as everyone was incredibly busy with finishing up work for the fashion project, I was tasked in researching the new footballer’s life and any interesting pointers that could be developed into a script. Research, in this case, could but didn’t have to consist of reading a Wikipedia page. I felt a better way to go about understanding the public perception towards him was to check news articles and mentions of him on social media to get perspective of the media as well as football fans.

On top of the subtitles, I was tasked with making 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.

Sketching a storyboard

21/10/2022

In preparation to presenting ideas to the client, my boss told me that a presentation was only good when it could clearly communicate an imaginative idea to the most unimaginative person possible. Some presentations would have a script and some visual references e.g. other commercials, scenes from a film, mockups, or still images that helped convey the idea of what the commercial would look like. When a script played more fantastical elements or had a plot that was difficult to imagine, storyboards were then made to give a clear visual idea.

The different ideas for the sports drink brand were quite imaginative, with some playing with split-screens, match cuts, and VFX. It was an art director’s role to brief storyboard artists on what to draw, and that required them drawing out the storyboard themselves first. I was given the opportunity to sketch out one of the ideas to brief the storyboard artists, and I was very excited to draw.

I wasn’t given an example of the sketches so I wasn’t sure about the standards these drawings had to be at given the short timeframe (2 days). I didn’t want to risk handing in sloppy work, however, given that this was the first drawing task they gave me, so I took the time to clean up my line art and add shading, which turned out to be quite fun. I had never been very confident in drawing storyboards as I found it difficult to find the right shots and composition, though I tried to reference to commercials that were discussed and other scenes from films that could be applicable.

WEEK 3

Finishing up

24/10/2022

It was the final day, and the two major stages left were the VFX required for the film and the narration, which had to be done at different studios.

As the film was about one woman who multiplied herself in different styles, a lot of stand-ins were scouted to have similar proportions to the main model and everyone wore matching wigs. The key part in the VFX was to superimpose the main model’s face on all the stand-ins, especially in the final scene with everyone.

As I was monitoring the film with everyone, I noticed and pointed out a few small details such as an inconsistency in the phone the model held and the final close-up shot where a strand of her wig was stuck to her lips. This garnered a flustered response from the rest of the team as they needed extra time to make those adjustments, and I felt minutely bad for indirectly piling more work onto them, though my boss assured me that it was the right thing to do as this was the final stage where every detail had to be checked.

Things grew tense as time was running out. As more time was needed for the VFX and adjustments had to be made from clients’ feedback, the team had to separate with copywriters heading to the recording studio for the narration while art directors stayed at the first studio to finish everything. I found myself in a hurry too as there was a small dispute over the romanization of english words that ended with me having to go back and redo some of the spelling in different versions of the subtitles.

Once the adjustments were done, I showed the art director the storyboard I had sketched for the sports drink project, who, slightly surprised, said I didn’t have to be this detailed as it was going to be a guideline for the professional storyboard artist to work from. My boss, on the other hand, encouraged this as a way to intimidate the storyboard artist (said jokingly). I was given some pointers on some sketches to make things more precise and capture the mood better, which I spent the rest of the day working on.

The finished sketches:

The other art director returned from holiday around the evening. As the narration recording wasn’t done yet, the subtitles couldn’t be finalized as there may be spontaneous changes to the script. It was getting late, and I had the sketches to work on, so I transferred all my subtitle and disclaimer files to the other art director and went home at 9pm, which was nothing when I found out that the project was finished at 6am the next day.

As a side note, I got the most out of the catering – Korean snacks, three different drinks throughout the day, and a big (but most importantly free) bowl of ramen for dinner.

The final product, with subtitles done by me:

The special cutdown, with the coveted tiny disclaimers done by yours truly:

It’s always high-time

26/10/2022 – 27/10/2022

It turned out that there was no “low time” for jobs; at least none that I had experienced so far. That was another main difference between working in a company and freelance; though there was no control over workload or projects, there was a salary and no dry periods.

The beginnings of a project were interesting; some brands had very specific sets of demands that must be met. An example of this was Maybelline New York always requiring every visual material to be set in New York, and creatives involved in production such as songwriters or presenters must be New York-based. This made research slightly more difficult as everything was narrowed down to that one aspect, so if I had come across a talented artist with style perfect for the campaign, there was no chance in using them if they were based in Los Angeles.

Additionally, the storyboard I had sketched was completed by a professional storyboard artist. I don’t have access to these photos, unfortunately, but I could see how it followed my sketches with some adjustments in details and angles for further clarity that my sketches lacked. They also worked very fast, having only a few days to complete it, and the storyboard captured the mood and tone of the brand well.

This brand came with a lot of challenges, my boss went on to explain; it was difficult to escape the label of an “old people product” and try to expand their consumer market to include gen z. It was even more difficult for health products and sports drinks when Gen Z already have a range of sports drinks marketed towards them, from Gatorade to Pocari Sweat.

Think outside the box (unless the client doesn’t like it)

28/10/2022

The preparation to presenting to a client requires organizing a visually pleasing presentation that matched the brand’s aesthetic (I realized that anyone who went the extra mile of making very pretty slides in high school would be good at this job) and a rehearsal within the team.

It was my first time observing a creative team presenting their ideas to the client; everyone was suddenly speaking very politely, which was funny.

There were a few directions that I thought would make for a good film and would appeal to Gen Z, so I was surprised when the client shut down basically everything, made contradictory points and other feedback that indicated that they didn’t fully listen to the details of each idea.

Some very confused notes I made as I listened to the client’s feedback:

In the end, it was clear that they essentially wanted a very simple and direct commercial with a celebrity holding their product, not a film. Some of the comments did rub me the wrong way; they said that the young actor didn’t seem relevant to their brand despite them having chosen him themselves only because of his young fanbase. Despite the team going through the effort of showcasing what he was known for and to honor that, the client only wanted to have him holding the drink, believing that fans would blindly buy anything their favorite celebrities held and at the same time not seeing the value in the presenter they had chosen other than his fanbase.

A lot of questions floated around after the presentation; how do we willingly make something we don’t like? How do we settle for less? Will we still be respected for our craft if we willingly make something so shallow?

The team essentially went back to the drawing board, throwing out ideas according to the client’s feedback and writing scripts based on their demands. It was a disheartening experience overall, but it was interesting to see the team collect themselves and work with what they had.

WEEK 4

Not my brightest moment

31/10/2022 – 1/11/2022

While figuring out how to fix one project, the team also had to prepare to present another project, where they asked me to work on some of the graphics, though I didn’t get to work on them until the evening as the day was filled with meetings for other projects.

I was quite tired at that point, and this somehow contributed to me not completely understanding what they wanted me to make. Despite my many mishaps ending up with one of the art directors working on it instead, the team was very patient with me and tried their best to explain, and I was very grateful for that.