After many months, countless meetings, religious wars over the "meaning" of a green bus or white shirt, we finally reached a milestone for VietnamWorks.com -- our very first television commercial. It was fascinating participate in a process leading from an initial idea to a finished product. I went on the shoot a month ago, from 7am until 11pm at night. What you see here is just a tiny fraction of the footage we shot. And I learned that any film is made or broken in post production -- editing, music, sound effects are so important. Many thanks to My Linh of VNW Marketing, Saatchi & Saatchi (the ad agency), Star Films (the production house) and Pixel Garden (post-production house) for helping us to make a great ad.
I hope my Public likes it. If you don't, I don't wanna know! It goes on the air in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh next Satruday, October 6.
FYI, the first voice over says "Click on a mouse to get a better job fast." The ending voiceover says "VietnamWorks.com - Seize opportunity!" Funny enough, both sound better in Vietnamese but can't be translated exactly into English. A more accurate translation for the second voiceover would be "VietnamWorks - grab quickly fleeting opportunities before they pass you by."
Some shoot trivia: The two adorable twins watching our man chase the mouse weren't a planned part of the shoot at all. They were bystanders. The producer convinced their mother to let them appear in the shot. Their expression is perfect. The dog appearing with the cat also was unplanned. The cat trainer placed the cat on the pavement, then the dog came along and we were all wondering what was gonna happen. But the cat remained calm and it worked out great. It actually was raining during that scene, but you can't tell due to the post-production magic. The "old office" scene was shot at a real office -- it looked even lousier than what you see here, the shot doesn't do it justice. The "new office" scene was shot at the VietnamWorks office. All scenes were shot without sound. The sound was added in post-production. We cut a lot of scenes because we just couldn't fit them in.