In March, 2016 I was contacted by Rossalind from the Western Australian grain growers' cooperative CBH Group in regards to producing a corporate film for the company.
CBH would be leading a tour of 25 West Australian growers through Vietnam to see where all the wheat from Western Australian farmers ends up. CBH Group own a 50% stake in Interflour Group and the farmers would be visiting the Interflour Mill located in the Cai Mep Industrial port in Ba Ria, Vung Tau and also the Heineken Brewery in Ho Chi Minh City.
Rossalind also wanted me to visit the Interflour Mill in advance of the tour so that we could shoot plenty of b-roll footage of the facility in advance of the tour.
She mentioned that it was important to capture the fact that these are Australian farmers, many of whom have never left outback Australia and would be going to see and do things that are very different from their way of living at home.
We would be doing interviews with 4-5 grain producers and then we would also be interviewing a few CBH senior staff members to tell the story from a more corporate perspective. We would then pull it altogether with some stock footage of Ho Chi Minh City.
Over the next few months Rossalind put together a wish list for stock footage and I arranged a crew and aerial permits for shooting at the Interflour Cai Mep facility. It was important to arrange our shoot dates around the arrival of a cargo ship at the facility and therefore the shoot dates where confirmed quite late as shipping schedules are weather dependent and very difficult to predict.
On arrival at Interflour we did a full days scout at the facility and planned out our shots. Due to bad weather the cargo ship had been delayed at sea and this meant that it would be arriving on our second day of shooting. I had planned to shoot a timelapse of the ship as it arrived at port but as we had a drone team booked for the second day we would now be able to get aerial footage as it arrived as well and I was really happy with the cut that we were able to put together with this material.
We had to deal with pretty heavy rains in the afternoons but we managed to get some great outdoor footage when the skies cleared and then plenty of good footage inside the mill as well. Below are some behind the scenes shots as I directed the drone team of Trung and Long.
The tour dates rolled around a month later and for the second trip I was joined by location sound recordist Vu and my camera assistant Kyle. Samantha from CBH Group joined me during the shoot and she interviewed the farmers.
On our first day we did a full day tour of the Interflour Mill and then we toured the Heineken factory and visited the Interflour bakery in HCMC on the second day.
The farmers were great to work with, they were very proud of the efforts of their company and they were excited by the opportunities that the companies investment in Asia presented for them.
We got a lot of great footage and we had a wealth of information to use from the interviews and I was really happy with the edit that we produced.
CBH also requested delivery of three shorter films that could be used in social media and you can see these edits below.
They were so happy with the films that they contacted me again the following year.
In 2017 they would be bringing a group of around 60 Western Australian farmers to Interflour Cai Mep, for the grand opening of InterMalt which would be the first malting plant in South East Asia.
We had visited the facility the year before but it was a building site at the time
Their focus this time was to get as much media coverage of the event as possible so in addition to capturing the events of the day they we’re seeking short raw broadcast quality video and interviews of the opening to be sent from Vietnam to CBH and then to TV and radio media outlets in Australia as soon as practical following the opening ceremony.
The interviews this time where pre written by Todd from CBH Group and we would feature CBH Group Chairman Wally Newman, Interflour CEO & Managing Director Greg Harvey and Western Australian grain grower Chris Antonio.
It would be a one day shoot this time and I had a day in advance to scout the facility. This time they provided stock footage of the facility that I could use in the film.
I once again worked with sound recordist Vu and my colleague Hugo joined me so that he could quickly edit the interviews and send them off in time for CBH to distribute them to Australian news outlets for the 6pm evening news.
I would then be delivering a 1-2 minute edit and 3 x 30 second interview edits for social media purposes.
On the scouting day I met Samantha again who was now working with Interflour and she gave me a tour of the facility and she also took me into the tent that had been constructed for the event and walked me through the running sheet.
The shooting day went well, we did a few runs of the interviews with the subjects reading from a teleprompter and then we also did a few runs from memory so that we had some more natural looking footage to work with. We got the interviews and the ceremony footage off in time and then I spent the afternoon shooting footage as the group did a tour of the facility.
As the script was pre written the post production turnaround was very quick and I delivered my first draft a few days after the shoot. We made a few minor changes and then I delivered the films.