In December, 2017 I was contacted by NOI Pictures about a stills commission on the set of an action and adventure TVC for FWD Vietnam and I jumped at the opportunity to be involved.
A few days later I met the team from Hunter One creative agency who where producing the TVC and they talked me through the script of the TVC. It would be based on the concept of “the leap of possibilities” and it was going to be an action packed three days. The difficulty though was that I had to shoot everything live and that I couldn’t direct the talent or use any flash to freeze the action so I had to rely on fast shutter speeds and available light. During the shoot I worked closely with Hunter One’s creative director Quan Pham as we worked out the best angles to shoot from.
The focus for the stills campaign would be on the leap and the celebration afterwards and FWD was after images that felt as candid and spontaneous as possible.
On the first morning we started at a pool in Ho Chi Minh City and the art department had built a giant diving board at the end of the pool. We tried a few images as the diver was jumping into the water but in the end the strongest shot ended up being a challenging shot that we took underwater.
I had my Outex underwater housing with me so that I could take my camera underwater but the challenge was getting down to the bottom of the pool and timing it so that I could be in the right spot when the talent jumped in. It proved impossible to get the timing correct during filming so I asked the film crew if I could borrow their scuba diving equipment after they had finished shooting and I was able to spend about 10 mins with the talent getting the shot as the subject excitedly played up to the camera.
My producer Francois from Noi Pictures also captured a behind the scenes video as I was shooting.
We then headed to a concert venue in the city to shoot musician and FWD Vietnam ambassador Toc Tien performing on stage in the afternoon. The stunt for this shot was of Toc Tien doing a stage dive into the crowd of about 200 extras. The lighting was low and it was difficult to freeze the moment so in the end FWD chose some shots that I quickly set up with Toc on stage and the stage lights blaring in the background at the end of the shoot.
Below is the finished artwork and some behind the scenes shots that the team from Hunter One captured as I was shooting.
The following morning our call time was at 5am and we headed south from HCMC to the coast of Long Hai where we shot our cliff jumping scene. The actress for this shot was from the Team X stunt group and when we arrived the Team X crew where busy working on the set. They had set up a harness and rigging system so that the actress could run and leap from the cliff and be caught mid air and brought safely to the ground.
I climbed up the rigging to get a shot from the side as the stuntwoman took another flying leap from the cliff.
The stunt woman gets a helping hand from the Team X crew as she is lifted up for another jump.
She seemed a little nervous at first but with each jump she became more and more confident and by the end she was loving it. We shot from both the top of the rock to capture her from behind and also shots from underneath but the shot from behind was the stronger shot and below is the finished artwork used in the campaign.
The final scene that was used in the campaign was shot at the floating markets in Can Tho. This time a stunt groom dressed in traditional Vietnamese wedding attire was jumping from boat to boat on his way to his wedding ceremony and it involved a number of flying acrobatic leaps. Due to the difficulty of the stunt the crew where filming from two camera angles and they also filmed a few scenes with a drone making it difficult to find a position where I was out of frame but close enough to get a dynamic and interesting shot.
We captured a lot of great shots but in the end they used the below shot of the groom leaping towards camera.
Below are some behind the scenes shot that my assistant Tuan Anh took as we shot from other angles.
Quan was also very kind to share some of the outtakes from the campaign which are below.
It was a fantastic shoot and I loved every minute of it. Make sure to take a look at the TVC that was produced for the campaign as well.