McD APP
- McD APP ‘Takeaway’
A sequence of 4 short ads for mobile, that may look simple at first, but was thoroughly challenging to execute. Both on shoot & during post-production. From the minds of creatives at Leo Burnett & production house PRS – my 1st project with them – we crafted final films that are seamless & unexpected, yet interesting to watch. This particular one, we shot at the Danau Kota McD outlet with the adjoining DBKL Park – a very nice & beautiful one too. With our main talent riding a Segway – the original idea was a skateboard – but we wanted to inject some modernity to it & to make the scenes move along more fluidly to pick up the McD takeaway bag from the outlet ‘below’. We were given timings that we could shoot in McD, so we shot the outdoor scene first. The challenge, besides obviously lining up the packs perfectly, etc, was that our Main guy didn’t have any experience on the Segway! So it was a 30min practice for him & in the end, he was a semi-pro, having to look at his phone & at the same time balance on it to pick up the pack and so on. The 2nd part in the Outlet was ensuring our McD crew placed the takeaway bag always on the same spot on the counter top. Q-Take was a big help on set. And then the rest was up to De Touche who handled the post-production. This was the easiest of the 4 boards to execute. Shot using the Red Dragon at 6k resolution by DOP Simon Chin, edited by Ng & color graded by Chloe. Music composed by Rec Room.
2. McD APP ‘Dine In’
A sequence of 4 short ads for mobile, that may look simple at first, but was thoroughly challenging to execute. Both on shoot & during post-production. From the minds of creatives at Leo Burnett & production house PRS – my 1st project with them – we crafted final films that are seamless & unexpected, yet interesting to watch. Of the whole lot, this proved to be the most problematic. After hours of trying to match the lighting from both packs on the tray even though they are both in the same McD outlet, we managed to create quite a nice seamless spot. What was always important is to cap it all off with their acknowledgment of each other, that makes it all the more real & interactive. We shot the McD crew scene first, with against a full green screen as he walked into frame & raised his hands up. Art Director William picked up the tray on a ladder. We had to ensure our background extras were interacting with the SOK machines as a separate background plate. Then we shot the couple upstairs in the outlet interacting with each other & then we had our same McD crew lie on the floor & raise the packs to roughly where his hands ended in the previous bottom frame. This had to be quite exact, as our Male customer would then take the tray off him. Q-Take was a life saver here. The customers then reacted to ‘him’ & nodded happily. Matching the lighting in post & digitally removing our McD crew’s hands from the bottom frame was tough, but thankfully, the camera was all locked so that did help a little. Shot as the last scene of the day, we used the Red Dragon at 6k resolution with DOP Simon Chin. Edited by Ng & color graded by Chloe. Music composed by Rec Room.
3. McD APP ‘Drive In’
A sequence of 4 short ads for mobile, that may look simple at first, but was thoroughly challenging to execute. Both on shoot & during post-production. From the minds of creatives at Leo Burnett & production house PRS – my 1st project with them – we crafted final films that are seamless & unexpected, yet interesting to watch. What was expected to be the toughest to shoot, mainly because of the whole main prop – the car – in the frame! Turned out to be relatively simple. Lol. So we cracked our brains, on whether to use a fully cut car at the main windscreen area as that would have solved our problems. But we couldn’t get one with a nice interior to be cut. Thus, we found a large Estima 7 seater which had the gear stick at the Steering Wheel, so we had the inside where the normal gearbox would be. Our Art Director then sat inside that area for an hour at least – Air conditioned – and helped to raise up the takeaway bags in a tray so our dad could pick them up. We shot this scene second. The first was shooting our McD crew walking into frame as camera panned to him, & he raises his hands up to a green screen with the tray. Again, our trusted Art Director William would pick up the tray from him & that would be our first pass, followed by matching the car scene tray with the packs using Q-Take. Shot in the same day, using the Red Dragon at 6k resolution by DOP Simon Chin, edited by Ng & color graded by Chloe. Music composed by Rec Room.
4. McD APP ‘Drive Thru’
A sequence of 4 short ads for mobile, that may look simple at first, but was thoroughly challenging to execute. Both on shoot & during post-production. From the minds of creatives at Leo Burnett & production house PRS – my 1st project with them – we crafted final films that are seamless & unexpected, yet interesting to watch. The most challenging of the lot in terms of the practical shoot, this board required stitching together 3 scenarios. We shot the top screen first with a green screen bottom, so our McD crew could place the pack on the bottom. Then we shot our guy in an office mimicking the actions with a transition effect into an actual car. The original plan was to shoot with a car rig mounted onto the window of the car. But the plan fell to shambles during the actual mounting process, because we couldn’t match the framing of the guy in the car to him in the office correctly. Thus, we decided to shoot the car static against green, & have him mimic the continuous action from the office into the car. Then he interacted with the ‘COD’ machine & our ‘top’ McD Crew & grabbed the Takeaway bag from our Art Director William in the green suit – standing on a ladder. Again, the main challenge here was also matching the 2 bags together, as everytime the bag was lowered in the bottom frame, it would be out of sync with the other previously shot scene. Needless to say, we had quite a lot of takes. Shot in the same day, with De Tpuche handling Post-production. We used the Red Dragon at 6k resolution handled by DOP Simon Chin, edited by Ng & color graded by Chloe. Music composed by Rec Room.