Advert - Tiger / Wall

RI004 - Tiger / Wall - 04/2016

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updated: 2022-02-08

From the [previous project][], I mentioned the lack of equipment and personel for production and started to concert about the future of the group. My salary through out the time at Rice was comparable to a car driver. I was never informed about the financial details of the group either.

When I asked about the direction of Rice, Andy’s reply was that we will eventually seperate from Digipost and become an indipendent production company. At the time, my possesion was a Canon 600D, a 50mm plastic lens, and a Shure SM58. Đông contributed more with a Canon 5D, a 35mm, 50mm, 105mm (or 85mm?), a recorder H6, a mic Rode NTG and a lavalier set. Other than that, we have 2 set of computer for editing and the support for post-production from Digipost. Perhaps this is a fortune for a small film crew. But in the meeting, I pointed out the problem of depending on equipment from individuals would not last very long on the long-run if we were aiming to conduct a professional production. More over, if we wanted to increase the number of output, the current workforce is not sufficient.

| Tôi | Đại | Đông | Linh | Andy | Nguyên | Hiếu | @ Họp ở Rice (Hà chụp - 2016-??-??)

Everybody seemed to understand with the judgement. To settle our nerves, Andy explained about the collaboration between Digipost/Rice and Yolo - Digipost supply the post-production in exchange Yolo supply the help on production. In the future for sure we will invest when we raised enough fund. With the very fast changing digital era, I recognised that the future was very unpredictable. I did not however ask for what the funding at the time was and where the income were comming in was either. I just closed my eyes and put all my trust into Andy and everybody after the meeting without discussing the benefits or reponsibility in the future. Sounds really romatic but this is the very mistake that I made in my early days.

Not long later, Andy got Nguyên to join the team. This lady has history with Rice when she came for help with a short film that she did earlier. Đông cut that film I recall. We also receive a couple of applications. One day Andy rushes in to tells us of a letter that came in. This email read as though it was a casual chat with a drunk friend - completely with no seriousness. We had such a laugh and decided to arrange for a meet. If I am not mistaken, after one project, Đại joined Rice with his hunger to learn, his passion and his lively personality. Sometime later, we have Hiếu to join the film crew and Mai Nguyên for the producer crew; but Hiếu grew fond of still photography and didn’t stay with Rice for very long. Hằng was the accountant for Digipost also contribute with the production of this project.

One day, Any walked in and asked us about an offer from Tiger. Their main advert campaign was to tour a massive wall 30m high for public to climp up and ring a bell in 6 provinces of southern Việt Nam. Apart from making films for the celeb, they want to have videos from ordinary people who participate in the event post to social media to increase spread and quality of the campaign compare to the previous year. My reply was that it is possible but we need more man and equipment for testing and also we couldn’t promise on the numbers of videos. On the testing day with Linh at the Phan Đình Phùng sport center in district 3, the thing I was worried about the most was post processing since we would be doing all of this outdoor. After we Thu Hà joined the team to take care of the social media side we were ready to place equipments’ order and head to battle with Yolo.

| Thành | Kim | Phương | Quang | Đông | @ Bức Tường Tiger 2016

This was the schedule for 2016:

Province	Date
Cần Thơ	2016/03/26-27
Quy Nhơn	2016/04/09-11
Rạch Giá	2016/04/09-10
Đà Nẵng	2016/04/28-29
Nha Trang	2016/05/27-29
HCM	2016/06/09-12
Biên Hòa	2016/06/25-26

We didn’t visit Quy Nhơn but Rạch Giá instead, I have no idea why.

When we showed up at the first province, Cần Thơ, the wall was still being build. Everybody was quite concern because the wall was really tall and we could all imagine the worst scenario. Yolo head to battle first with all their forces. The rest of us, GoPro team, was just hanging out waiting to be assigned somewhere to set up our station. From the very start, I request to seperate the post-production station away from the wall just to minimize the risk. Anyhow, a few days later, the construction was done.

Shame that we weren’t allow to cut the films somewhere else because as I understand, Rice and Yolo wasn’t the only company involve in this event. So we sit right next to the wall.

We got an iMac 64”, 9 GoPros and a tons of accessories, a big Lacie harddrive and a brand new MacBook 15” for the project. The organisors of the event didn’t want to cooperate with us very much since it was a lot of hassle just to get enough table space & chair and electricity for ourselves. Umbrellas was never enough and all the electronics kept overheat.

| Hà | Nguyên | Trung | Andy | @ Bức Tường Tiger 2016

Work start around 9 a.m, finished around 10 everyday. After a couple of climper in the beginning, I started to get the hang of things and began to pass down the process for the other guys of how they would mount the cameras and pass the footage over for editing. At some point, we started to rent more laptops for editing since we couldn’t handle the number of climpers with just 2 machine. We produce around 30 films per day for this project. Each province we spent at least one day and max out at 3 days. I think after this project, no one can beat us with the numbers of production rate. But compare to George Méliès, this is just child play. Here is our Ironman 2016.

I don’t remember exactly at which province, but I met a football friend from RMIT. Hùng was also involve in this event with Click. Because of this relationship, umbrellas, chairs and electricity was no longer a concern like the beginning. Things were going quite well even though we fried under the sun and showering rain with all the electronic equipments. When we got to Nha Trang, we half terrified of the win, half wanted to just get down the the beach behind us. In the evening, apart from cutting those films in the barking music of the event, we were bombarded with stage lights - it was working like editing in a night club.

Biên Hoà, the last province, the great walls of Tiger was build in a public park in front of lots of trees. Just like before, we setup our station right below the wall. This time we didn’t bring the iMac but rent laptops to cut because there were other projects at home that needed loving. Things were going just fine until one of the climper staff shouting. Realised what was going on, I also start to shout at people sitting at our table to leave everything and run off. I managed to yanked the brand new MacBook right in front of me get away from the wall just in time. Light rain that day reminded me of the British weather. All of us were just standing there looking at the pile of collapsed. Luckily no one was hurt.

A few years later, I saw Tiger learned their lesson and redesign the wall into a rectangular structure way safer than the flimpsy piece of paper in 2016.

Below is the final main film, produced by Yolo.