We were approached by the Singapore office of an international public relations and marketing consulting firm about producing the Japan video for an Asian wide promotional campaign for Windows 11. The campaign spotlights young creators, social campaigners and innovators who use Windows 11, showcasing how Windows 11 enables them to do their best work.
The creator to appear in the Japan video, Mizuno Cabbage, was already lined up so as the production crew on the ground here in Japan we were tasked with finding the location, filming the day long shoot with our crew and then completing the edit to delivery, coordinating with the Japan-based client and the agency in Singapore.
Once we had the go for the project there was less than 2 weeks to find a suitable location to film in Tokyo, so after narrowing the locations down to 5 by an online search we then headed out to do a location scout for 3 of them. We were looking for a house studio type place, with lots of natural light and clean, simple, modern lines that would allow us to focus on the talent, not the location.
The main issue we always face with these types of studios In Tokyo is that they are almost never designed for sound recording, just for the visual look of the space. Downtown Tokyo is obviously a busy place and the locations that are easily accessible are usually the noisiest ones so it’s really important to get out to the location and have a listen. Funnily enough, at the location we eventually choose, when I asked the studio manager if we could be quiet and have listen for the sound, immediately an ambulance with blaring siren went past, followed by a noisy motorcycle! The studio was on a, generally, quiet street though so, as well as having amazing natural light it had the interior style we were looking for so we decided to go with that location. As it turns out, passing traffic wasn’t an issue at all during the interview and we got some nice clean sound from both the lav and boom mics on the day. .
With the location locked in, we then co-ordinated with the agency and Tokyo-based client about the style of the video that was required, including the clothing of the talent and prepared for the shoot.
Shoot day, we supplied the Japanese and English bilingual crew of Director, DoP and Sound/Assistant, along with all camera, light and sound equipment. Although we do rent if there is a specific camera that the client is requesting, this time we went with our Canon C70 cinema camera, recording in 12-bit Cinema RAW Light. All other equipment was also ours so our familiarity with it allowed us to completely focus on the story of our talent, rather than spending time on unfamiliar equipment.
The client was keen to ensure that we dug a little bit deeper than normal, to find out what drives the talent, how they actually specificially use Windows 11 in their everyday workflow and in what way Windows 11 as a tool allows them to be more creative. Keeping that in mind, although we only needed less than a minute and a half of sound for the final video, we had a nearly hour long talk/interview with the talent, taking our time to get to learn as much about him and how he works as we could.
With the interview done, the rest of the day was spent filming scenes that could illustrate some of the Windows 11 usage scenarios that he had talked about and to get some general shots of him at work creating.
The first draft was due a week after the shoot and then we went through some rounds of revisions to make sure we had a video that properly aligned with the client’s vision and also the wider Asia campaign. Final delivery was a month after the shoot day, on schedule, with the client and agency (and us!) delighted with how it turned out.
We supplied a clean version with the English subtitles as a seperate srt file so that the client could have the option of putting on either English or Japanese subtitles, and some frame grabs to illustrate an article on the Microsoft Japan website, here.
