For the next few days, Stella, Geok and I visited many locations around Beijing, met with most of the crew and generally prepared for a difficult shoot. The weather was showing all the signs of becoming a problem with a huge dumping of snow onto Beijing on the 29th! To be honest, I was amazed at how different Beijing looked after a snowfall and took the opportunity to go see the Forbidden City & Tiananmen Square whilst under snow!

The TVC required a lot of background plates for a fast paced walking sequence. For this, I had been shooting plates with my 5D2 in Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia. Now it was time to film more in Beijing. So Geok sent me along with a local fixer and using my slider I was able to film quite a few plates suitable for our project. The TVC is based around the concept of Chinese superstar athlete Sun Yang making his way to the London Olympic Games with a little help from Coke! So we see him relaxing with friends at a party before heading off on his journey across China and then across the world. Its a sort of visual metaphor for his hard work, to make it to the games with scenes involving him evading bad weather, the press, catching cabs, avoiding distractions while always marching forward along his journey. For me it was an opportunity to play with visual rhythm, seamless transitions and compact a lot of story in a short amount of time. I had great support from Agency creative Colin Lee, who actively involved himself into the project. Another person joining us in Beijing was Damien Yang, now representing his new company Voltfx Shanghai! He had made the switch and had moved to Shanghai lock stock and barrel and was energised to start his first real job with me on this Coke TVC. Also from Singapore was DOP and friend Goh Meng Hing, who arrived in Beijing in time to see the locations with us. Goh had previously shot my Ponds TVC for Jakarta and I truly value his expertise as Cinematographer. He could also speak Mandarin fluently which turned out to be incredibly handy. However its his creative ability that I enthusiastically embrace on each project. We think alike when it comes to filmmaking and in a logistically challenged environment like this current project, that counts for a lot!

With a large crew, cast of a many and a horrendously early start, we began production on the 4th of December 2011. The temperature at 4am was -22˚C and Geok had organised massive blow heaters, tents and good catering to keep us all happy! The first scene we shot was our London arrival scene. Shot in central Beijing, we dressed the street with bollards, post boxes, a London Cab, a Phone Box and signage to suspend disbelief that this was London in the middle of summer! In post, Damien and Nuke artist Garth O’Brien replaced parts of the shot and included “Big Ben” and other London buildings and tracked in additional signage plus other enhancements such as a hint of sun! The scene had about 40 extras milling about some of whom had to be dressed in summer outfits. One particular girl from the Ukraine wore a very short mini skirt and blouse as she rushes out from inside the phone box! I still don’t know how she managed not to freeze! At times, Damien and his team had to remove the effects of breath in freezing cold conditions to stop the visual betrayal of winter! In any case, the shoot was quite a challenge even with a huge supportive crew to help make it happen!

Still on day one, we moved up the road to the next location where an even bigger challenge awaited – the “rain scene”! Twenty or so rain towers had been setup with a long hose emanating from a large tanker truck parked along the street. The tanker still had snow all over it as it began to pump freezing cold water into the air! Fifty extras with umbrellas began to run as we follow Sun Yang along a 20 meter section of track. He is momentarily distracted by a beautiful and skimpily dressed woman who passes him by drinking coke, but soon begins to run to avoid getting wet from the rain! It was a very large scene involving a lot of work to get the right visuals since it was filmed in a very public place. The location was well suited to our needs though and provided some nice depth and realism.

After several takes, we finished that scene and moved on again. “The paparazzi scene” involved a precision “wipe” past a lamp post which transits us to a fast paced scene, where Sun Yang dodges the press to catch a cab. The camera had to land exactly in front of the Cab (a Beijing taxi) so that we could match frame it to several other Cabs in a rapidly cut sequence. At the end of day one, we shot several more cabs on the back of a low loader to complete that sequence, by driving them around central Beijing. That was another particularly freezing experience!