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Blending past and present with ink and water, this week's Hotshot sees Troublemakers.tv and WeAreFlink unite under the guidance of agency MMIA to craft an animated homage to Chinese culture and ancestry for Central China Television.

Shots.net spoke to WeAreFlink executive producer Andreas Lampe to find out more about the ideas and processes that went into creating the spot. Check out the spot and the making of below.

What did the client want to achieve with this project and how did you go about
responding to that in your treatment?

Lampe: The backbone of the commercial was based on three sentences: "From invisible to visible", "From boundaries to no boundaries", and "CCTV - Believe in the power of the brand". We therefore constructed our progressive visuals around these narrative points.

Conceptually, the aim was to create a commercial that represented a journey from traditional China to modern China, all made out of ink to represent the history of CCTV, China and above all the power of branding.

We therefore did a lot of research on the history of China, aesthetics, symbols and paintings in Chinese art. Once that was done we worked on a series of style frames that would lead to the future storyboards that were created for the film.


How did the idea evolve and solidify in your discussions with MMIA?

Lampe:We had a lot of discussions about the storyboards, about the various individual elements and in particular certain movements. We had to discuss every element and how they would be interpreted by the Chinese audience through the lens of their specific cultural and social background. We soon realized the cultural differences and recognized that we had to learn the nuances in order to speak the right visual language.

Visiting China was great. It was our first time and definitely a culture shock. It took us a couple
of days to adjust to the Chinese vision. For obvious reasons the main creative challenge for us was to bring together the different cultural, social and commercial needs of the client with the ambitious aim of tell a story made out of ink. The agency was extremely hospitable and made sure we were taken care of at all times.

What were some of the key technical processes that went into making the film?

Lampe:While working on the final storyboards we'd been doing Research & Design. As this wasn't our first film with liquids and ink in particular, we new that we wanted to take it to another level. This meant that we needed to generate a big part of the ink in CG applications. Another reason for this was that we needed the ink to represent well known Chinese landmarks and other cultural reference points.
For that reason we decided to work with FumeFX and Krakota. That is were 3D Studiomax came into play. But we also worked with Softimage and Cinema4D for some of the animation and added some live action footage in the compositing process which we shot on a table top stage in house. This gave us a lot of flexibility.

What were the biggest challenges on this job?

Lampe:Our first challenge was communication across language and cultural borders. All parties
needed to make sure that there was nothing "lost in translation" so we decided to have a Chinese native speaker with us for the PPM in Beijing and throughout the entire project on our side.

The other major obstacle was the short period of time that was given to us. We knew from the
beginning that the deadline couldn't be moved. We literally had to work in two shifts from
start to end. It was an ambitious project for the obvious reasons, but still decided to keep an
open mind and work with techniques that we had to experiment with at first.