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Corporate Video Production: LTFV

Oct 20, 2015   //   by RandyQ   //   Uncategorized  //  No Comments
Corporate video screen capture

Shots taken from corporate video of Luen Thai Fishing Venture, Ltd.

OVERVIEW
We’ve been doing corporate video production for Luen Thai Fishing Venture for almost ten years, and I’ve had an insider’s view of the company’s growth from a one-product fresh-tuna company to its current stature as the undisputed tuna supply chain provider in the Western Pacific, offering the entire range of tuna products. In 2010, LTFV asked me to produce a new corporate video highlighting their new product line and newly upgraded facilities. To shoot this, I flew to three different locations: the processing plant in Toril, Davao del Sur (Philippines), the joint venture partner in Ningbo (China), and a gruelling 12-day shoot that took me from Pohnpei to Majuro to Guam.

For this project, I shot both video and photography, the photos to be used for various brochures, posters and other promotional materials LTFV were planning to produce.The videos were to be produced in two versions: English and Chinese. Our approach was to consider both entirely different videos, with differing scripts. Our translator actually wrote a different script in Chinese, rather than translating the English script, an approach that resulted in the language flowing better and being more meaningful for our predominantly Chinese audience. To ensure that the delivery and accent were perfect, our Chinese voiceovers were recorded by broadcast professionals in Shenzhen who were screened by the producer to make sure that their Mandarin was standard.

The Fisherman’s Dream

FIRST STOP: DAVAO

Our client needed me to take some photos of some of their products, and the most convenient way to do it was to fly to the Far East Seafood plant in Toril, Davao del Sur, and do the shots under the supervision of production manager Timmy Pardilla. The plan was for me to fly there early in the morning, shoot all day in the factory, then fly back to Manila on the last flight out. Timmy Pardilla made sure that that the products’ quality was right, sometimes making last minute slices on the tuna just   to make sure that the cut was perfect.

SECOND STOP: NINGBO
Soon after the trip to Davao, I had a meeting in Shenzhen with Joe Murphy of LTFV, who was spearheading the marketing effort. They briefed me on the new directions LTFV had taken, and then, late in the afternoon, I made a mad dash to Shenzhen airport to make the flight to Ningbo, where LTFV was operating a cooked loin and neg60 plant with their joint venture partner.

One of the points that Joe Murphy stressed very strongly was that I try my best to capture “the Romance of Fishing” in everything I shot. I sort of wondered at the time how I was going to do that, considering that the Ningbo plant was a cooked loin facility. More on that later!

THIRD STOP: POHNPEI
Finally, after months of planning and coordination, I left for the longest shooting leg of the project: the long slog through Pohnpei and Majuro. The first stop was Pohnpei, where i met up with LTFV CEO Samuel Chou and his management team on the Continental Island hopper flight. One of the shots I took in Pohnpei were those of the new tuna boats in Kolonia harbor. It was unfortunate that one of my favorite shots had to be redone because the tuna boat was too dirty. Because there was no way we could use the shot, I had no choice but to ask the base commander to have the boat repainted, and we shot it again two days later.

LAST STOP: MAJURO
After a few days in Pohnpei, it was on to Majuro. Majuro was a very busy fishing base, and in addition to shooting fishing operations on the base, I also had to take photos of the fish that they caught. The folks at MIFV had asked the captains of the fishing vessels to set aside quality specimens of several large pelagic species for me to take photos of.

In the last few days of my stay at Majuro, I got on one of the new neg30 longline tuna boat and shot footage of the fishing operations. This was very, very difficult to do because the wet, tight working conditions on the boat made shooting alongside the fishermen very dangerous. It also didn’t help that the new neg30 boats were shorter than the old longliners that I used to shoot on, and their motion at sea was much rougher. Regardless, it was a great experience and I got great footage. The big bonus was that the crew were old friends who, as it turns out, I worked with on their old boat back in Palau many years ago when I shot the first LTFV corporate video. It was like a reunion of sorts. The big difference, however, was that I could speak Chinese now, and the crew were very amused that I could kid around with them in Chinese.

CONCLUSION
A week after wrapping up the shoot in Majuro and arriving back in Manila, the first draft of the LTFV Corporate video was finished. And a few days after, the good folks at the LTFV head office in Shenzhen were busy making DVDs for the Shanghai Seafood Expo. Client Joe Murphy was quite happy with the final product, and, when I asked him what part of the video he enjoyed the most, he said that he really loved the shots of the fresh tuna as it was being offloaded and washed. “You definitely captured the Romance of Fishing,” was what he said. I guess that means we succeeded handsomely.

View an edited sample from the final corporate video production here. Find out more about Q2 Digital Studio here, and the services we offer.

www.q2digitalstudio.com