Careem - Value That Blows You Away | TVC Case Study
Behind the making of HyperJump Productions' collaboration with Misfits on their iconic TVC for Careem.
The Careem campaign is one of the most enjoyable projects we have tackled to date. Misfits, a UAE-based creative agency, were the creative team behind the concept, which stemmed from the scene in Bad Neighbors where Seth Rogan is thrown to the ceiling after they planted airbags in his chair. The idea was that Careem's values were so impressive that they would physically blow you away. HyperJump was enlisted to help execute this memorable concept.
Executing such a project meant managing a lot of moving parts. There was a pulley system attached to a dummy on the ceiling, and we had to create many different plats for the CGI team to stitch the best things from moments from each take. For example, the ceiling broke really well in one take, but the dummy fell in a bad position, whilst the other take the ceiling didn’t break and the dummy fell perfectly. Of course, there was going to be added post magic around it to enhance it further.
Building a sense of cinematic space required layers, and there were many, many layers to the actual set. So we placed in the foreground a Saudi locally-dressed man, and the camera would slide across to our hero frame of the protagonist. This was important, because if the shot was a pan or another movement, it was going to be quite hard to fix and layer up in post without costing an enormous amount, so the trade-off was to instead have the entire camera system always perpendicular to the subject, and pulled from left to right of screen on a specific mark.
This, pared with a 50mm lens, gave quite a dynamic and interesting effect of us sliding across the office, really giving texture and levels to the area, as the 50mm compressed enough space for things to feel nice and tight together. It was also important to shift from a close-up to a medium-wide, and having the opening shot of the locally-dressed individual to pulling out to the hero shot, was such a powerful way to bring in the viewer visually.
For this project, we wanted to have a very camera-technical shot that would be a fun way to be used in cutdowns, for audiences to be brought into the shot and work as an alternative and faster hook. The idea was to have a Dolly-Zoom, paired with the Arri Alura 18-80, which was wide enough and gave quite a beautiful distortion if done right.
Lastly, painting the set with light was very important, because there were over 3 layers of work desks, and each actor and model had to pop out. A mixture of hard light, Apurture 600Ds were used to really bring out each person, however our starting close-up and main protagonist was lit with a mixture of hard light and frontal beauty light.
Since it was a stylistic choice to have a gradient from the beauty light on the actors' faces, we closed off all the natural light and emulated hard light coming from the left side of the office, and also this sheer soft light that would hit the models faces.
This was important as we wanted high-key lighting, to make the video pop with colors, but always wanted it to look rather natural, so understanding and lighting the space before the actors was important to create a realistic set that followed the direction of the sun through the office. Making it more believable really allowed the shot to look cinematic yet have a realistic undertone.
Have a project you’d like to talk to us about? Contact us now at info@hyperjumpproductions.com or at (+971) 058–599-8064.
Comments