USTUDIO / OMO Capsule
Client: Unilever / Omo
Project: OMO 3in1 Capsule KV / TVC
Scope of Work: KV / TVC
Agency: Ustudio
Producer: Linh Le
Director: Le Quan
Production House: Alien Media
3D Post-House: 3deers
ACD: Sang Huynh
Guest ACD: Hoa Nguyen
Account Director: Huong Lien
Account Executive: Nhi Trinh
Sr. Copy: Linh Nguyen
Jr. Copy: Long Nguyen
Visualizer: Phung Tran, Duck, Bao Hoang
Editor: Thien Nguyen, Qui Nguyen
SAD (October 2023 - April 2024): Tung Dinh
... and ex-SADs
Key Visual
6s iTVC bumper
30s iTVC
On October 2023, it was my first job ever at Ustudio for one of the biggest brand at Unilever with Sang Huynh, ACD and Linh Nguyen, Sr. Copywriter from Homecaristas team. The Homecaristas team mainly was responsibled for Omo, Vim, Sunlight and Comfort brands. It was a sweet memory of mine during my journey to the world of advertising. The last also the first advertising job that I landed before, in 2021, was quite a bit hectic that impressed me in a negative way. However, with this team, I realized a different advertising world. I mean, that's a fantastic benefit of changing and moving throughout my career.
Storyboard of 6s bumper
I remember, first day working at Ustudio, I was asked to join an online meeting with production house, the director and post studio from Greece to discuss about some feedbacks on this video from brand team. In order to survive in that meeting, I thought it should be better to write down quickly some of my thoughts on their current work.
Screenshot of my feedbacks
Only 6 seconds of animation, but as I was told, this project tracking deck was nearly over 400 slides just for feedbacks. Mostly the feedbacks focused on the transformation of the bottle to represent idea of compression (from the common bottle packaging to a capsule) and the light setup of lab environment. What I could do back at the time was trying to use 3D technical language to better communicate the idea of our director and the feedbacks from brand team with the post-house in Greece. Also, a funny thing that happened during the time we working on this 6s was that our team was asked to join a serious meeting with our GM to discuss about some issues escalated by brand team.
Storyboard option 01
Stilomatic option 01
The 30s iTVC was a real challenge from the beginning. We had to create quite different options of story to meet the requirements from our client. The thing was brand team had to send it for testing before we could proceed to production stage. Therefore, we needed to see deliver an like-animatic version of the story to be ready for the test. Green was good to go, red was “do it again".
Storyboard option 02
Stilomatic option 02
This was a lot of work for our copywriter to be able to create different stories in short amount of time that we had before presenting those stories to client. Even so, the board had to be in colored version. We had to work together with 3 different visualizers to meet the deadline and requirements.
Storyboard option 03
Stilomatic option 03
Besides, we also had to work with Qui Nguyen and Thien Nguyen, our editors, to be able to create stilomatic version of our storyboards. That was a busy and wild week for us to deliver such a massive amount of work for the next presentation.
Version 03: Storyboard option 01 Setup
The Setup option 01 was about how heavy and inconvenience of the packaging the father feel while using it. While in option 02, we featured the inconvenience of the packaging together with the fact that this husband does not know how much he should pour into the tray.
Version 03: Storyboard option 02 Setup
After version 03, we thought that the father looks quite a bit lonely. We were suggest to feature a happy family right at the beginning of the video.
Version 04: Storyboard
Version 05, we were almost there after days of working. We finally came to the final version of our storyboard where everything was just sweet. It was a beautiful artwork of copywriters and visualizers.
Version 05: final version (with some adjustments would be fixed by director)
Stilomatic delivered to the test
After the test, we moved on with FGD test where we were able to observe reactions from random target audience of Omo. There were 2 days (Saturday and Sunday). Our team also tried to noted down what was happening during the interviews. I, personally, recorded by sheets to track down everything I could hear from the applicants then sent this report over to the team.
Screenshot of the FGD report I created
After that, we had a 24 hours on-set day from 5am to almost 5am the other day to finish this video. I was incharged of the shoot together with Linh Nguyen, Senior Copywriter. Our job on the day was to sit in front of the monitor with brand team to discuss and decided which takes to go, obviously with the agreement from our director. The rule of shooting for agency was not to enter shooting area without permission from our producer and director. We only should work within our room. I believe so.
Screenshot of my shooting report on 13 Jan 2024
Almost forgot, befor that, we entered pre-production stage to discuss with production house, the director and brand team on how we would to to execute this iTVC. A brief production and director treatment were a must to get approval from brand team. Following it, there were set design concept, wardrobes, talents, music, location, and so on to get confirmation.
Production Brief for OMO 3in1 Capsule iTVC 30s
After shooting, we moved on to Offline stage where we together discuss about video flow, transition between frames and music. Copywriter played a key role in this stage where we had to ensure that the storyflow was not broken, basically telling our story in a smooth way. Most of the time, our clients will focus on visual, sound effect, color, etc. which are not belonged to this stage. It's our job to consult and let them know the Offline stage only focus on the storyflow itself, aka how the director trying to tell our story.
Offline version of the video
It was complicated to work on CGI of this video which we had to work with a post-house abroad. Time management was stricky in this situation. Also, miscommunication was a result of language barrier. We had to ask for production house to arrange quite a lot of direct meeting with artists from Greece to discuss about the quality of CGI. Since smoke simulation, softbody simulation and flowers simulation were tough things, we had a hard time to enhance the quality of this MOA stage. Together with that, we also moved on with colorgrading.
Colorgraded version
Then, we came to Online stage where we worked on VFX, SFX, compositing the 3D sources from both post-house and a Russian artist.
This was a remarkable project of mine at Ustudio since we had to work on this project almost 7-8 months before releasing this video. A huge effort of everyone involved in this project.
Thanks.
Tùng Đinh