I was tasked with collaborating with art director, Beth Ashby and the brand itself to create a concept to introduce the new Cepia product, Charm U, to the world. The main goal was to create a social engagement between the brand and its tentative audience: girls aged 5 to 10. This is how we landed with a world where an older sister-like character introduces this world and creates magical hand-crafted adventures through her unboxing-like YouTube videos.
In the end, the campaign was highly successful with more than 5 million views and leading to 29K subscribers to their YouTube channel, as well as increased traffic on their Facebook. Creating an engaging fan base, who even tried to emulate our videos with homemade versions. Following the success, we were also tasked with creating broadcast commercials and engaging with other Cepia products. We shot over 20 episodes, a TV commercial, and much other online content in less than 6 months.
Process
The biggest challenges we had with this project were: 1) the short time we had to shoot the footage because talent (under 10-year-old girls) were not allowed to stay on set for longer than 4 to 6 hours. 2) the small budget. We had to shoot 3 to 4 episodes a day, which included more than 90 different shots and sometimes substantial changes in the set dressing.
Problem-Solving
The best way to be effective was to plan every detail ahead of time, including a highly detailed shot list that I created. So we would only shoot what was necessary to the edit of the story and use my editing skills to assess what would be enough to tell the story.
After shooting, the turnaround of the editing process would usually be less than 8 hours, which made it essential to shoot efficiently. Part of the difficulty was also the small size of the characters, which involved creating miniature sets and using a Macro 100mm lens when shooting.
