Buddha to Buddha Jewellery 'Embrace Life' Commercial
With its solid weight, Buddha to Buddha jewelry is designed to make you constantly aware of the current moment, and the brand’s name is inspired by the spiritual connection of souls.
With these guidelines in the back of our minds, Ashar Medina and I wrote the concept for this online commercial. Shortly after receiving the GO, I flew to Indonesia with Cinematographer Aziz Al-Dilaimi and Line Producer Alexander Nedjalkov.
On location in Bali, we experienced some rapid weather changes during every day of filming, including tropical rain showers that stopped production from time to time.
When we arrived at the waterfall location, the conditions were perfect, but as soon as we had set up the camera, it started raining like crazy, and very rapidly, the creek turned into a massive mud stream. In about 5 minutes, we shot all the stuff in the water before the heavens came down on us and washed away our beautiful location.
We also incorporated a monk in the story, but we didn’t realize then that most of Bali, where production took place, was actually Hindu (while a monk in Buddhism).
On the day before we were supposed to film at the temple for the monk shots, production still hadn’t found the right monk when suddenly the camera rental boss showed me three pictures of random guys and asked me who I thought would be a great monk.
She explained that they would pay him $200, shave his head, and dress him in orange garments. And so the next day, some guy from a village nearby showed up on set as the perfect monk. He was probably a friend of the local crew members because they laughed at his bald head when he arrived.
This story also incorporated a Barong (good) vs. Rangda (bad) Balinese mythology dance. The day before shooting the scene, the line producer Alexander Nedjalkov told me I could have a complete Barong ceremony for the same price as the Barong dancer.
And so it happened that on the day of the shoot, about 50 people showed up and performed a private ceremony. At the same time, Cinematographer Aziz Al-Dilaimi danced in between with the camera, and our production driver kept pouring gasoline on the fire that lit the scene.
Director - Robin Piree | Writer - Ashar Medina & Robin Piree | Producer - Nadjim Tsouli | Line Producer - Alexander Nedjalkov | Cinematographer - Aziz Al-Dilaimi | Music - Thomas Goralski | Sound Design - Tom Jansen | Editor - Robin Piree | Colorist - Wouter Suyderhoud
