Bangkok can shoot!

My friends thinks I draw with crayons and still cant fathom what I do. I’ve given up explaining to them as I have given up trying to understand what my Banker friend does as a Dealer or my other friend who is some sort of engineer in the oil and gas industry.

Been here in Bangkok since Thursday evening, having to shoot and post a commercial for our clients in Indonesia. So during meetings, its quite interesting to have a mix of cultures,backgrounds and nationalities - we have us the Malaysians, our clients the Indonesian, our other client the Dutch, our production house people the Thais. I have never produced a commercial out of Thailand before but I've heard enough commendable things about their quality of work and professionalism to get me really excited about producing this one!

To start off, I wrote a script for the client which was selected among 4 others. Its a simple board but the story in which it is told needs to be well done. We chose this Thai director who is a lady and a mother herself to direct the commercial since our future consumers are mothers. Contrarily to popular belief, producing a commercial out of Thailand is much cheaper than i thought. the value we got out of them so far - - im God damn impressed!

The shoot day was on Friday as well as Saturday. They had 2 X the crew we have in KL, but they have the most professional attitude Ive ever come across wiht any production houses ive worked with in my entire career. They dont waste time squabbling and yakking away mindless talks during shoot, they are always on their feet, takes less than 15 mins to set up the next shot. Amazing!

Then the director has the most polite way of arguing and disagering with us. She is firm yet very polite. She is also extremily detailed, she runs through with us each time she's finished with a shot and discusses with us thoroughly. Unlike the most Malaysian production houses which are quite happy to ignore your requests and do what they think best for the commercial.

Anyway, there are 3 points I'm trying to stress here:
a) Never underestimate the Thais
b) Malaysians needs to be kicked in the butt to be more progressive!

On point a) & b), we were producing 2 commercials back to back. Actually the 1st started off in November (with a Malaysian production house) and this one only started last month (with the Thai prd hse) The Malaysian one (which Im quite shy to admit) ran through countless problems and complications. Up till today, we still havent gotten it approved by the Vietnamese and Indonesian clients. As for this Thai-made commercial, Im quite sure it can be approved and go on air by next week.
With the Malaysians, Id almost puked blood having to deal with their inconsistency, unwillingness and change and lack of professionalism. Ive never had 1 single crisis as yet with the Thais, even if it did arise, it was made a very small matter that was solved on the spot.

Anyhow, I may be speaking too soon. This commercial may take a bad turn the next 1 week, cant be too sure.

Though the language barrier, the Thais really tries to understand and do their best for you. Its sad that Peter gets so upset with them when he works here. I suppose Im quite lucky to meet the really good ones here and they really explifies the best one can ask for. Maybe all we need to do is to look beyond the life of Pat Pong, show girls, bad language, loud Thai music, bad traffic, puzzled looks to see what's really beyond them. Truly amazing people, no wonder they have the best advertising in the entire region!