A look behind the scenes of Singapore Airlines’ epic new campaign

A look behind the scenes of Singapore Airlines’ epic new campaign
By Dan lake


Singapore Airlines’ image is one of the most curated in the industry, so launching any new campaign for the company is not something that can be taken lightly.

Sweetshop’s Liz Murphy took up the challenge when the airline began work on its Welcome to World Class Campaign.

Murphy said she was excited about the project from the moment she read the script, however the project was a bit daunting.

“I do remember feeling as though we were standing at the bottom of a giant mountain when we started pre-production. We actually nicknamed the job “the beast”, slowly taming it one day at
a time. My co-producers did an amazing job pulling it all together,” Murphy said.

(Sweatshop)

And, it was the sheer size of the project that provided the biggest challenges in making the film, too.

“Staying on top of the logistics of shooting in 5 different countries, and trying to keep a creative idea of the whole film in your head is definitely challenging. But a great advantage of shooting over a 30-day period is that you have time to review what you’ve shot, and get into the groove of what’s working well, adapting intuitively as you go.”

There’s probably only one image that’s as protected and nurtured as the Singapore Airlines brand as a whole, and that’s that of its crew.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beB249dZFlQ[/youtube]

Choosing the right actors for a project can be a challenging job, but in this case there were no actors. All the talent were Singapore Airlines staff.

“We were all drawn to their honesty and ease in front of the camera from their very first casting session. It’s rare to find non-actors who are so open, natural and intuitive on screen. The guys
at the agency spent a few months interviewing 100s of cabin crew in Singapore before they went on flights.

“Gradually this group was refined down to the eight key people who were featured in the film across the various countries.”

The film was shot using some pretty strict creative restrictions.

“My amazing DP, Sam Chiplin and I had a few rules – no slow motion, no camera movement that felt too Hollywood, no long lenses! We pretty much shot the film on a 14mm and 17mm. We
also improvised a lot and found different scenarios on the fly depending on what was feeling authentic and engaging,” Murphy said.

Executive Producer Laura Geagea says it may be cliche, but having the right team is what made the campaign a success.

“Although I kept a very close eye on the job from an Executive Producer stand point, I had three fantastic producers running the job – Allison Lockwood, Luke Goodrum and also April Lee as the locally Asian-based producer. And they did a fantastic job.

“We shot with our production partners in Singapore, Barcelona and Mumbai and with our own Sweetshop offices in and around Auckland and Shanghai. Using a nice mix overall of people we
trust made sure things went as smoothly as they could during the process,” Geagea said.

The campaign was shot in five countries, over a period of 30 days, with teams of between 30 people and 150 people in each city depending on the size of the shoot we were looking at. This meant over 20 people traveling between our Director / DOP / Producer teams along with agency, clients and the SIA team.

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