The Talkies: The Making of Saveto's One-Shot Commercial

GPN’s Middle Eastern and North African production service company, The Talkies, just completed a complex and brilliant commercial for a client in Saudi Arabia from their base in Beirut. The commercial required an interior set build complete with several different rooms of a home stacked on top of each other, mechanical stunts, and later, VFX.

Regional EP | Partner, Jay Nehmé explained that “great executions necessitate time and money, we used to have both, then one out two, and lately, none! Efficiency becomes crucial, so we had to find a good balance between organic live-action and VFX. ” To ensure that the project stayed on track without compromising the creative vision, Nehmé says that they meticulously planned the project in pre-production and mapped out each aspect of the film by prioritizing the two main pillars of the TVC: set design and VFX integration. They worked on pre-visualizations to decrease any possibility of error and bring to life the concept. The synergy amongst the key players was perfect (director, duo DoPs, production designer, post-producer, agency, and producers).

The Talkies is a film service production company with offices in Beirut, Dubai, Cairo, Casablanca, and Riyadh. This particular commercial reflected a modern lifestyle for a client in Saudi that could easily be shot in Beirut. According to Nehmé, Beirut is (and will remain) one of the places to shoot just about any form of content. Everything needed for a production is there: locations, cast, crew, equipment, and competitive rates. On top of that, the people are warm and welcoming, the food and wine amazing, and the climate comfortable. Put all of that together, and you have the perfect film destination. Things are changing politically, making Beirut, once again, a more than desirable location to shoot.

This commercial was shot in-studio, with a motivated cast and crew of 30+ people, and with a high degree of technical difficulty. Many moving parts needed to come together at exactly the right time for things to work smoothly. Adding to this, the film is only one sequence, making it super important that the action in each scene was choreographed with the crane camera. This was a major challenge for them due to the complexity of movements and the number of people involved, but they made it work and work well. They even finished ahead of schedule, and the immense pride among everyone was tangible.

One of the creative issues they faced was being able to tell an entertaining story while showing the product's performance. This most likely rings true for many commercial writers, directors, and producers. Nehmé says to get this to work, there was “A LOT” of back and forth in post-production. One of their goals was to strike the right balance between technical prowess and marketing goals. The outcome is brilliant- it’s creative, fun, entertaining, and connects the audience to the product.

With every project, there is something gained and something learned. This is how knowledge and experience are built and how professionalism is shaped. It doesn’t matter how old someone is or how much they’ve done in their lives; there is always something to take away. On this project, Nehmé learned, once again, how important it is for the expectations and objectives to be fully aligned between the client, agency, director, and producer. We applaud The Talkies for continuing to push creative boundaries in advertising and for setting the bar even higher.

Learn more about The Talkies