Customer Stories Sydney

We were commissioned by Silicon Valley based tech giant PayPal to capture four testimonial pieces surrounding Sydney based customers and how they utilise PayPal products in their day-to-day lives. 

Authenticity was the name of the game on this project; we were tasked with telling authentic stories, in an authentic way, utilising authentic locations. The customers personalities and lifestyles would mould this content and it was essential that we dig into their personas to build a mise en scene that was true to them as individuals. 

We have done an extensive amount of work in Australia over the past six years, and so have built an excellent network of filmmakers across this territory. We tapped into our local contacts and assembled a crew of established HoDs, with three of our team flying out to oversee the production.

The campaign directors on this project, London based agency Studio Hansa, pulled together an extensive PPE deck that outlined the creative, technical requirements and logistical fundamentals in detail. This gave us a foundation to work from, however we were required to source suitable locations and build the look of each video from the ground up.

Our UK based producer team sourced and secured locations remotely, with our Sydney based director and DoP handling location recces. We worked closely with our Production Designer, Stylist and Director to build the aesthetic; producing detailed style decks that outlined the set dressing and wardrobe for each video.

The shoot itself lasted three days; one of which included shooting two setups in a single day, in a single location. Our DIT set up a live-stream via Vimeo so that the stakeholders in Los Angeles, London and Singapore could attend remotely and offer live feedback – which our on-set producer would then relay to our director.

This was a shoot-only project for Ether/Awe and the edits were handled by Studio Hansa at their London studio.

At the end of each shooting day, our DIT would upload compressed proxy files to our WeTransfer so that the team in London could download the footage remotely and begin assembling the edits. The full resolution footage was backed up onto four hard drives; one of which remained in Australia and three of which travelled back with us to the UK. Two of these hard drives were delivered to Hansa upon our return.

In total, over twenty deliverables were created from the content that we captured in Sydney; four ninety-second Hero videos and sixteen cutdowns for socials.

Working across three continents; with a London based campaign director, a Los Angeles based client and agency, and a Sydney production team proved quite the challenge – but we relished the opportunity and all parties knocked it out of the park!

The final videos were released on PayPal Australia’s official YouTube channel as part of their ‘Tips and Tricks’ series. The videos spanned both 16:9 master versions and 9:16 YouTube shorts.

We had an absolute blast working with PayPal, Tongal and Studio Hansa, and are very excited to work with them again very soon!

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