Filming in Arabia: a unique and challenging production experience

When Federico Cavicchioli, a colleague and a friend, came to me to share this project, we both knew that it wouldn’t be just a job.

Working for Existence – Raw Ties Group at Al Ula has been an incredible, intense, and exciting experience.

Every single moment of the journey, from the first briefing to the flight home, has been a moment of singular beauty.

Thoroughly

Both of us are thorough guys, we usually spend a lot of time looking at things, trying to understand the sense of what we are going to do so, as one can imagine, this work was carefully prepared in the months that preceded the days of shooting.

The mission was to create and produce three clips centered on the new Existence jewel collections, aka three commercials with a strong creative and artistic vision.

We spent weeks defining the entire communication concept, writing the stories and the scripts, transforming them into scenes, therefore into storyboards.

It was intense. We confronted each other over and over on every aspect, creative and logistical, preparing for the challenge to port abroad and in a very peculiar environment a production of this complexity.

All the creativity was supported by our creative pillar Daria Borovkova who, with her vision of the brand, guided us through the journey inside the brand philosophy

Flying and scouting

Then the time had come to leave, after a long preparation that also involved local technicians and logistic teams, who managed to bring the necessary equipment into Saudi Arabia, and specifically to Al Ula.

The production was scheduled over ten days. We did location scouting for the first two days, guided by local rangers and scouts.

Finding the right places that represented what we wanted to shoot was intriguing and engaging and it was one of the most important moments of the production.

Assisted by a great team that provided us with every need we had, from logistical to personal, we began shooting on the third day.

Sunny, sandy and hot.
A lot.

Being on the ground and putting into practice the scenes that we had thought of and transcribed in the storyboard was one of the most interesting challenges of the whole work.
Working in that environment at that temperature is a challenge, for people and gear, especially electronic ones (the gear, not the people .)
Of the two ARRI Alexa Mini that we had on set just one, the most sensitive we supposed, fainted at 44° Celsius, giving us a useful heads up.
The production team dealt every single day with a great number of challenges and things to be fixed, snakes and scorpions included, to make all this possible.
They did an outstanding job.

Starring Sati Kasanova

Sati Kasanova’s presence was the single most important creative contribution to the production. We knew from the start that we would be working with her, and we kept that in mind while writing the script and the storyboards, but having her on set, with her ability to improvise and her creativity at every turn, added immeasurable value.

Her voice and her physicality drew everyone in, breathing pure beauty into the days of shooting.

The sound of sands

In a production like this, sound design and music do much of the work in defining mood and securing the right feeling. The scores that refined our work so precisely were composed by Fabio Costantino, involved in the project from the very beginning and adding his own vision to the concept. He captured the atmosphere by interpreting the feeling, capable of sensing the subtle moods that ran through every scene we shot, without ever being there.

A special mention goes to the whole film crew, and in particular to Rabhi Felfly and Younes B, First Cameraman and Digital Imaging Technician respectively, whose skill and dedication made all of this possible.

EXISTENCE RAW TIES