Note: Since the videos embedded within this post are Youtube links, you will need a VPN to view them if you’re in China.
Last year I spent several weeks with a small creative team to put together a series of promotional videos highlighting Chengdu for the local tourism bureau and Ctrip. We spent 11 days filming and roughly three months putting the films together. The whole process had a big impact on me. Since I started doing video work with Ctrip back in 2010, my interests have shifted to include film and I hope to make more of them in the future. This last set of videos (3 shorts) taught me a lot about making films, not least that I need to learn a whole lot more (follow the previous link if you do not have a VPN).
Before we jump into the videos, here are some behind the scenes looks of us capturing this goodness:
The shorts are as follows:
Mind
A video about the pursuits that occupy Chengdunese people. We filmed a lot of close-ups of arts and crafts, games and workmanship to show what the region’s people like to get into and what they’re good at. Here is the description of the Chengdu Video: Mind for Chinatravel.net, Ctrip’s sister site.
Body
This video is about food and movement. We spent a lot of time with local break-dancers and sampled as many dishes as we could get our chopsticks into. We could have devoted hours to either topic, as people have already, but we wanted to tantalize people here and fill them with energy. Maybe the next project can go a little deeper into the elements shown in this short.
Spirit
This is the “epic” short that has the landscape shots, the long pans of temples; we hoped this would show the foundation of Chengdu Basin Shu Culture civilization – the water and the land … the colors and the lush abundance that has become proverbial even as it still informs every aspect of life outside the Third Ring. And within.
Check the videos out and let me know what you think by leaving a comment!
Absolutely fantastic videos; man I miss this place so much.
Very cool stuff Sascha! Interesting to hear it may have led you down a new path.
yeah we’ll see. hopefully have some new stuff later this year. cheers
Awesome videos. What kind of equipment was used to shoot these? It must have been fun working on this.
Gosh. It’s so beautifully made. Absolutely love it. So proud to be a chengdu spicy girl.
Unfortunately we live in Singapore. It brings back lots of memory of my childhood 😉
Did Chengdu look like this when you were a child? Has it changed much?
Beautiful, but um, why put those people with uniform in the third video? It reminds me of the college military training, it’s a rough time
to show that stern uniformed types are still happy young people 😉
In the third video, there is a forest scene, why there is a Guan Yin in the tree?
that shot is from the cable car that goes up Qingcheng Mtn