Written by new-contact on Jan 31, 2012. Posted in Production News

Weareflink creates Chinese New Year on location in Beijing for VW

German production company Weareflink and Chinese production house CONTRA have filmed in Beijing to mark Chinese New Year for vehicle manufacturer VW. The spot shows a dragon with VW wheels creeping through a busy Beijing street to mark the event.

Andreas Lampe produced the spot for Weareflink: “Everything was put together very quickly. The campaign was for the Chinese market so we were always going to film in China and we needed to be sensitive to using recognisable landmarks. We didn’t have a lot of scouting time and we needed to avoid locations that were too new or industrialised.”

The spot was actually filmed just after Christmas to make sure it was ready in time for the real Chinese New Year. Location permits took five or six days to arrange and the European crew members flew out on 26th December.

We filmed on 29th December over a single night, starting at about 10pm, with a mix of Western and Chinese crew members.

Andreas Lampe, Producer

Lampe adds: “We filmed on 29th December over a single night, starting at about 10pm, with a mix of Western and Chinese crew members. There weren’t any major changes to the actual street. There were already Chinese lanterns hanging overhead, but we doubled these up with CGI in post-production.”

Crew in blue bodysuits (see photo above) provided reference points for the animators creating the dragon. Background fireworks were also added digitally as you can’t let off fireworks on location in Beijing unless it really is Chinese New Year.

Credits:
Client: VW, China
Agency: Proximity, Beijing/Goodstein & Partners
Executive Creative Director: Georg Warga
Production Companies: Weareflink/CONTRA Productions China
Executive Producers: Hans Dornseif, Andreas Lampe
Producer: Muriel Dornseif, Karsten Müller
Director of Photography: Roman Jakobi
Director: Weareflink