Just as any audiovisual product should be made with love, any professional who is dedicated to it must aspire to the maximum. This is no easy task and requires a great deal of effort. Technique alone is not enough. In the audiovisual sector there are intangible elements that make the tangible (spot) even more valuable. One of these elements is creativity. At Vostok, they know this well. This is a production company that is also dedicated to post-production and that welcomes talented directors and producers who have one mission: to bring great ideas to the screen. That creativity and effort has led this company to win different awards at festivals such as: New York Festivals, Cannes corporate media & TV Awards and Japan World’s Tourism Film, among others.
Vostok aims to be among the winners of the APCP Awards 2023 this year. The spot with which the company hopes to achieve this goal has as its client WOVO, a line of egg white based products that seeks to position itself as a viable alternative to dairy and vegetable products. Through this campaign, they are inviting consumers to join their “revolutionary” proposal. If you want to know more about Vostok, today we bring you some of its secrets…
- What is the essence of Vostok?
In a few words, we would say that our essence lies in craftsmanship.
We know that there is no better showcase than a brilliant work, and our goal is to make the idea shine, that’s why we put all our effort in taking care of our production processes to bring the best solutions to each project, where craftsmanship and custom work stand out in our processes.
We rely heavily on our experience and our internal resources, as we have an integrated post-production studio, and we are also at the forefront of new technologies and working methodologies, which we apply in our production processes, because everything changes and evolves and an idea can be told in many ways, but having the knowledge of different ways of telling that idea can make all the difference.
In short, Craft, creativity and content are the engines that drive us to make exciting stories happen, and this is what makes us different, because bringing the idea to life is our job, and we know that if the idea shines and achieves the goal, we will have achieved ours.
Juan Pedro Boluda
2. Creativity is one of the bases of Vostok’s work. What can we do to develop this capacity?
From our point of view, creativity is not just one thing, it is a set of knowledge and experiences that if you mix them all together you get the cocktail called “creativity”, and that combination is made up of references, reading, intuition, teamwork, searching for emerging talent, making a good analysis of the objective of the idea and having knowledge of the advertiser and its audience, and when you have these elements in mind you can start to think about how to tell that idea so that it fulfils its objective, and that is when we develop what we call creativity.
Therefore, in order to develop our creative capabilities we work internally in a natural and organic way, in which we carry out different actions, such as keeping up to date with everything that is produced nationally and internationally, we carry out visual research work to have a good database of references, we surround ourselves with talented and experienced people and we always have our radar ready to find emerging talent.
We add all this to the analysis we make of the initial idea to find a way of capturing that idea on the screen, and that finally that idea fulfils the objective set by the agency, and it is at that moment when we can offer a creative vision to the project that enriches the initial idea that comes to us.
- Do you usually start your work by brainstorming?
When we receive a job, the first thing we do is to meet with the creatives who have created the idea so that they can tell us their point of view and the objectives they want to achieve with the work, and once we have obtained the information we start our process to give shape to the idea that is presented to us.
And that’s when we start brainstorming, always taking into account some key factors around the project, such as budget and timing, but once we are clear about all this, that’s when we start working on how to tell that idea and what resources we want to allocate to what and for what purpose.
Therefore, I would say that yes, we brainstorm ideas, but always taking into account key factors, what we don’t want is to come up with something that is far from what the campaign is looking for or to present approaches that are not viable.
We live this process with great enthusiasm and affection, because when we present a production design and treatment we want it to be loved, and that when they read our documents they can visualise in a simple way what we want to capture on the screen.
- How did the idea for this campaign come about?
Well, the idea for this campaign came up with a first brief that was simpler than what was finally done, and this work is a good example to summarise everything we have been talking about in this interview, because when we received it we analysed what we wanted to tell with this idea, and we were clear from the first moment we read the script that this idea had to be told in a striking, very visual way and create a special universe in accordance with a new product that aims to stand out from its competitors, and after working with the director and our production team we managed to capture this idea in a document that we ended up falling in love with and we were the winners of the competition
- Do you think that even the “craziest” idea can have a place in an advertising spot?
Without a doubt, however, we are also clear that an idea can be told in many ways and it doesn’t always have to be the craziest, there are ideas in fixed shots that are brutal and other ideas that when they are very crazy are very powerful.
Therefore, we would say yes, but I would qualify that each idea has its own way, and we must avoid falling into the gimmicky if the idea doesn’t need it.
- What was the most complicated part of this work?
The most complicated thing was coordinating all the departments and implementing a work methodology in which all the departments are coordinated so that the final result of the campaign is the one we have right now.
All the shots we see in the piece have many elements that depend on different departments, and postproduction has a strong weight, so we need to shoot with the following processes in mind, and this meant that our planning and organisation of the work methodology had to be very scrupulous so as not to arrive at postproduction without all the necessary elements for the piece to look the way it does right now.
- How important is the use of colour, costume and make-up in your audiovisual creations? In this spot these aspects (among others) attract a lot of attention…
This is undoubtedly putting the finishing touch to the costume, the treatment of colour is key for the piece to generate that texture that evokes what the idea wants to tell, the costumes and make-up make the characters that appear in the film credible, even when we are in a fantastic and unreal environment as in this case, so we would say that it is essential that these elements are well studied so that they coexist and are integrated within the film that is intended to create.
- To carry out a product of these characteristics… Is teamwork vital?
Yes, if it wasn’t for teamwork and coordination it would not be possible to have carried out this project.
In order to carry out this project we had two months of pre-production, in which we first designed the film using storyboards and animated pieces, then all the set construction designs, costume design, choral casting, post-production design, and many other elements that were necessary for the film to have the result we were looking for.
So not only teamwork is vital, but also the production design and planning of the whole production process with all its departments so that the final result is as expected.
- What do you expect from the APCP Awards 2023? Are you nervous?
Well, we hope to have a good reception at the festival and that all the work we have done will be recognised, it would be a source of great pride for us.
And yes, we are nervous because this festival in particular is one of the most interesting for us, because the people who evaluate the pieces are your own colleagues in the profession, those who deal with the same situations every day and have experienced the same things as us in similar projects, therefore, the expectations and demands when it comes to the evaluations made at this festival are possibly higher than at other types of festivals, and getting recognition at the APCP2023 would be the confirmation that we are doing things better and better and would give us more strength to continue on our way as an advertising film production company.
- Any message for those young people who want to work in this sector but are afraid?
The best advice we can give is not to lose hope and not to set short-term goals, and that constancy and perseverance are other qualities they will have to work on, because when you don’t win competitions or when they don’t accept your proposals is when doubts appear, and perhaps that is the most difficult thing to manage, because that moment is the one that makes you doubt your own abilities and question whether you are really good for this, but undoubtedly, the person who is interested and wants to follow this path knows that they are good for it, and therefore, fear is not an option, but rather an ability to learn and improve every day.
Vostok: a house whose owner is creativity. No wonder that so much effort has led them to make others admire their work. Exciting stories that turn everyone who sees them into dreamers of other universes…
Interview by Paloma Garrido.
