Category: Work Related

I will no longer be coming back on the 15th to Kuwait, my trip has been extended 2 more days.

I just found out I am leaving to Beirut tomorrow for a photo shoot. I should be back in Kuwait by May 15th.

Today was the Young Creatives competition in Dubai. Our flight arrived last night at around 1AM to Dubai and by the time we got to the hotel it was 2. Still, we managed to wake up at 7 and headed to Dubai Media City where the Cannes Lions competition was being held.

At 9AM we were briefed by the client which turned out to be WFP (World Food Program) and we had to come up with a campaign that would help promote their Food for Education program. We had until 6PM to come up and execute our ideas which was a surprise because we were told originally to expect 12 hours to work on it.

Anyway we managed to come up with around 19 different ideas which we finally narrowed down to three and then to just two which was the maximum amount of creative work we could present. We are pretty confident one of our ideas should get us in the top 3 but we will have to wait and see.

At the start of the event they introduced me and my partner as the only team that isn’t from Dubai. Turns out this was the first time a team from outside of Dubai participated which put Kuwait in the spotlight. My partner is Kuwaiti and I grew up in Kuwait so we were truly representing Kuwait.

Hopefully one of our directions hits the top 3, we should find out the results by May 8th I believe. I will try to post our favorite direction here but at the moment I am not sure if I am allowed to. I am going to go skiing now so will I post again later on tonight once I come back.

I will be traveling to Dubai on the 1st of May and I will be back on the 3rd. I will be going there with my partner from work to participate in the Young Creatives compeition thats part of the Cannes Lions which is regarded as the most prestigious international advertising festival. The Young Creatives competition is for creatives 28 years old or younger and you enter as a team made up of an art director and copyrighter.

Last year me and my partner wanted to participate but they were fully booked, this year we managed to get in luckily because I turn 29 in August so I wouldn’t have been able to participate ever again. To get to Cannes we need to qualify and thats why we are going to Dubai. Different creatives from the Middle East will be participating in the qualification process on May 2nd with the gold winner going to Cannes to participate in the main international competition.

This is how the competition works. They put all the creative teams participating into one large room. They then bring in a client which is usually a non profit organization to brief us on the job. Once the client is done briefing us, the teams have 12 hours to come up with a campaign and execute it. Every team will have a workstation to work on, there will be no Internet access (for 12 hours!!!) and you aren’t allowed to bring in anything with you either like CDs, cameras, laptops etc.. There will be a work station usually sponsored by Corbis or Getty Images where you can search for photos but there is a list and you have to sign up and wait for your turn.

Its a very exciting event and getting gold would be amazing since it would mean me and my partner will be traveling to Cannes in June and putting Kuwait on the map. You can check out the winners from last years competition [Here]. As you can see the work from last year was extraordinary. I am nervous but it should be a lot of fun.

I got back from Lebanon yesterday night. My flight arrived at around 11:30PM which was around the same time Star Academy Prime was on LBC. I wanted to watch it to see if we made it on the program since they were going to talk about the making of the MTC commercial. According to k.thekuwaiti I did make it on the program but only for around 4 seconds and I was like in the background behind Shada. Not bad considering I was the only one from my agency that actually made the final cut and appeared on the show.

I am currently in a studio up in the mountains where they are working on the color grading of the MTC Atheer commercial. Yesterday after the commercial shoot they dropped the films here where they were developed and converted to video, a process called telecine. Now we are working on the color grading of the video which is the process of altering or enhancing the colors of the video. When you pull the video off the film its in very raw form and needs to be color graded before use. The commercial director and director of photography are both present for this process.

I have a few pictures and a short video I want to post hopefully today from yesterdays shoot but I am waiting to get permission from LBC. Once I do I will put them up.

Today I had the MTC Atheer commercial shoot with Ilham Al Madfai and Shada from Star Academy. I woke up at 7AM and was on the set by 8. The whole shoot took place in an old house/museum here in Lebanon and it was a really beautiful location. The shoot started at 8:30AM and ended 16 hours later at 12:30AM. It was extremely exhausting with only 1 short break for lunch.

Its now 2:15AM and I just got back to the hotel room. I am posting three pictures from todays shoot for now but will try to post more pictures tomorrow with more details.

Both Ilham Al Madfai and Shada are in the studio recording the song we are going to use for tomorrows commercial. Here are two pictures I just took of them. The light inside is kind of dim so the pictures are a tiny bit blurry but I will try to take better shots once they are done.

update: I had to remove Shada’s pictures because LBC didn’t give us permission to publish them.

I just got to the recording studio awhile ago, they have wifi here which is pretty cool. I am in Lebanon on an MTC Atheer (Iraq) commercial shoot involving Shada from Star Academy and Ilham Al Madfai. Currently Shada is inside recording and we are just waiting outside until she is done. This studio is really huge, so huge they actually have their own restaurant inside.

Today we are recording the soundtrack to the commercial but tomorrow we will be actually shooting it. The picture above is of the large set at this recording studio.

update: Ilham just arrived and said hi to everyone. He seems like a cool and down to earth guy.

I need to go down to Beirut for a few days to shoot a commercial and I should be back Friday night. My flight leaves at noon so I have to pack everything tonight. I will have Internet access from my hotel room so I will continue to blog from there.

Me and my partner at work plastered over 20 Coca Cola posters on our room’s wall. We wanted to add a bit of color to the room and we figured this was the coolest way. I am a Pepsi guy though.

Nat came in to work today morning to find a new toy awaiting her. Other then her 30inch Apple display, Quad Core Mac and 8GB of RAM, she now has a 21 inch Cintiq 21UX tablet!

Me and a friend at work both purchased some pimped out RC cars from Fantasy World. I got the Mercedes G-Class and he got the Dodge Charger. We built like a makeshift ramp in the office and we were flying the cars off it. The cars although costing only KD8 are pretty responsive and fast.. for their size. My G-Class out performed the Charger in everything except when it came to making donuts but thats because the Charger has a longer wheelbase.

We were supposed to get a real live snake today but for some reason we didn’t. On a positive not we did get a large stuffed mountain goat delivered to our office. We’ve named him Simon.

Tuesday me and my partner at work should be receiving an interesting package. A guy we know has a friend who has a 1.5meter long python and he is looking for a new home for it so we volunteered to take it. Should be fun having it in our office, don’t think anyone will want to piss us off. We are going to call the snake Jake after Jake the Snake from WWF if anyone still remembers. I will take pictures of Jake once we get him.