Continental Drift

Before we delve into the Jameson City Session between Toronto and Seoul, a bit of history at the start. Contented came to life when an Irish guy, Neil, and a German guy, Nils, got together in Seoul over a decade ago. With a good overlap of skills and a good working relationship they decided to continue to work together on projects even after they no longer lived in the same country, or even on the same continent.

Small world

The plan was to work individually and also to combine occasionally on interesting projects in different parts of the world. It worked, sometimes. But even if we try to assure clients that we can absorb the extra travel costs from our fees, there can still be a psychological barrier. Probably this has meant some projects have slipped by. 

What goes around comes around

When Nils got an enquiry about a project in Seoul from an Irish production company who needed to outsource the work, for once our geographical situation became an advantage. Nils also heard that in addition to the Seoul shoot the company was putting together a promo based on three cities, the others being Dublin and Toronto, for Jameson Irish Whiskey. 

I know a guy

Nils quickly suggested that Contented could not just handle the Seoul production but could also do Toronto too, since Neil was living in Canada at the time. It later turned out that Neil knew and had previously worked with Ross Kileen, the owner and founder of Event Junkies, the company that had got in touch with Nils. As the films needed to follow a single theme and in the same style it made sense to hire two teams in Seoul and Toronto that already worked as one. 

Directors dispatched

As Contented put together local crews and prepped locations, Event Junkies sent out two of their directors, Peter O’Brien to Toronto and Jarlath Finnegan to Seoul. Unfortunately the Dublin shoot had to be cancelled at the last minute due to the untimely death of a Jameson staff member.

City Sessions

The Jameson City Sessions concept was to take groups of local influencers on a Jameson ‘City Session’, a night out. This involved the friends hitting the town in a VW camper van, playing pool and bar games, a trim at the barbers and hitting bars and restaurants sampling Jameson Irish Whiskey based cocktails before ending up at a live music performance.

Set-up

We worked closely with the locally based marketing teams in each city to chose great locations and experiences. We used a two camera set up with the Sony FS7 as the A camera and a Sony A7Sii on a gimbal as a B camera in both cities. 

Nightlife, but no cocktails

The local talents used their social media to share the journey as it unfolded. Both Seoul and Toronto put on a great show as vibrant nightlife cities. As wonderful as these cities are, they both have their traffic issues so we were on a tight schedule. Despite not having time to sample some of the cocktails ourselves the two shoots passed without a hitch. The Event Junkies directors returned to Dublin with nice footage for editor to play with. Enjoy the Seoul and Toronto edits below and a combined edit at the start of this post.