Wonderful Indonesia

A few years ago I got a call about directing a series of immersive videos for Wonderful Indonesia, the campaign run by Indonesia’s Ministry of Tourism. I was hired just days before I was on a plane, and what followed was almost a month travelling across the archipelago, shooting with a crew and a cast of local talent across a string of very different territories.

There wasn’t much time to prepare in the traditional sense. Immersive work depends heavily on knowing your space before you shoot in it — where the camera sits, how the environment wraps around it, what happens off to the sides that a normal frame would simply crop out. On this project, I didn’t have that luxury. Access to each location only happened once we physically arrived, often the day of the shoot itself. So the routine became: land, scout what I could the night before with whatever information was on hand, sketch out a rough shot plan, and then adapt fast once I actually saw the place in daylight.

That meant a lot of thinking on my feet — figuring out in real time how each shot needed to flow into the next, how to block talent and crew around a 360-degree space I was seeing for the first time, and how to keep continuity across a production that was, by necessity, being redesigned every single day. It was demanding, but it also became one of the most rewarding parts of the job: learning to trust instinct and make strong creative decisions quickly, without the safety net of extensive prep.

The finished films were shown on headsets at travel expos around the world, giving audiences an immersive way to experience Indonesia’s landscapes and culture before ever setting foot there. One of the main videos was due for release on YouTube around Christmas 2018, but was ultimately pulled following the tsunami that tragically struck the region that year