Chapter 101

101 His Idea and My Efforts

“Thank you for your attention. After flying over to visit some wet markets that sell dog meat and visiting various dog meat farms of various sizes, this is the storyline and storyboard that we came up with. We were captivated by the idea of conflicting views of our common society to that of the local people, especially the older generation where eating dog meat is still a part of their tradition and culture,” I paused a little as I changed the slide.

I could tell that I still had the attention of everyone in the room and that was a great step forward compared to my first presentation in this room when I first joined the team. They could hack at my presentation with their killer questions later on, but for now, I wanted to complete telling them the entire story that I had in mind.

“We still want to push for a clear message to ending the cruelty of the dog meat trade and farming while showing that we’re not actively advocating for the destruction of cultures and traditions. We plan to do this by incorporating the real trend that this activity is in fact losing its popularity especially among the younger generation. Naturally, we believe that this tradition would cease to exist anyways as dogs take on another role in society as people’s pets and friends,” I explained patiently.

My explanation earned few nods from the audience and that gave me more confidence to go on. It seemed like Ace’s storyline was heading in the right direction and now I just need to make sure that the storyboard that I had on the slide portrays that storyline well.

“As for the storyboard that we have in mind, we’ll start by showing footages around the theme of dogs as a man’s best friend before flashing to show the conditions in uncontrolled dog meat farms. We believe that the contrast would be quite disturbing and will help capture people’s attention. We will then go on to show the tradition related to this issue such as scenes from markets and local restaurants before transition to show the downfall of this trend over time by showcasing the newer and younger generation including people around our age, then teenagers and then children with their new relationship with dogs as a companion rather than food. Then we’ll end with introducing the foundation and instructions on how the viewers can make their donations while keeping that as subtle as possible,” I explained before coming to the end of the storyboard on the presentation slide.

There was a brief moment of silence as everyone seem to take in my presentation. Ace seemed quite satisfied with my presentation although he did not comment on anything.

“Any comments?” Ace asked the other in the room.

“Is that your idea for the storyline? It’s very like you,” Jeremy asked with a smile on his face.

“You can tell?” Ace replied lightly.

.....

“Yeah...it’s very...well positioned to resonate with many people,” Jeremy commented openly.

I guess after working with Ace for a while the team had gotten used to telling which was his work even without Ace standing up to take credit for it directly. Even I knew that all of Ace’s work had a touch of him and was quite unique from the others. I bet all of his works were successful because I have never heard of a project that Ace supervised that ended in failure or was not well received by the audience of the public before.

“That’s my storyline that Karina adapted, and that storyboard is pretty much her independent work based on a few sentences of the storyline that I gave her. Not bad, right?” Ace said with a grin.

“Right...not bad at all,” Richard chimed in with a nod.

I felt like praises were being rained on me from above and suddenly the sun was out and shining. For Richard to say that my story was ‘not bad’ felt like a hard-earned compliment. I bit on my lower lip a little to keep myself from smiling like a fool right in front of everyone.

“Thank you,” I murmured as I headed back to my seat.

“Well, that is that. Do we have a consensus already on the storyboard or do we want to put it to the vote?” Ace asked as he leaned back casually in his seat.

“No need. We’ll go ahead with what you and Karina had co-developed. We’ll all do our part now for the detailed design, budgeting and all that. There are many technical things that needs to be sorted out for sure on the filming and production side,” Richard said sternly.

“Great. That’s that then. I’ll leave it up to Karina to come up with a more detailed storyboard. Of course, you’re welcome to mash in some other ideas from the other teams as well. I think they’ve got some good ideas for more emotional scenes here and there,” Ace suggested before wrapping up the meeting.

“Ok. Thank you,” I replied determinedly.

Suddenly, I had my work cut out as part of Project Alpha and it was a very big part as well. The storyboard will determine almost everything about this project. It would be a hit or miss and I was determined for this commercial to be a massive hit.

...

I was in Ace’s office when I received a call about his schedule from senior secretary. Every week or so she would give me a call to recap Ace’s schedule especially the parts that required him to interact with external parties.

“A business trip? Aha...ok...” I said as my hand busily jotted down some notes about the upcoming business trip.

The secretary gave me additional details about the trip including who Ace was expected to meet as well as some requirements that the client had slotted in.

“Chase Creatives will also be there?” I exclaimed in absolute surprise.

Why would the client invite both Ace and someone from our biggest competitor in the industry to go on the same trip? Is this some kind of competition or something?

–To be continued...