Photo of the day: Three Days Total to Create this Ad

Our photo theme this week: Singles’ Day Fever. Wild ads, e-commerce madness and other virtual ephemera surrounding the consumer-tastic November 11 holiday for all the lonely hearts out there.

Days before Singles Day, Tmall approached Shanghai-based boutique video production team High Horse Studios asking for a short commercial spot. Kevin Pham from High Horse Studios explains the breakneck nature of advertising during the world’s biggest shopping event:

Tmall reached out to us over the weekend asking for a big favor. They needed to release a TV commercial as soon as possible and wanted us to do it by a certain day. We took a look at the calendar and realized that we had 3 days to do the following: pre-production (ideation, plan out shots, locations, etc.), production (shooting), post-production (editing, music selection, color grading, etc.) and delivery of the final product.

Pushed to the limit with an extremely tight deadline, we forced our way through the creative process, a rainy shoot day that ran extremely late, and an all-night run for our editor in order to get the product. An extremely hectic few days, all so the video could be released in time for 11/11. It just shows how important the holiday is to companies wanting to sell products. It’s easily the biggest shopping day of the year worldwide, and it’s vital to push out advertisements in order to compete.