A few personal thoughts for our ten-year anniversary
by Viki Trepper, producer
( A magyar nyelvű bejegyzésért kattints ide!)
Now that Moviebar and my younger son are both 10 years old, I have been thinking about the parallel events of giving birth for the second time and becoming the producer of a successful company. Fate decided that in 2003 as we were forming a new company, my younger son, Ádam, also decided to enter the world. During the first months of Moviebar, Ádám was a passive participant, he did not really have a choice, I was carrying him to all shoots. He was bearing it quite well (so did I), coming and going, enjoying our first productions. Moviebar was developing nicely, shooting more and more fantastic commercials, as we worked very hard with my partner, Esther Turan.
We have worked very hard and by the end of the year (and the 9th month of my pregnancy), I was slightly exhausted and went to the delivery room straight from work. I clearly remember that between two contractions, my phone rang asking what they should do as one of the locations withdrew our shooting permit?! I could only mumble something along the lines “I’m sorry, I can’t deal with this know, solve it somehow…”. Of course everything turned out all right and two hours later, my wonderful son, Adam was born.
A few quiet months followed, but if you work in this addictive profession, you cannot stay too long at home. Moviebar kept going and I soon realized I got involved with the everyday workflow, managing the company, organizing shoots, etc. And rushing home after work for the evening shift, feeding, bathing the little one, and playing with my older son, Lackó.
As the years went by, in addition to the commercials made for Hungary, we started working for the international market. Initially we mostly worked with Scandinavian directors, spots produced by Moviebar were broadcast all over Europe.
We have done several Libero spots, the first one – one of the most defining commercials produced by Moviebar – was directed in 2005 by Jörgen Lööf, with whom we keep working ever since. It was a funny and moving shoot: as the story went we shot with an 8 month old baby, who sleeps through the night thanks to Libero. We shot at night with 6 babies (hoping one of them will be willing to fall asleep since we needed only one hero baby). However, shooting involves a lot of noise, lights and movements, and the babies were happily playing around watching the surroundings. The whole crew was quietly waiting around for them to fall asleep. By the time one of the babies fell asleep (along with most of the crew and even the client) it was dawn… :-) In the end, it was worth the wait, we made a beautiful commercial to the satisfaction of everybody:
So Moviebar’s international career had started, we made a lot of commercials for the international markets, among others for Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Austria, Great Britain, Poland, Switzerland, Israel and Russia. Later, we started exclusively representing several foreign directors for the Hungarian market, for example, Johan Tappert, Tobias Bergman, Roman Valent, Henrik Hallgren, Kristian Petri and Andreas Nilsson among others.
We have been fortunate enough to work with fantastic directors and DOPs during the years, here are a few wonderful shoots and names as examples.
These classic McDonald’s spots were directed by Roman Valent in 2006, these films have won several awards :-) Here's one of them:
We shot a Swedish bank commercial with Anthony Dod Mantle, an Oscar winner DOP, hanging at least 20 stunt guys from the ceiling. :-)
We did a commercial in 2010 with Jesper Kouthoofd, also for the Swedish market, who has not only won several awards as a director, but he is a noted designer as well, working for IKEA among others!
We shot a Van She music video with Andreas Nilsson who is considered one of the best music video directors in the world. Read more about him and this shoot in Esther’s first Moviebar blog article:
http://moviebar.blog.hu/2013/11/21/first_blog_post#more5648092
It was great to shoot two spots with the directors of Traktor, these film were part of a longer series and have won several awards since.
We have also been lucky to work with Hoyte van Hoytema, DOP of Oscar nominee film “Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy” and recent Oscar contender: Spike Jonze’s “Her”.
We did a commercial for Foot Locker and Nike starring Mario Balotelli, and luckily, the list of celebrities is long.
Recently we worked with John Mathieson, the DOP of Gladiator. This coffee commercial used several elephants. John could “speak” perfect elephant, he was the only one of the crew who decided to take a ride on one of them :-)
John Mathieson riding an elephant
In addition to commercials for the international market, we did plenty commercials for the Hungarian market as well. Since 2008, we have been doing Vodafone commercials, with, for example, triple Olympic champion Tamás Kásás (who nearly froze into a tiny Fiat 500 – it was incredibly cold in Geneva in January), serious acting chops go to the Olympic champion waterpolo team, radio and TV presenters Balázs Sebestyén & Jani Vadon, and Yonderboi who has created the first Soundmap of Hungary. We shot a McDonald’s spot with Mystery Gang and helped to create several other memorable commercials, for Hungarian brands like Béres Csepp, Pöttyös, Omnia, Borsodi, Biopon, Danone, Sága, UPC, and so on.
@ Geneva, with Tamás Kásás
We shot with a dancing cat on a piano, a ping-pong playing skunk (smelly as advertised), a helicopter landing in a stadium, stuntmen on fire, ice-skating in the summer, we flew back to medieval times and enchanted ourselves to Alice’s Wonderland. This is Moviebar.
When I think back of the years when my sons were little, I can’t even imagine where that energy came from. I believe I am infinitely lucky not only because I can do what I love and this gives me a lot of energy, but also that I have a secure family background, especially my husband without whom these ten years could not have happened.
The boys, Lackó and Ádám love to come to the shoots, they are very interested in what Mom is doing. There was a time when Lackó wanted to become a DOP. They like the details of filmmaking, especially the special effects, following through the process from the script to the final product. And when they see the result on TV, they shout out loud together: “Mom did this!”
The boys at a McDonald’s shoot with the prop car
and even participating as extras…
Recently Adam’s head teacher asked me to give a lecture to the kids at school on commercials, and the making of commercials. It was a very fitting task and I enjoyed it tremendously. The many interested children listening with sparkling eyes… After class many of them came to me to ask more questions about this interesting world. It was great to see the openness of a new generation.
Naturally, a blog entry is insufficient to summarize 10 years of Moviebar, but that is not my goal, anyway. The full Moviebar story should be published in a book :-) There so many funny/instructive/surprising/moving stories connected to the 350-400 commercials we have shot so far!
I hope that Moviebar will have many more 10 years like this and I am certain that a lot of exciting tasks are ahead of us.
I WISH YOU ALL A HAPPY AND SUCCESSFUL 2014!
