05A - BoA - TONGAL
IT’S LOVELY TO MEET YOU
We’re VEMOD, a trio of long-time friends and collaborators with over 40 years’ experience to discuss with our therapists. We love partnering with creative brands to capture thoughtful, world-class visuals that actually MOVE people.
Look out below for a few recent, similar projects we concepted, produced and directed; and click here to see more of our work.
- John, Jakub & Mike
WATCH ME FIRST ⬇️
01
This brief spoke to us
directly, and on a personal level. I (Jakub) am a Polish immigrant myself, and Mike (EP and partner)’s wife is a Mexican immigrant and entrepreneur, whose story looks a lot like Carolina’s.
Carolina has chosen the long, hard, but incredibly empowering road of entrepreneurship, and our hats are off to her!! We want to honor her story (and all immigrants’ stories) through the work we do.
Shameless plug: if you want to see another immigrant story - not a tonal reference for this project; just a piece of personal work we love - this is “The Silent Pilgrim,” a film I (Jakub) made about my father and his journey as an artist.
Above ⬆️
A short doc we made, exploring the life and work of a little-known artist.
Below ⬇️
Another project of ours, celebrating the Arrival of new transit technology.
Above ⬆️
A project of ours quite similar in scope to this one - and a great collab with a fantastic agency.
Below ⬇️
Another short doc of ours highlighting an entrepreneur’s story.
02
We believe the simple
things in life, the carefully designed but often overlooked items we interact with day to day, have the power to transform the spaces in which we live, and the way we experience the ordinary.
Carolina’s products are simple. A towel; a bedsheet; a piece of fabric that exists in the background of your home and your life. And yet, when these products are well-designed and well-made, they elevate the world around them.
That beautiful irony - power in the little things - beats at the heart of this story!
03
but, like, specifically though….
So: suppose we find ourselves in a somewhat bland-looking space, maybe a bedroom. The frame’s wide. Nothing’s happening. Colors are muted; furniture is nondescript; you’ve seen this room a million times before. It’s a bit lifeless.
Until…. a figure walks through the frame - anyone: a child? one of Carolina’s kids? - and carelessly drapes a Caro Home towel over a chair.
It’s a startling pop of vibrant color! And suddenly the frame’s not boring. Now it has a SUBJECT. Now it has FOCUS! (We didn’t come up with this idea, by the way; Carolina did! It’s all over her Instagram).
We propose to film several scenes like this: boring spaces made interesting by a simple change, a tiny injection of color and design.
Our interview with Carolina, meanwhile, will hammer the metaphor home. Carolina herself, after all, is a little like the towel tossed over a chair: she is a rare pop of color in a world that needs it desperately!
We’ll break up these carefully composed wide shots by interviewing Carolina in her element. Whatever she does to unwind, to get ready for her day, we’ll film an on-the-go interview with her while doing that. Running a business requires energy! It’s not a passive sport. We want to show Carolina as the motive force behind her own success. Her heritage, her background, her drive, is what empowers her. (Of course, we’ll also plan for a seated, more traditional interview setup with her to make sure we check all the topical boxes.)
04
docs should look like films,
period, end of sentence. We want to bring that crispy, elevated commercial look to this project, without sacrificing the realness (the verité if we’re gonna get fancy about it).
When we heard this project was shooting in Stamford, we immediately thought of a good friend of ours, DP Quinton Brogen, who lives right around the corner (ok, not literally, but he’s close). We’re big fans of Quinton’s thoughtful use of color and gentle, unpretentious compositions. Story is king, and Quinton’s images always serve the story.
These images should feel natural and filmic, carefully composed, and gently nudged in the direction we want with minimal set dec.
05
WINDING DOWN
We are enormously grateful for the chance to pitch on this project. We really mean that: we’re a newer production company (although we ourselves are, increasingly, the old-timers on set; this world just keeps on a-turning with or without our permission), so without Tongal, we’d probably never have heard about this brief.
We truly believe we can bring something special to this project, and we’re so excited to dive in and chat more.
Thanks again, and hope to talk soon!
-Jakub, Mike & John
