Business of Design Week 2022 / CiGa BODW 2022 - Zhang Jianmin (CiGa) - Changing Times

A filmed profile of Zhang Jianmin, founder of CiGa, made for Business of Design Week 2022 around his theme Changing Times: creativity, community, and innovation. Directed and shot in collaboration with Capsule48, Hong Kong, to screen at the event and live online afterward.

The brief

A piece on Zhang Jianmin to air at BODW 2022 and online, capturing not just his ideas but his energy and spirit, in a register more cinematic than the talking-head profiles he was used to sitting for.

The challenge

He’s a very busy man, and going in he didn’t want to give up much time. The window we had for the interview and b-roll was short, and on paper that was the whole shoot.

The approach

I directed and shot it to look like nothing he’d sat for before, using the short window to set a genuinely cinematic tone rather than another point-and-shoot profile. It landed fast. He told me he loved the way I was making it look, that it wasn’t the kind of video people usually came in and shot of him.

The result

He liked it enough to cancel the rest of his day. What was meant to be a brief session turned into an afternoon: he left the office with us to grab more shots around the area for variety, and kept going. Then he took it further, insisting on introducing me to his marketing head and asking them to bring me in to shoot one of CiGa’s upcoming products.