As Jin mentioned earlier, Romantic Life is our chosen photo-shooting company.
It was still too early to be impressed by the final product and we have not been very satisfied with their administration so far...this briefing was rescheduled twice, because of their internal mis-communication.
This also meant that we held up the momentum and busted off ... I was at the edge of being super irritated and not sure how I would react if there were anything else to go wrong...
Kind of stressful.
(I must say my standard has become so much higher since I started working with my demanding internal customers. My bar may even reach another peak now - with my partner coming from the place with the highest service standard in the world...who actually works with his emperor-like customers everyday...and who is actually one of my very demanding customer!! haha)
hmmm...how can we be more relaxed/ have higher tolerance to others?
(but...when it comes to marriage...how can we tolerate?)
In fact my "account manager" is a nice lady with strong human touch. You feel like you are talking with a friend who always excite for you on your marriage. It could be that she works part-time and that's why follow up was (I wish it's a past tense) always not thorough, not detail minded enough, too.
However, with her soft skill, the tension always released when I meet her in person.
Well, back to the topic.
We were supposed to have this briefing 1 month prior to the photo-shooting day. (but we ended up having only 2 weeks) It aims at clarifying what style, effect, venues we want for the photos, and confirm the logistics.
However, the photographers were already gone to Japan when we held the meeting. Presented in the meeting including my account manager, the "director" for photo-taking, me and Jin (via Skype video).
My account manager walked extra miles for me to pick the wedding dress, which was a good starting for the day.
Well... it was a very busy night. So many Taiwanese staff and other customers. Space was limited and noises kept inside the room. People started to yell..and not enough chairs...my account manager needed to knee down for the whole process...wao...it's such a big MESS.
In order to get Jin involved, we needed to use the staff's PC (with Skype). It was quite inconvenient as staff were actually working, busy in and out. One staff was bugging me for almost an hour for having occupied her PC....well...level of irritation kept rising.
One fortunate thing was...since we had so limited time with the preparation team, we thought it might work better if we prepare a super thorough "briefing sheet" for the meeting.
This worked especially well when time was limited and mode of communication was not 100% clear/ smooth.
With the briefing sheet in hand, things went so much easier.
For the 2nd half of the meeting, the director came. He is a Hong Kong(er?) and visits Nara every year in the same timeframe. He sounds familiar with the setting there and his idea easily merged with Jin's. This was a big relief - finally we found somebody (at least) looks detail minded and knows the actual thing.
His comment to our plan was: too many spots (we are creative, and in another way - greedy =P). It was a plan for a 2-day shooting. (!!!!!!) But he tried his best to work out the itinerary and backed up with options. With gives & takes, our plan was finalised.
Conclusion is: we need to start from 7am and all the way until night!
What a big challenge to all our physical tolerance!
We will make sure we treat them a nice dinner after the photo-shooting...hahahaha.
1 comment:
It was an interesting but serious time to discuss our grand photo shooting. Since the venue was in Japan, I wanted to try to be as helpful as possible, which yielded in creating such a detailed research and creation of the briefing sheets.
The environment was indeed not a pleasent one on your end. I was so rueful to see you so irritated... mmm. But regardless of such a difficult environment, you kept your integrity and calmness, and I think that kept the momentum going.
I think we are indeed greedy. Moreover, our tolerence level was (and still is) high, so we need to keep ou rnecessities and must do's.
Well, the more we provide, the better image the director will have. This is my basic idea. However, we don't want to overflood the team with overwhelming amount of information. Not tooooo much, but a bit over the "just enough" amount. Thus, it may indeed be for 2days, but it's a collection of choices to pick from to get the best looks and faces.
Finally, a big yokudekimashita chop for Carol for hanging in there at the Romantic Life briefing. Your hard work in delivering the ideas we planned nights over nights will indeed be the seeds of ourselves blooming under the pink pink sakura trees.
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