Rob Chiu
Calm & Composed
Rob Chiu is a London-based filmmaker whose subtle visual style infuses everything he shoots. His work is characterised by a strong photographic quality with close attention to composition, typography and editing.
Impeccably crafted, his commercials are confident and assured, often displaying a keen ear for innovative sound design on top of pure, atmospheric drama. His commercial work includes films for McLaren, Peugeot, Audi, Nike, Jaeger LeCoultre, Center Parcs and The French Marines.
When speaking about his commercials, Rob says; "My work nearly always begins from a narrative point of view. What are these people doing, why are they here, where are they going, how do they feel? Even if it isn’t as clear on screen as it is with a narrative film the background to all of the characters is something that I like to set in place for my commercial projects."
His recent foray into music promos has already seen him working with renowned producer Jon Hopkins and film composer Craig Armstrong while his continuing personal work has moved into longer form film-making with the 'Division of Gravity', being a beautifully shot study of love and despair within a relationship, and it’s right here that Rob likes to be:
"I get to try out new ideas and to try and push things a little bit further than what I would be able to do with a commercial."
"I just began in music promos since the beginning of this year and have found it to be really liberating. You can basically propose whatever idea you want and then if you are lucky to win it then you get a small budget to see out your idea. I love working in this medium purely for this reason. I get to try out new ideas and to try and push things a little bit further than what I would be able to do with a commercial where you have a lot of responsibility to the client and the agency. That’s not to say that you have no responsibility to the artist or record label but you are given a lot more freedom to experiment. They are nearly always open to this and is something they actively look for in a director."
Rob has also turned his technical skills to digital formats with most notably the Philips 'Obsessed with Sound' project for Tribal DDB Amsterdam. This unique interactive experience used sound, film & data visualisation to let the viewer single out individual orchestra musicians playing a specially composed track. The film picked up Gold at Cannes Cyber Lions, a Yellow pencil at D&AD & Gold at The One Show among others. So, what’s next? Well, 2015 has seen new representation and a whole new set of opportunities:
"I’ve been working with Iconoclast and Standard Films a lot recently and am doing some exciting work for them. I recently finished a commercial for Peugeot which turned out really nice and a great one for McLaren through VCCP in London. I also have a couple of other projects in post production which I look forward to sharing. On a personal side I have a feature film project in the very early stages of development and I hope to be able to get that off the ground ASAP!"
For his film portfolio Rob chose our Airdura theme. His body of work is split into four portfolios; showing off his commercials, music promos, narrative work and photography. With a portfolio of varied media formats, Airdura's layout choices allow him to focus his film projects with the fullscreen slideshow layout whilst presenting his photographic content in a lightbox layout. Airdura's image-focussed design lets the project content do the talking and he’s using Fabrik’s sub-portfolios to make specific sub-portfolios for each client, which lets him present the client underneath each project.