The Secret Project

Qatar Airways · 2024 · Platinum MUSE · Grand NYX

A national occasion carries a meaning that exists before a brand enters the conversation. The film needs to understand that meaning rather than treat the date as an empty advertising opportunity.

This Qatar Airways project responds to a National Day brief. Its central relationship is between the national carrier and a wider sense of collective identity.

The occasion sets the terms

A conventional commercial usually starts from a product or service. A national film begins with an audience that already has a personal relationship to the occasion.

That changes the directing question. The brand has to belong within the work without appearing to claim ownership of something much larger than itself. The images and sound need to support the occasion first.

Emotion needs a specific centre

Broad ideas such as pride and belonging are easy to name and difficult to film precisely. Their expression needs a consistent perspective. Otherwise a film can accumulate impressive images without establishing a relationship between them.

For me, the useful discipline is deciding what holds the sequence together. It may be the way the film moves through people and places, or the relationship between sound and image. The audience should experience a coherent thought rather than a list of symbols.

A place within the body of work

This project belongs to the more ceremonial side of the aviation portfolio, alongside campaigns whose purpose is sporting, social or directly promotional. The shared client does not make the directing problem the same.

The value of the film is in responding to its occasion on its own terms. That is the distinction worth keeping: a brand can participate in a national moment without asking that moment to behave like an ordinary product advertisement.