Following the success of The Investigation, Filmages went incognito once again to uncover the latest mouth-watering line-up of La Rose Noire products.

Filming in multiple locations in Hong Kong and in the Philippines, our team pulled out all the visual storytelling tricks that would keep the audience informed and entertained.

Being invited as a major speaker to the Swiss Economic Forum is nothing short of prestigious, and usually the SEF produces the guest's biopic introduction themselves.

But Gerard Dubois preferred to take his portrayal in his own hands, or rather, to put it in ours.

Having already produced several films for LRN we had to stick to the provided SEF guidelines, but could produce a much more creative and richly documented video portrait.

How do you represent a company with a global presence?
You get people from all around the world to talk about it.

So, we created six mini-stories ideally portraying a business club manager in New York City, a golf club manager in Singapore, a catering manager for a fashion event in Paris, a six-star hotel manager in Dubai, an executive chef in Sydney, and a royal banquet official in London.

Since their doors first opened for business, La Rose Noire has struck a balance between their business and humanitarian activities in the Asia Pacific region.

They know that every effort counts when managing a profitable business as well as corporate social responsbility, with nothing spared when it comes to improving the quality of life for the next generation.

To honour their commitment to this cause, we introduce how LRN Foundation support education and training programmes in developing communities.

When you're passionate about your work, there's little that can stand in the way of your dreams, and our Client, La Rose Noire, has carried this youthful optimism with them everyday for over 25 years.

We wanted to tell the world of their triumphs with the exact same energy, and what better way than working with sparkling on-screen and voice over talents.

Of course, our production schedule had to keep the same pace! From pre to post, production was wrapped in 4 weeks just in time for our Client's presentation and the holiday season for Filmages.

It seems that the sky is the limit for Gerard Dubois and his loyal team...
To celebrate the launch of their (already very successful) second shop in Tsim Sha Tsui, La Rose Noire asked us to produce a video that would reflect their long-term vision.
With shop rental being the major hurdle for any brand expansion in Hong Kong this video is primarily geared to seduce property owners.

How could we turn a classic case of corporate need into a piece of entertainment? How could we engage an audience of existing customers with the details of the whole of La Rose Noire's processes?

We turned the story upside down! Instead of highlighting the positive points of production, we lead the audience into a dramatic exploration of LRN operations from the perspective of hired investigators.

For what was a rather dark movie, we had to come up with a positive resolution to ensure the audience came away informed and satisfied.
 

In times when large corporations continue to push profits ahead of ethics, it's always heartwarming to watch La Rose Noire support their workers and the community through CSR and charitable activities.

We documented the La Rose Noire Foundation vocational training programmes by interviewing the students, alumni and employers.

Besides capturing moments from their latest graduation ceremony, our cameraman found out what it felt like to be totally covered in bees! 

Following the previous year’s video the highly successful La Rose Noire wanted to keep their customers updated with their achievements and new lines of mouth-watering products. 

However, the world had been shaken by several China food scandals, and we scripted a storyline starting from their strong fundamentals; top quality Flour, Eggs, Dairy, authentic craftsmanship; building up towards quality control, distribution, and ultimately impeccable taste.

This video certainly helped them go serenely through the media storm, and in fact consolidated their reputation.

La Rose Noire has grown in every direction over the years, and Filmages joined them on a journey back to where it all began.

This movie presented a unique challenge as we documented a complex subject over several countries with lots of different elements, and people, involved. We needed to balance a lot of information to stay in control of the story.

Aside from understanding the technical elements of the chocolate making process, we kept focus on the core message - why La Rose Noire chose to make their own couverture.

Many companies try to be more socially responsible.
Million dollar question is: What to do?
It seems that the answer point in the direction of: everything counts, and La Rose Noire has been working hard at it.
That might seems all nice but that made our task explaining it all very very complicated because organising their myriad of actions in a strictly logical order just wouldn’t work.
Our creative logic ended up with a Polar Bear, a Baby Boss, and other wacky concepts.
But it works!
This is Nuts...
 

How do we make a movie delicious? This was the challenge posed to us by LRN, was to turn 3 new product lines and make them visually appealing whislt using our sense of sight to ultimately determine taste. 

Another challenge was to demonstrate the handmade care taken with the products, all being done in an industrial factory.

It was a challenging project, this fun, delicious, stylish and sexy and we here are very proud of the end result.

When you work in the creative industry, there is not much that separates your passion from your work.

The team at Passion By Gerard Dubois understand this labour of love and we endeavoured to reflect that commitment in this tribute to their retail brand.

Finishing touches in post-production added that extra dash of magic using creative visual tricks, motion graphics and illustration.

How do you fire up a party?
By inviting La Rose Noire's mischievous Mini-macarons and Amuse-bouches!

To promote this new line of finger-food products we created a light-hearted comedy using stop-motion animation to give life to bit-size delicacies.
We wish we could say that no Macaron was harmed in the making of this video, but that wouldn't be true. Stop-motion animation takes time, a lot of time, and we had to frequently relieve the "actors" from duty.

Whether you're a customer, a competitor, or even a video production house; keeping up with a fast-paced business like La Rose Noire requires a lot of stamina!

Additional product lines, expansion of their Passion retail brand and overall improvement of their business practices meant that we needed to produce an equally energetic video to do their success justice.

Never forget where you came from. 

La Rose Noire may have an incredibly successful global enterprise now, but they never forgot their humble beginning as a single cake shop.
Although the high-demand grew them into a wholesale manufacturer, they always kept a deep love for retail.
So in 2012 they opened the “Passion” patisserie and asked Filmages to produce a social-media teaser.

Our main challenge was to introduce the audience to an unusually large array of products.
We decided to bring in two dancers with different outfits, choreography and mood lighting to represent various consumers and their respective appetites. 

Animation adds a greater flexibility to storytelling that's appealing to more than just kids!

Layered with a professional and upbeat voice over track that spread like butter to bread, a pop-up graphic style gave their message a storybook quality to end a chapter in their company history.

There are many people who might think Bakery and Pastry are easy; just add the ingredients in correct quantities, mix, bake, serve; et voilà! - Not quite.
The fine art of French Bakery and Pastry is about crafting each product down to the smallest details. And that is what makes La Rose Noire operations so fascinating; Industrial scale yet genuinely handcrafted.
So to produce this movie we had to first observe, and then humbly learn to see from the eye's of this industry.
We brought in a strong storyline, a touch of poetry and humour.
The resulting movie was extremely well received by LRN customers world-wide and this translated in a noticeable increase in sales.

Our clients and friends from La Rose Noire were celebrating their 25th anniversary, and we had the priviledge to write their stage's script. Here is the first excerpt:

"If the whole story of the universe, since its creation to today, was measured as 1 year,
our solar system would only appear on the last quarter,
birds and flowers would only appear in the last 3 days,
humans would only appear in the last minute,
and modern history would only start in the last 5 seconds.

So 25 years is not much, really.
One can argue that it is a quarter of a Century; but in the grand cosmic scheme it is virtually nothing, less than a blink of an eye, and it is humbling.

Yet, the 25 years that we are celebrating today represent an incredible journey,
filled with wonderful people,
hard work,
amazing achievements,
and I hope you will agree; delicious outcome.. "