Pellice Moda - Rail Yard
Phillip Wong Productions
Photography/Publishing
Pellice Moda – Rail Yard
In working with luxury goods, and in luxury environments, I’ve always been aware of contrasts between the most valuable of items, the people who wear them, the people who create them, and what creates the idea of “luxury.”
Contrasting the luxury of furs and the Old World that embraced that idea of luxury, with the age and romanticism of that world – I convinced my editors at Pellice Moda, that the editorial story would have beauty, interest and appeal. They introduced me to Nadya Khamnipour, a stylist who’s work I loved – lush, whimsical, contrary, resisting cliche, her combinations of accessories with textured clothing created a balance with my need to focus on the evocation of emotion, or a stark, textural landscape.
Italian Vogue - Intense Silhouette
Phillip Wong Productions
Photography/Publishing
Italian Vogue – Intense Silhouette
I used to describe the difference between working for European publications with America publications like this: In Europe, as a photographer, an artist, a creative, someone outside, with a wide mix of influences and resources, I could propose something, and while editors might not understand completely, they trusted in that background and allowed me to produce the piece.
In America, I described publications as having a “Donald Trump mentality.” The people in offices, cloistered and separated from the trends and developments and people on the ground, dictated that “this was the way it was.” This was the way it was going to be. And because I was simply hired with a camera – I would do what I was told. (I was defining this “corporate” way of looking at the world, in the 1990s).
Italian Vogue editors didn’t always understand what I was trying to describe (a cross between imperfect Italian and overly complex English), but they often let me go ahead. They had products or trends or parameters which they wanted to cover (they had writers already working on an article), but they were looking for “creative,” “different,” “interesting,” visual images. (Not surprisingly, those were some of the first words I learned in Italian.)
I had been looking at textile shops and in New York, found some stretchy tubular material (I later found was used for undershirts), and bought a few rolls of it. In Milano, I tried wrapping it, and liked the form-fitting quality of the material – but didn’t see what I could do with it.
Alberto Nodolini, and Luca Stoppini, handed me off to Vogue Pelle to shoot some handbags for a story. I saw the stark composition and silhouette of the bags, and wanted to contrast it with the forms, shapes and curves of the human form.
The difficulty of accessories has always been the proportional difference between any accessory and the human body. When other items are added to the mix – they can create distractions.
They let me run with this:
Wine Tasting Event for California Vineyard on New York Rooftop
Phillip Wong Productions
Events
Wine Tasting Event for California Vineyard on New York Rooftop
A large California vineyard wanted to do a luncheon wine tasting event for international press on the rooftop of a New York hotel.
They commissioned us to design and construct an airy, sectioned space that would suggest a vineyard, as well as creating the table designs for the luncheon part of the event, and a separate tasting part.
Many vineyards have their own stemware for tastings and vineyard events, but since this event was across the continent, we also provided a line of Reidel stemware that would accommodate their multiple offerings.
Proposals and Designs
Phillip Wong Productions
Photography
Proposals and Designs
We use images to create brands, identities, emotional and informational connections to ideas, and for us, to create the proposals that would persuade event directors at major corporations of the direction and ambiance that we propose.
In a world of nuanced communications, visual images mean everything.
Promotion for Travel Industry
Phillip Wong Productions
Events
Promotion for Travel Industry
The travel and tourism industry consists of travel, accommodations, entertainment and various aspects of the entire industry. This event was to encourage travel agents to recommend Italy as a destination in the United States.
Non-profit Fundraising Event
Phillip Wong Productions
Events
Non-Profit Fundraising Events
In our first project for a new client, they originally asked us about floral elements. It quickly expanded to everything beyond the booking of Carlos Santana, the Gypsy Kings, and Marc Anthony, and the staging, rigging, lighting and sound system that was already contracted.
Everything else was up in the air. From the auction to decor, dining, event flow, catering, photo ops, meet and greet, reception through the logistics and manpower needed to pull this through within the week.
An Anatomy of an Event
Phillip Wong Productions
Events/Production/Planning
An Anatomy of an Event
Events have many layers in the planning, the preparation, the budgets, the purchasing, the assembly, the implementation, the management and the close.
It takes organization, direction, foresight, timelines and unlike so many other areas of production: there is no “do over.”
Each production, film, manufacturing, construction, media, photography have elements of this: but all of them have timelines that can be postponed, extended, or revised. Events can not. Theater is similar, but most others are not.
The most crucial part of event production is logical, practical, realistic, planning. Assessing what needs to be done, what can be done, what we want to be done – needs to be considered with how we wish to implement this assessment.
Without exaggeration, Phillip Wong Productions has worked with thousands (yes, thousands), of productions. In events, we have worked with the lighting, staging, electrical, structural, decor, logistics, workplace safety, catering, crew, employee, and crowd management, security, and budgeting.
We have worked with the design and construction and implementation of build outs, and end-of-event dis-assembly. More importantly, we have worked with all of the sub-contractors and crews to understand what their needs, and timelines are to complete varying expectations prior to, and throughout an event.
As we work with the vendors and sub-contractors on timelines that allow sequential load-ins that would allow different teams to work at the same time, pulling together a project in modular fashions.
This core element of Timeline Management is not unique for events, but is crucial to industry after industry. The opportunity of working in the event production business, is the sheer number of times we were able to do it to refine the process.
In both floral and catering, the element of freshness and refrigeration adds urgency to timelines.
Gold Richtig
Phillip Wong Productions
Media/Magazine/Photography
Gold Richtig
I worked with a number of publications from Italy, Britain, Germany, China, Japan and the United States, when I was in another country.
Editorial work has to be coordinated and have the communications necessary to balance the copy being written, the direction of a written piece, and the image creation. Depending on the publication, the overall budget, coordinating models, make-up, hair, stylists, transportation, location, studio, lighting, assistance all contribute, or dictate the simplicity, or complexity of a project.
Understanding of production from concept to print was crucial in my being able to coordinate and delegate multiple stories on location for entire issues of publication.
We would plan four or six articles, sometimes for a single issue, or for multiple issues, around the production schedule of a week or several weeks.
Relying on my understanding of manipulating visual imagery around theme, or story, rather than an artistic sameness, and on location, understanding the need for transporting an audience to “place” as well as a “threaded” theme, allowed me to compose different shoots of coherence within short turnarounds. (This is similar to how film productions are constructed dependent on weather, time, actor availability, location availability etc.).
Franco Moschino
Phillip Wong Productions
Photography/Editorial
Franco Moschino
ID Magazine’s Iain Webb contacted me from London when they were planning on doing a profile on Italian fashion designer Franco Moschino. ID was one of a series of influential British publications that rose through “street style” to showcase the irreverent designers that would put a huge stamp on fashion through the first 20 years of the 21st century.
Iain sent me a number of questions he wanted me to touch on in an interview I was conducting, but my discussion expanded into Franco Moschino’s views on designing, the growing direction of fashion into name branding, the diminishing of designers as labels ascended, and the pricing and commercialism of fashion.
Franco Moschino was the son of an Italian ironworker, and he approached designing from the perspective of craftwork, but he was overseeing 27 labels when we spoke.His expression to described how he approached his fame.
A New Covenant
Phillip Wong Productions
Photography
A New Covenant
A New Covenant was a gospel group that I encouraged to sing, to perform, to live who they were. They arranged themselves in their performance groups, and I created new stages for them to interact with.
In still photography, most images are clustered groups of people arranged from tallest/most to shortest/least back to front. In film production, the idea of motion, interaction, foreground/background and principal relationships are part of the story.
Classic photography is based on portrait painting of the previous 400 years. Modern cameras have the ability to move and tell much different stories.
