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On June 16, International Domestic Workers Day - a special yet a forgotten day – Home Box kickstarted its commitment to a meaningful initiative across the Gulf region.
A short film has been launched by the furniture retailer in the Middle East in collaboration with Leo Burnett agency in Dubai. It features real domestic workers, based in the Middle East, each telling their own story and describing their favourite place in the homes they work in. Out of all the places they speak about, one room remains hidden: their own room.
This film, inspired from research where Home Box and Leo Burnett asked 329 domestic workers about their favorite place in the homes they work in, and out of all the places they spoke about, the workers’ living space—their own room--remained unmentioned.
Through this premise, the film addresses an inequality delicately and sensitively.
Expat domestic workers are employed in many homes in the Middle East, often working for years for the same families, living away from their own families. They come from all over the world. But while they work in towering skyscrapers and big villas, their rooms remain very small spaces – typically 7 feet x 10 feet, but sometimes even smaller. These rooms are often furnished with second-hand or third-hand furniture, mismatched, worn out or dingy.
So, the “The Hidden Room Collection” was created by the agency, Leo Burnett Dubai. It’s a specially curated collection, designed in collaboration with Home Box’s design team, that provides beautifully designed furniture and furnishing items for the small spaces where domestic workers live. With these smart living solutions, Home Box can help to transform these spaces, so people feel at home in the homes they work in.
From an executional standpoint, the film, framed intentionally in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, creates the boxed-up feeling that they feel in their constrained and restrictive living space. The camera movement is slow and lingers. Visually, the lenses used were chosen to feel like 70-80’s vignetting, with specially created LUTs and rehoused vintage optics recreating an analog film look.
For the colours and lights, the film was not shot in clean white light. The shots are always filtered with a bit of blue, grey or a bit of dim yellow. Frequent moments in blue lighting cue us into inner sadness and loneliness, balanced with frequent moments of dim yellow lighting that help tap into the darker side of yellow, hinting at depression and loneliness too.
The film directs people to a website, where people can shop for The Hidden Room Collection, which is also available in-store. Demand is said to have started to pour in, and homeowners have started transforming the rooms as seen in the few snippets here– a process that Home Box is capturing for a mini-documentary.
Because this is not another commercial, but a narrative-short that aims to brings light to all the hidden rooms across the region.
Credits
Creative Agency: Publicis Groupe ME&T - Leo Burnett Middle East
Production Company: Liwa Content.Driven
Ajay Antal, Chief Executive Officer, Home Box
Kunal Kapoor, Marketing Manager, Home Box
Shahzeen Rizvi, Digital Marketing Specialist Omni-channel, Home Box
Bassel Kakish, Chief Executive Officer, Publicis Groupe ME&T
Kalpesh Patankar, Chief Creative Officer and Creative Direction, Leo Burnett
Tahaab Rais, Chief Strategy Officer, Publicis Groupe ME&T
Tahaab Rais, Film Director, Story and Sound Design
Shereen Mostafa, Head of Production, Leo Burnett
Sagar Rege, Executive Producer, Liwa Content.Driven
Aeyaz, DoP and Cinematography
Aunindo Sen, Senior Creative Director, Copywriter, Leo Burnett
Kapil Bhimekar, Creative Director and Art Direction, Leo Burnett
Paurav Shah, Senior Copywriter and Dialogues, Leo Burnett
Smit Agrawal, Creative
Vaibhava Bhatnagar, Creative
Remy Haddad, 1st AD
Neda Zag, Editor, Cold Cutz
Karim Mira, Grading and Colorist, LZRD
Khushboo Sawlani, Strategic and Creative Excellence Designer
Asma Zaghdoud, Account Manager, Leo Burnett
Nadine Raad, Account Manager, Leo Burnett
Shane Vessaoukar, Executive Producer, Liwa Content.Driven
Neha Jaswani, Production Coordinator, Liwa Content.Driven
Charbel Zgheib, Production Designer, Liwa Content.Driven
Puja Chatterjee, Account Director, Liwa Content.Driven
Nishqa Pillai, Account Manager, Liwa Content.Driven
Shoaib Ischtiyak, Nikhil Soman, Talal Dakkak, Post-Production, Liwa Content.Driven
Raed Hakim, Client Operations Director
Sheni Meledath, Senior Manager - Digital Delivery
Venkat Krish, Senior User Experience Specialist
Soundtrack: ‘Art of Silence’ by Uniq featuring Onio
