Client: Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA) is one of the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world owned by the Emirate of Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. It was established to manage funds for the Government of Abu Dhabi, overseeing approximately $853 billion in investments.

Brief: ADIA recruits talent from all over the world, and as part of the recruitment process, they invite select candidates to visit Abu Dhabi to experience the city as a resident with a focus on housing, education, healthcare, and leisure activities. ADIA wants to encapsulate that experience in a video as part of the onboarding process to answer some questions to potential candidates while opening up conversation for additional information.

Challenges: Any characters portrayed in the video should be diverse and generic without using testimonials from current employees that have gone through the process, this was a direction to extend the shelf life of the video.

Solutions: As this video is used for internal purposes only, we had the liberty to use existing footage from other entities with no cost apart from permission to use them in this video. We were able to stick within budget with minimal filming using some of their employees as talent, and using some stock footage.

Direction: We wanted the video to have a raw and personal feel to avoid it being a tourist destination video, but more real life and work in Abu Dhabi. The initial storyboard was developed with a clear introduction, conclusion and the key touchpoints in between. The voice-over script was developed and using an AI VO, formed the base of the narrative to start post-production until the script was fully refined. A major focus was to establish a sense of place, so a simple map of Abu Dhabi was used as a key visual anchor throughout the video that gives the viewer the spatial awareness of the city and a visual indication of proximity.