Love Slave to My Devil CEO Boss R18

184 His Secret Place

“Your presentation just now confirmed the thought that I had when I was reading your proposal. This storyboard seems well put together and I know without a doubt that it was hard work for you both; however, there’s something very lacking about it,” Ace said before his eyes rested on both of us.

There’s something very lacking…?

“Can you please explain?” Jeremy quickly requested clarification.

“Of course. I feel like the storyboard is very dry although all the components that we agreed upon are in there. This is just my guess but if we hand in the storyboard as is to the production team, we will end up getting a commercial that doesn’t have any emotional appeal to the audience. In other words, it won’t be emotionally engaging and that is the key to success for a commercial with the purpose of motivating social changes,” Ace started to explain sternly. 𝘯𝑜𝑣𝘦𝘭.𝘦𝑡

“But I’m sure that we’ve incorporated all the scenes that should be relatable to the audiences…” I mumbled.

“Producing a commercial is more than just putting scenes in a sequence. You should know that already, right?” Ace asked in return.

I didn’t know what to say in response to that, so I just nodded. This was the worst possible scenario that Jeremy had mentioned. Ace didn’t like our work and so we had to fix it. The question was how do we do that? How do we transform what we have to make it more emotionally engaging?

“Thank you. Well noted. We’ll figure something out and set up another meeting with you again soon,” Jeremy said.

“Thank you…” I thanked Ace as well.

…..

Unlike Jeremy who seemed as motivated as ever, I felt slightly uncertain about how to push the work forward. Frankly, this was the first time that I didn’t quite know how to go about my work. I’ve always worked with clear and direct instructions on what needed to be fixed. This time, however, the instructions were vague, and we had to think of our next steps on our own.

Well, this is surely challenging.

Ace didn’t say much after that, but it was crystal clear that he was dissatisfied with the quality of our work and its lack of appeal. I should have known that Ace would have a super standard when it came to calling for emotional appeal and connection from how his past successful commercials essentially had that as one of its main selling points. What we had to change in order to make our commercial as appealing as he was something that I have yet to figure out.

If I could figure it out so easily, then I might as well be Ace Hills.

“Don’t look so down and frustrated. I told you; this is normal…” Jeremy said while trying to keep his tone light.

“I don’t know about you, but I have absolutely no idea how we should even start fixing this,” I admitted bluntly.

Of course, I was frustrated. Who wouldn’t be?

It felt like I had just rammed into a brick wall headfirst and was forced to acknowledge that my head wasn’t hard enough to crash through it.

“Honestly, I have no idea where to start either. However, that doesn’t mean that I don’t know where to start looking,” Jeremy said before he flashed me a smile that bordered on looking cocky.

“Where should we start looking?” I asked with widened eyes.

“That’s a secret…” he mumbled before his smile widened.

“Not this thing about your secret place again…” I started complaining right away.

“Well, since we’re in this together and buried all the way to our necks, I’ll show you something extremely cool,” Jeremy proposed excitedly.

“Your secret place?” I inquired just as excitedly.

If this place was the source of Jeremy’s inspiration, then it might solve the problem that we had on hand. Plus, I really wanted to see where this genius got his creative juices from.

“Have you ever been to the company’s archive before?” Jeremy asked.

“There’s an archive?” I asked blankly.

I have never heard of such a thing existing in this company before. No one has ever mentioned it to me.

“Yup. You don’t know anything about it? I would have thought that the design team would take a look down there often,” Jeremy asked with clear surprise.

“Umm, I haven’t heard about it at all. What is kept there? I thought all the files are in the server and we can already access them to pull up old files and data on past projects,” I said.

“Not really. Not all files are there, that’s for sure. The older files from many years back were never really digitized and are still stored as paper in the archives. I guess many years ago, there were people who still worked on paper mostly first before transferring it to computer files,” Jeremy explained.

“I still do that sometimes, actually,” I admitted a little shyly when I thought of all my hand-drawn storyboard drafts.

“I do too. Anyways, I think if we check out some older commercials, we might find some inspiration on what we’re looking for,” he suggested with a smile.

“Good idea. Let’s go down there. I’ll leave it to you to lead the way,” I quickly agreed.

“Sure…” Jeremy replied before he smiled broadly at me.

I followed Jeremy to an elevator that seemed to be hidden way at the back of the building. Needless to say, I had never been here before. The elevator that opened on the ground floor didn’t lead upwards but downwards to the floors that were underground. I knew that there were floors underground, but I never knew that anything down there could serve as inspiration to us designers.

“Your first time down here?” Jeremy took a guess.

“Yes…” I replied truthfully.

I didn’t quite know what to expect but the neat and clean hallway that greeted me wasn’t quite like what I had pictured. The company must have very high standards to maintain even the floors underground that are barely used. Jeremy led the way and after many turns along the hallway, we finally arrived at what Jeremy referred to as his ‘secret place’: the company’s archive.

–To be continued…