Happy Productions produces documentary-style video for nonprofits, foundations and NGOs with programs across Asia and the Pacific. We've filmed in Cambodia, Vietnam, Hong Kong and on Australia's Central Coast, each time with a vetted local videographer on the ground, our producer on the brief and our editors on the cut. Overnight for you, business hours for the crew, footage in your folder before your Monday meeting.
Book a 20-min consult20 minutes. No pitch deck. You leave with a plan for your programs in Asia-Pacific, whether or not we work together.
Asia-Pacific is where much of the work happens and where the least usable footage comes back from. Sound familiar?
Your country team filmed the training, the clinic and the graduation. It's beautiful. It's also untouched, in three formats, and year-end is in eight weeks.
The comms lead flies fourteen hours, shoots everything, and that b-roll has to carry impact reports, sustainer emails and social for twelve months.
Flights, visas, a fixer, a translator, gear through customs. The budget goes to logistics and the story gets what's left before the flight home.
Generic drone shots, a sad piano, subtitles that miss the meaning. Your partners in Jakarta can tell it wasn't made by anyone who knows Jakarta.
For what it takes to move one crew from the West Coast to Cambodia and back, you can put a vetted local videographer on the ground in three countries, and spend the difference on the edit.
Three steps. Your country team gets one WhatsApp group, one shot list and one production day, not a film crew to host.
A 45-minute call with your program and comms leads. Our producer writes the shot list, the interview questions and the consent approach, then books a videographer we've vetted in-country (portfolio, reel, a live video call) and a translator when the interviews call for one.
One production day where the work happens: interviews, observational footage, the moments in between. Our producer is on WhatsApp with the crew from call time to wrap, and the footage lands in a shared folder you own within days.
Our editors cut a hero film plus vertical short-form for Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, subtitled. When the story fits, we feature it to the Are You Happy? audience of 200 million viewers a year.
We've produced patient and staff stories at a partner hospital in Cambodia with local videographers and a Khmer translator, filmed the 2026 Lions International Convention in Hong Kong, filmed a two-district production in Ho Chi Minh City, and covered a four-hour community day on Australia's Central Coast with 19 interviews. Our network spans the region, so if your programs run anywhere below, we can staff a shoot there.
countries and territories across Asia-Pacific we've filmed in: Cambodia, Vietnam, Hong Kong and Australia. Every shoot with a local crew and our producer on the brief, every edit cut by our team.
Headquartered in Manila, Jakarta, Bangkok, Delhi, Singapore, Hong Kong or Sydney? We work with organizations based in Asia-Pacific the same way: a local crew we've vetted, our producer on the brief, our editors on the cut, and distribution through the Are You Happy? audience when the story fits. Time zones are our normal.
Every image on this page is from a shoot we produced — stills from our photographers and frames pulled from the footage itself. No stock, no library, no other agency's work.
A four-hour community day with more than a hundred volunteers and around a thousand members of the public. An Australian videographer captured nineteen interviews across five clubs, plus drone. It became a thirteen-piece batch and a three-part series — and the client was right to ask us to drop the stock national music clichés.
Two days around the Lions International Convention, filmed alongside the organisation's own crews. The rule we now apply to every convention: lanyards off, dated signage out of frame, so the clips still work a year later.
Not stock. Not a single trip stretched across a year. Field productions, shot locally, cut by us.
Reach figures are organic, reported by clients or measured on the Are You Happy? channels. Detailed metrics are shared on the call.
“We're living in a world where video is king. And we can't just up and travel to get the content that we need. So Happy Productions was an answered prayer that fell in our lap.”
Kalindi Cordero, Search for Common Ground
Overnight for you, business hours for the crew. Here is what we have actually filmed across the region, and how each day was run.
Two days in December 2025 at a partner surgical centre for Watsi, with two local videographers and a Khmer translator on set. Patients, families and clinicians, including the all-women ENT team. At the client's instruction the facility is never named on screen or in copy — naming the country and the action is enough, and that constraint is now part of how we brief every cut.
April 2026 across two districts in one production, with a Saigon-based videographer and an on-the-ground coordinator moving the crew between a shared workspace and an R&D lab. Worth saying plainly: on that job the client edited in-house, and the footage taught us to be firmer about lavalier audio and b-roll coverage in the brief. We changed the brief.
March 2026 at White Memorial Park, The Entrance: a four-hour community day with more than a hundred volunteers and around a thousand members of the public. An Australian videographer captured nineteen interviews across five clubs plus drone, which became a thirteen-piece batch and a three-part series. The client also asked us to drop the stock national music clichés, and they were right.
The 2026 Lions International Convention, filmed across two days in July alongside the organisation's own video team. The rule we now apply to every convention: lanyards off, dated signage out of frame, so the clips still work a year later.
We have a videographer network reaching India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Japan, Papua New Guinea and New Zealand. We have also edited client-supplied footage from Thai refugee camps into a finished series — if you have a drive of field footage and no production budget, that is a real option.
One production day becomes a library: the hero film for the gala, the 45-second cut for the appeal email, twelve verticals for the feed, and the quiet two-minute piece your program officer sends to the funder.
There is no per-video menu on this page on purpose. Every program, country and season is different, so we scope on the call and send a written plan the same day.
One call with our producer. Bring the two or three stories you know you're sitting on and the dates already on your calendar. You'll leave with a written plan for filming in Asia-Pacific: which stories, which crew, what it takes, and what it costs. If we're not the right fit, we'll tell you on the call.
Locally, almost always. We source and vet a solo videographer or small crew in the country where your program runs, brief them with a written shot list and a live call, and our producer directs remotely on the day. Our founder filmed the Lions convention in Hong Kong himself when the client wanted him there.
It works in your favor. The shoot happens during the crew's business hours, our producer covers it live, and footage is in your folder before you start your day. Review calls land in the overlap, usually your morning.
Interviews run in the language the subject is most comfortable in: Khmer, Tagalog, Bahasa, Hindi, Thai, Cantonese. We book a translator when it matters, as we did in Cambodia, and every cut ships with English subtitles plus any second language you need.
Release forms in the subject's language, signed on a phone via QR before the interview. No minors' names or identifying details, ever. Patients and other vulnerable subjects review anything sensitive before it goes live, and your safeguarding policy overrides our defaults.
Most shoots book within two to three weeks of the brief. Footage lands in your shared folder within a few days, first cuts follow in about two weeks, and revisions run through a review link. Conference or convention coverage can be planned months out.
You do: raw footage and finished films. We keep the right to show the work in our portfolio, with your approval.
Yes. Foundations, national NGOs and community organizations in Manila, Jakarta, Bangkok, Delhi, Singapore, Hong Kong and Sydney get the same model: local crew, our producer, our editors, and distribution through the Are You Happy? audience when the story fits.
Absolutely. Send us a link and we'll cut it. If a drive full of unused field footage is your main problem, start with our free first edit at happyproductions.me/footage.
Book a 20-minute consult. We'll map the two or three stories you're sitting on across your programs, tell you exactly what a shoot there takes, and give you a plan you can use whether or not you hire us.
20 minutes · No pitch deck · A written plan either way
P.S. The regional convening on next quarter's calendar is a production day if someone briefs a local videographer now. Let's make it one.
