AXIS 'Buas'
The word ‘buas’ in Indonesian doesn't translate cleanly. Fierce, yes. Feral, maybe. But it carries something more physical than either of those: an unleashed quality. Like something that has been held back and suddenly isn't. That was the energy AXIS wanted for this campaign. Their 5G network arriving in various second cities wasn't just a connectivity upgrade. It was a superpower.
The brief was exciting and, if I'm honest, deceptively tricky.
Getting a wild expression from talent is easy. Getting one that reads as charged rather than threatening, that's the work. There's a razor-thin line between ‘buas’ and simply frightening, and on camera that line lives in the eyes, the mouth, the angle of a jaw. We had to find the version of unhinged that still made you want to be that person. The version that says I have access to something you don't rather than stay away from me. It took real direction, real conversation, and talent willing to commit fully to something that felt a little ridiculous in the moment and electric in the frame.
Once we had that, once the expressions were genuine and the energy was there, the images went to Steven Joe and HIRA Studio, our in-house digital imaging department, and that's where the concept fully came alive.
The lightning coursing through the talent's hands, the purple charge crackling off the phone, the sense that the network itself is surging through a human body. None of that was accidental. Steven and the team built it with precision, frame by frame, making sure the effect felt visceral rather than decorative. The goal was always integration: the VFX had to feel like it was coming from the talent, not placed on them. When it works, you don't see the seam. You just feel the voltage.
Looking at the finals, I think we found it. Buas, but make it beautiful.
- Arza Nursatya, advertising photographer. HIRA Imaji, Jakarta