Director Dawn Shadforth creates a glam thriller for North East Asia

The film sees Catherine Zeta-Jones as a mole inside a sinister corporation. She's out to steal the secret formula for the Golden Elixir, a substance that can bestow unparalleled beauty on its user, but which only the super rich can afford.

The creative was overseen by JWT Tokyo ECD Jun Fukawa. They were keen to create a campaign that had a strong new media element to it, so they came up with the idea of creating an epic online film. The film would then be cut into teaser commercials and shortened films to shown on TV and in cinemas.

The pitch was then put out to a shortlist of screenwriters, who had to submit a script. In the end they opted for Jeffrey Caine, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter behind The Constant Gardener and Golden Eye, who would bring the desired Hollywood magic to the project. "It had to meet very strict criteria," explains agency producer Darcey Cherubini. "It had to be entertaining, it had to have a true story arc, it had to have mystery, and it couldn't just be a fluff piece."

The idea of advertising's global workflow has almost become a cliché, but for the team behind the film, called The Alchemist, it was the real thing. While the creative was handled by JWT Tokyo, the agency production was led by Cherubini out of JWT New York. The production team came from RSA London, the shoot took place in Prague, and post production and sound were done in Hollywood.

JWT chose to work with RSA and, after examining their roster, decided Shadforth was the lady for them.

According to Cherubini, the film was ambitious and broke new ground. "Never before has there been an online film of that quality with a proper story - apart from the BMW films. Not since then has there been a proposal with a beginning, middle and end. Not even Freixenet [The Key to Reserva, a film by JWT Barcelona starring Martin Scorsese] has much of a story."

In the North East Asia region, cosmetics commercials tend to focus on quality rather than fashions. Rather than pushing make-up and hairstyles, brands are keen to promote skin and hair care in a way that focuses on the intrinsic beauty of the hair or skin.

And with quality, comes a bit of old school glamour. This is something the Lux brand has been synonymous with for years in Japan and China. Lux was created in the UK in 1899 (and launched in the US in 1916). As such, its Asian marketing tries to capitalise on its perceived aspirational value as a Western brand, recruiting Hollywood A-listers like Marilyn Monroe and Sofia Loren.

Catherine Zeta-Jones is the latest in a long line of movie star royalty to work with Lux in Asia. Working the shoot around her busy schedule and accommodating her large entourage was a tricky part of the shoot. "That was a job in itself to be fair. It was a bit like President Obama had arrived. There were a lot of security issues, because she is Hollywood royalty."

Sherwood says that working with Zeta-Jones was an example of true A-list professionalism. She even allowed the team a few hours of overtime when time was tight. "She did attract a lot of paparazzi. You realise how naughty these people are; sneaking in, walking past dressed as funny people," explains Sherwood.

To keep up with the Joneses - or in this case Zeta-Jones - many of the crew were seasoned feature film hands. DP John Mathieson, who has collaborated with Shadforth before, for example, has credits for movies including Hannibal and Gladiator to his name.

There were 12 shooting days in the Czech Republic. For the scene in the laboratory, the team found a newly built library building that had the right level of futuristic elegance without appearing too industrial or communistic. "It had to look like a laboratory that had been designed by Karl Lagerfield," explains Sherwood.

One of the big challenges of the job was to balance the traditions of high quality beauty work - perfect hair, pristine styling, overblown aesthetics - and the demands of an exciting action-packed film.

After the shoot the team spent a long time in the edit, getting to grips with the differences between the sorts of narrative styles familiar in the West and those more common in China and Japan. Then there was the task of creating a suitably cinematic score. An orchestra was recorded in Abbey Road studios, and the team then jetted out to LA to put it together.

For the time being, the film can only be shared within the North East Asian market, for contractual reasons. But you can check out The Alchemist in its full seven minute glory on the Japanese microsite.