Get Crackin Pistachio Campaign: Funny Stuff

The new Get Crackin' campaign for Pistachios hits the air this week.  Our old friend Mr. Bill returns for a new round of torture.

Then we see our old friend, YouTube viral phenom - THE Honey Badger.... what a way to get your pistachio.  They also use the sassy voice over from the YouTube Honey Badger video.

Perhaps the weakest link in the campaign is KeyBoard Cat.  Another ode to Viral Video phenoms.... The attempt here would seem to be touching every generation.Creative campaign. 

The Winklevoss Twins make an appearance....  you may remember them from their suit against Facebook 'Founder' Mark Zuckerberg, claiming they came up with the idea initially.

Funny, simple and the product is the star.  You are going to remember that this campaign is about PISTACHIOS, aren't you?

Suprise: Don't Give Them What They Expect

Here's a creative and fun commercial for a French water, that certainly offers up some surprises. But a 95 second commercial is a rare luxury in the U.S.  

Keep them guessing.  Great way to keep your audience interested - avoid the expected.  The data on FB shows that a lot of videos are clicked but abandoned after five seconds.  Click count is nice, but you want to get your message across.  That's not going to happen if they only watch for a few seconds.  Commercial producers used to use all kinds of tricks to avoid bailout.... a funny premise is often a good way to keep them watching. 

Bob: An Animated Gerbil

Bob's adventure is a big one for such a short animated film.  He covers a lot of ground.  Take a look at his adventures.  Fun little story.

Animation is challenging video production.  It's not the kind of thing you can do in a week as it takes a good deal of preparation and a number of steps depending on the kind of animation you want to create.  Computer animation, like the stuff you see in Bob, usually employes some modeling, and a good amount of time on a powerful computer to crunch out the frames.  Our work for MIT's Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies used animation to explain a story that ranged from the nano schedule to the scale in our world.  Moving back and forth between those worlds, while envisioning how technology might enhance the gear belonging to future soldiers was well suited to animation.    Sorry, the sounds of the live interviews is a little out of sync.  The MIT ISN video is three up from the bottom of the page linked here.  deweymedia Executive Producer Paul Dewey has produced a range of animated projects, from animated logos for GE and Pepsi, to his simple animation work for Pubget.

Great Time Lapse Video

There's an art to great time lapse Videos.  There's even a feature length film devoted to it called Koyaanisquatsi. 

Here's a nice montage (below) of great time lapse video utilitzing one of the best sets in the world, New York City.  What makes it so interesting to watch is all the action in the foreground.  Without any action, there wouldn't be much to interest you.  What's also interesting to me is that it takes a long time to create a quick time lapse shot and it doesn't take that much time at all to shoot a high speed video which in turn takes much longer to play.  We are talking opposite film making here.

Metropolis - A New York City Timelapse from Will Boisture on Vimeo.

If you are in the mood for more, here are 25 examples of great time lapse shots.  Great Time Lapse Footage

At deweymedia we add time lapse shots where it makes sense, but it's important to make sure there's a logical reason to show a time lapse shot.  For instance, showing a theatre filling up, but not showing it in real time....   or high speeding a football stadium filling up.  Throwing in a shot for the sake of having one may make good art, but they it takes time to design a good one (need to address issues such as: where is the sun moving over the course of the shot, foreground action, etc), and you need to have a good reason to make it.  Also, because you take a camera out of commission for a good amount of time, it better be a good use of that time.  That's one less camera you can use, and that represents opportunity cost. 

Going Frogging: Frog Hunter

Here's a great story from Garden & Gun Magazine about Jody Meche, a frogger from the Atchafalaya Basin in Lousiana.  Sometimes you take the ride because you never been there before.  I suspect this will be the story when you meet Jody and here his story about how he takes most of his food out of the swamp.

Here's a great adventure story.  It's got sounds and sights most of us have never experienced before.  How much do we really care about the quality of the images in the final analysis?  How much better would it have been if you had better images?  20% or 30%  Point is, this video has great information.  Sure, shoot it as best you can, but remember to get good sound and a great narration.  Even though it's a video, the sound makes up for deficiencies in the images. 

This was the case when deweymedia produce a fund raising video project for Agape, a charity that runs orphanages in India.  We had to figure out how to tell their story with very little funding.  So what did we do?  We trained up a volunteer who was India bound on the cameras we had.  A still camera and a video camera and we used whatever came back with them to make the best video we could.  You decide if it worked.  It's three up from the bottom of the page - it has a little girl smiling at you on a bus.  Agape Video