As many of you know, we’ve been working with Evan Gotlib and the rest of the Blip.tv team to create branded campaigns for the many companies that Blip works with. The 711 Road Trip was a part of that, as were other gigs I have posted in the past.
The most recent job was for Reebok Zig Tech shoes, starring, if you watched Break a Leg, Mr. Dustin Toshiyuki (Mint) himself. Also, you get an extra cookie if you guess who the voiceover at the end is, as it’s another Break a Leg cast member.
Below are the first two videos of the campaign — next week, I’ll share the next two. Just to let you know roughly how the process went: Reebok had a specific idea in mind (trying to get the most out of your workout), we wrote the scripts, they approved the scripts, we shot the videos and voila — you should be seeing them play on various Blip.tv videos for the next little while.
This, as the title properly said, is how we make our money.
Anyway, without further ado…
…and…
Let me know what you think! If there’s any interest, I’ll relate how we did the various effects (if there’s a LOT of interest, I’ll get Dashiell, one of the Producers of HLG and our Head Editor/VFX guy to explain it).
As some of you may know, a couple of months ago our production company produced the 7-Eleven Road Trip — a reality series that followed two teams, one on the East Coast, one on the West Coast, as they traveled across the country, ate at 7-Elevens’, and did various challenges along the way, eventually ending up at the INDY 500.
When we got the gig, it was our intent to not make the same awful type of reality series’ that are prevalent nowadays — we wanted to make this show in our quirky, fun and theoretically smart style. Luckily, we had the extreme fortune of working with 7-Eleven and their ad agency, TracyLocke — both of which understood that the Internet does not necessarily function like traditional media and that funny, quirky comedy sells in this space like some kind of delicious, quirky hotcake. They gave us almost full creative power to do everything from having our host, Drew give them each a cardboard cutout of himself to having Mr. Peanut destroy their picnic and steal their stuff.
Thanks to this, thanks to Blip.tv and thanks to all the guys and gals at 7-Eleven and TracyLocke, the series was a huge success. Not only in the numbers and the results (that you’ll see in the video case study I’m about to post below) but also because I think it’s one of the first series of this size and scope that was really open to the creativity and innovation available in online video.
Let that be a lesson to you other brands and agencies!
Another lesson is to hire us.
A third lesson is to also pay us a lot of money after you hire us.
And now, the results of the 7-Eleven Road Trip in a fancy-shmancy video:
So, I may or may not have mentioned that a couple of weeks ago we got a great gig shooting 3 short online commercials for Samsung.
Through Blip.tv, we pitched our ideas to the company — who wanted a super hero theme — wrote up the scripts, and shot this over a weekend (give or take a day of pick-up shots). The videos were originally going to be 30 seconds but, I may have had a bit of fun with the script and they ended up being a little over a minute — for the best, I think.
The end result ended up being less of a 30 second TV-esque spot and more of a three episode arc of a short, very, very branded show. It makes me think that maybe, just maybe, we’ve stumbled upon what commercials are going to look like in a few years – actual entertaining bits of content, and not just bland advertising.
So, you know, we’re like the future and stuff.
Anyway! Let me know if you have any questions about the videos at all — how we shot them, how we wrote them, whatever — I’ll do my best to answer everything to the best of my very tired abilities.
Here we go:
Episode 1, Jumps Slightly Higher Than Average Girl
Posted by Yuri Baranovsky on Dec 24, 2009 in video, web series
I absolutely love this time of year.
You see, in the cold Communist stronghold where I was born — the USSR — we weren’t allowed to celebrate any kind of religious holiday. So, what they did was celebrate New Year exactly like you Christian-types celebrate Christmas — we had a New Year tree, Santa Claus (or, as we called him, “Grandfather Frost” — who had his assistant, Snow Girl, which was generally an excuse for a Russian girl to wear a short red miniskirt with white fuzzy trim), presents, songs — everything you guys have, without the messy Jesus thing.
And then we fled Kiev as Jewish refugees (we did! Take THAT, Communists!) came here, and continued to celebrate New Year up until I was 13 or 14. My mom would love getting a tree while my dad absolutely hated it. We’d be that family that would have the tree until July, until my dad got tired of it and threw it out the window.
Like I said, I loved the music, the coziness, the general warmth of it. Plus, since it was 6 days after Christmas, it was far cheaper to buy gifts.
At some point, my mom started reading more about Judaism and became very much into it — realizing that New Year was, in fact, Christmas, and that we were, in fact, more or less, celebrating a Christian holiday. So, we decided to move our festivities to September, for Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year… or Jew Year). But there is no tree, or Grandfather Frost, and we lose out on the warmth that Christmas with it brings.
Ironically, my dad now says how much he misses New Year.
I don’t mind the change — it seemed appropriate somehow. We weren’t really allowed to be Jews in the USSR, so it seems right to throw off the reminder of that oppression. Still, I love the season, I love the music and, thanks to my friends, I get to vicariously celebrate through them.
This unnecessary long post is leading to this: Happy Christmas, New Year or whatever else it is you celebrate. Be happy, be merry, be joyful and relax.
And, as my gift to you, I offer a video that we posted a while ago with two characters from Break a Leg: Tahko and Mint. Who happen to have a band, called: Mint’s Mint Condition Cover Band. Who happen to want to wish you a happy holidays.
To those of you who aren’t Jews — today is the first day of Channukah. You’ve heard of it before — it’s that one that lasts 8 days, has candles and is killing Christmas.
Anyway! In celebration of the first day, I have decided to post a video we did for Channukah a few years back that takes place in the Break a Leg world. This was a favorite among our fans at the time and one of our favorites as well. Ironically, it kind of fits the writing blog below (or at least the one about being a bad writer), so, check it out and happy candle-lighting!
Pass it on!
Oh, and by the way guys — feel free to follow me on Twitter (@YuriBaranovsky) — it’s where I update everyone about new blogs and try to be very funny about things in my life. Very, very funny.
