A new Tostitos website, www.nolaf.org, presents the snack chip as fun, something the National Organization for Legislation Against Fun (NOLAF), would like to get rid of. But viewers of the NOLAF videos might be enticed by the images of the chips dipped in cheese sauce, or they may laugh so much they’ll reach for a bag.
“Fun: A Societal Scourge,” is the one minute thirty-one second video that is one of 30 viral videos that play at more than 50 sites to drive consumers to nolaf.org, according to Todd Crisman, group creative director at Element 79, the agency that created the videos, which were produced by Mekanism, San Francisco. YouTube, Revver, Vimeo, Facebook and Digg are a few of the video sharing and social networking sites that are playing the videos. “Fun” also plays at the Orientation area of nolaf.org.
The video features a NOLAF director who explains how the organization is “dedicated to putting the un in fun” and illustrates examples of fun he wants to eliminate, from a toy monkey to a red rubber ball to Tostitos, “the corn based savory snack that everybody likes, and I hate.”
“Nolaf shines a light on the fun of Tostitos through the lens of the organization that is bent on destroying fun,” Crisman said.
The video was shot in December at the Alameda Naval Air Base in San Francisco, in a “decrepit building,” according to Mekanism director Tommy Means. “We were going for a very designed look, like it was one of the old educational health and safety films for the BBC from the ’70s that was shot on a grainy 16mm Bolex.” He used a Panasonic VariCam with a 35mm adaptor and Cooke lenses. “We used different filters to get that tobacco look and extracted the grain from it in post.”
Scott Parkin, the actor who played the NOLAF director, was a key to the film. “Casting was critical and we looked at 500 actors for an improvisational comedian who could carry the weight,” Means said. “He’s a middle age bald guy and after we yelled, ‘Action,’ we had no idea what he’d say. We had funny scripts to start with but we told the client we found an improv genius so you might not see what’s in here and they gave us the flexibility to run with it.”
“Fun: A Societal Scourge” is part of a campaign that features over 40 minutes of video on the website, from a series of clips featuring Parkin to others focusing on seven consumers in a classroom who ask Parkin questions about how they can assist in the unfun campaign. Visitors click on each consumer to hear the questions.
The website and a series of Free the Fun TV spots are elements of an integrated campaign that “gives consumers a different involvement with the Tostitos brand than they’ve ever had before,” Crisman said. “The videos were created to immerse consumers in a brand experience and engage them immediately, so they don’t run away. We wanted to be as funny as we could and fresh, making sure at the end of the experience people walk away smiling and understand that Tostitos was behind it.”
The campaign also included print, with both TV and print starting in early January before the web videos began playing April 18.
Copyright © 2008 DCA Business Media LLC. All rights reserved. All text, photos, graphics, artwork, and other material on the SHOOTonline.com site are copyrighted. All copying, reposting or reproduction, especially for commercial publicity use or resale in any manner, form, or medium, requires explicit, prior, permission from the publisher. If you have any questions regarding copyright or use of the materials on this site, are interested in article linking, reposting, pdf creation, or any form of rticle re-distribution contact permissions@shootonline.com, we will try to address your needs and concerns. SHOOTonline.com may, in appropriate circumstances and at its discretion, terminate the accounts of users who infringe the intellectual property rights of others.
Ang Lee To Receive ACE Golden Eddie Filmmaker of the Year Award From American Cinema Editors
American Cinema Editors (ACE) has named two-time Oscar®-winning filmmaker Ang Lee as recipient of the ACE Golden Eddie Filmmaker of the Year award. He will be presented with the honor at the 76th Annual ACE Eddie Awards taking place Friday, February 27, at UCLA’s Royce Hall, where winners will also be announced in 14 competitive categories recognizing the best film editing achievements of the year in film and television. Kim Larson, managing director and head of YouTube’s Creator and Gaming team, will be accepting YouTube’s previously announced ACE Visionary Award, and Emmy winning editor/director Arthur Forney, ACE, and Oscar® nominated editor Robert Leighton will receive ACE Career Achievement awards. Lee joins a group of Golden Eddie award recipients including Jon M. Chu, John Waters, Gina Prince-Bythewood, Spike Lee, Quentin Tarantino, Kathleen Kennedy, Christopher Nolan, Lauren Shuler Donner, Guillermo del Toro, Steven Spielberg, Vince Gilligan, Alexander Payne, J.J. Abrams, Nancy Meyers, Martin Scorsese, Norman Jewison, Robert Zemeckis, George Lucas, and the Sundance Institute. “Ang Lee’s exploration of our most closely held emotions has ignited an international passion for cinema for over 30 years”, said ACE president Sabrina Plisco, ACE. “The breadth of his filmography is unparalleled, ranging from the intimate and boundary-breaking romance of Brokeback Mountain, to the epic drama of Life of Pi and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, to even the pre-MCU Marvel film Hulk.” This year’s ACE Visionary Award recognizes Larson and YouTube’s profound impact on visual storytelling as a whole, the importance of digital content and spaces in the evolving media landscape, and ACE’s ongoing work to support... Read More