"Mouse got excited about shooting video with DSLR cameras about a year ago, however the technology wasn't quite there. Ever since we made Dust to Glory together we haven't been too intimidated by fixing or solving problems in post. When the 5D finally hit, we saw it as a game changer, specifically for the immersive feel that we wanted to capture in the Navy SEAL feature film we were developing and about to start shooting. The DP who is now shooting our SEALs film, Shane Hurlbut, collided with Bandito to do a viral campaign for Terminator Salvation which we shot entirely on the 5D and posted at Bandito. Shane has been pretty fearless about using the 5D and worked with Panavision to develop some awesome rigs to shoot unique shots. This initial project showed us what could be done and as we started to look at the material, its quality and our process... it started opening our eyes wider.

We had done a small commercial for BMW out at a test track and Mouse subsequently got inspired to shoot a short film about his own BMW M3 using only DSLR cameras. He wanted to do it quickly and efficiently, which the body of a still photography accommodates. Mouse was getting busy on the Navy film, however we worked with Sumer Friedrich (Producer) and Vic Huber (Photographer) and set the shoot up so that Mouse came back for a weekend and knocked it out. Given the mobility and flexibility of the cameras, we did do a few pick up shoots to grab some other angles, but the gist of the piece was shot in that first weekend. The spot and short film were edited by Steve Prestemon who is a good friend of Mouse's and an accomplished tier one car editor, Steve would cut from home and our Assistant Editor Siobhan Prior would relink his cut to media at Bandito.

From a shooting stand point we had the clear realization that we could actually do this in available light and process everything here at Bandito. We were shooting 5K stills and 1080p (30) HD, so our job in post was to combine those and make the pieces as dynamic as possible. I don't want to give away too much about how we shot each of the shots, but suffice to say the only effects or cg work that was done, was paint clear up and some image pan/zooms. Having the 5K still image sequence canvas was great because it gave us room and resolution to move. Mike McCarthy who has his own site, hd4pc.com started as my intern and turned into a post architect for us to help us solve technical problems and typical obstacles within complicated workflows, so we all put our heads together and figured the most efficient way to get the project done.

I have been a consultant for Adobe's video products for years and we used CS4 tools like After Effects and Premiere Pro to conform and finish the project.

Our process went something like this:

Shoot 1080p (30) Canon video and import the MOV files into the Avid at 23.976 (removing frames).

Shoot 5K stills and process as 1080p (23.976) video and import them into the Avid at 23.976.

[We used CineForm as our intermediate codec]

Once the edit was completed and we knew the shots that were in the edit with Twixtor'd (RE:VisionFX Plug-In for After Effects) the Canon files from 30P to 23.976 and assembled them into the online for color correction.

As for the 5K stills, we opened the source compositions of the sequences used in the edit and started to work on clean-up and the moves, this was a ton of heavy lifting done by Lance Holte and Brett Novak at Bandito. These moves and compositions were then exported into CineForm files and integrated into the same online as the other material.

We then took the cut and Andrew Huebscher colored it in SpeedGrade DI on our color correction system here at Bandito.

From start to finish it is an all digital project and workflow that takes advantage of where technology has led us and along the way we solved some problems and gained some insight into how to better deal with the Canon files and maximize using new cameras and technology to achieve a new vision.

Mouse told me that he saw this project and his short film as a 21st century pin-up poster. He had nine of those "hot babe in front of a hot car" posters in his room as a kid and using a DSLR camera and all the post tool that we have, he created a "poster" that he thought other kids would want to have on their wall, or in this case, watch on their computer.

Having gotten through a few of these projects now and being neck deep in 5D footage for our Navy film, I ended up directing a commercial with a meager budget that required high quality. I quickly grabbed a 5D with some excellent glass (swing/tilt) and shot a commercial for a client in Dubai that looked gorgeous, so the proof is always in the pudding and hopefully the pudding tastes good."

Related Links:

Kaya

Terminator

As part of an initial Web Campaign for PF Flyers, SLAM (Sportie LA Media) created a two-minute video purporting to be a "lost casting tape" from Martin Scorsese's 1990 mob classic Goodfellas. It featured an actor auditioning for the Joe Pesci role, delivering the same lines as they might be performed by famous actors of the day, including Al Pacino, Dudley Moore, Sean Connery, and Pesci himself.  

We would go on to promote Remington "Fashion Show" from The Viral Factory, which also would prove to be an enduring hit on this site - but there's a difference between "formal" viral campaigns and grass roots efforts like "Goodfellas Cast Party."

So, thinking it would be interesting to chart the success of this down and dirty endeavor, we traveled to the unofficial SLAM office, in the bar at Raffles L'Ermitage in Beverly Hills, to speak with SLAM Marketing Director Justo Diaz:

Raging Artists: Thanks for inviting us to drinks, Justo.

Justo Diaz: Am I buying? Is that how this works?

RA: You're the one with the successful viral video.

JD: You know that doesn't make me rich. It gives me street cred...not much else.

RA: It also makes you smart. So you're the perfect person to tell us the criteria for a hit viral.

JD: There are too many ways to make a popular viral. The key to a viral's success, though, is to know what a viral is and what it can potentially do for a business. What distinguishes a Viral from a Web commercial or a Web video is the degree to which it makes an impact and spreads across the Web. In the case of this viral, we wanted to garner search positions for the terms Goodfellas Cast, Goodfellas Audition, and Goodfellas keywords in general. You see, we wanted our target audience to become familiar with the PF Flyers brand by connecting to a cultural icon that this demographic relates to. The Viral was so successful in this regard that - nearly two years later - if you type in Goodfellas Audition, you will get two Google pages full of different iterations of our video. The fact that this video garnered so many Goodfellas keyword positions on google is what made it a viral - in this case.

RA: It seems like many people measure viral success in terms of millions of hits - 

JD: Some virals get millions of hits - Will Ferrell's "The Landlord" video, for instance - and that is what makes them successful. The adage "any press is good press" applies to virals, and the more people who see them the better. However, a brand's goals and audience may be much more specific than the audience for a comedy video. What most successful virals have in common is that they appear to have little or no connection to the corporate message. That makes them appear to be real and not conjured up by marketers.

RA: Given the fact that many advertisers see creating commissioned content for the Web as a means of keeping costs down, how important is production value?

JD: Production value is actually important, but not in the way most people think. A viral needs to look dynamic, as if it was shot on the spot - without any preparation. It needs to feel "real". For instance, if you caught Britney Spears stealing a pair of sneakers, trampling an elderly person as she ran out the door, you would have a viral. Millions of people would tune in to watch this video because they would automatically assume it was real and shot with a camera phone. Now, if the sneakers she took were clearly Pumas or Nikes, then you might suspect that this is a commercial, but you would still watch, so a viral is what you would have. If the production quality was high, and its stamp sent you to corporate headquarters, you would lose the viral quality and it would just be a commercial. It would take a lot of money to get Miss Spears to steal a pair of Pumas, so production costs would be high, even if the quality was purposely low. In other words, production quality would not be important in this case, but the subject and environment are key components that may cost you some money.

RA: Speaking of budget, is it true that "Goodfellas Cast Party" was essentially shot on spec? 

JD: The project fell outside the scope of the planned campaign for PF, so there was no money for production or seeding. But I'd conceived the spot as a means of connecting with a specific demographic, and knew in advance that we would capture and own keywords that dealt with Goodfellas. I also knew in advance that our target demographic loved this movie and all things related to the movie. The success was a byproduct of design.

RA: So you pulled this off with very little money, but money is still important.

JD: Yeah, it's important. The Coke and Mentos viral was extremely inexpensive in terms of quality, but to orchestrate it well took time and energy. Still, in the end we are talking a fraction of the cost of a real commercial. In the case of Goodfellas, it had to look like it was on film in a real studio. Otherwise, people would not believe this was a real studio-produced audition tape. The sound and background were key elements that made it look and feel real. I guess what I'm saying is that production value may or may not be important. Realism is what you are after. The Goodfellas video looked good - it had to.

RA: So the fact that it looks good has helped the video build momentum over the last couple of years.

JD: Exactly, people continue to link to this video because the debate about whether it was real is still out there. That controversy is what powers the video. The links are what garner Google positions for Goodfellas keywords. Blogs often publish this video when talking about Goodfellas. Bloggers are more powerful than people realize, even now.

What can you do with a penny? When it comes to advertising in today's world, that question is more relevant than ever. This is especially the case on the music side. "Music production for spots has always struggled with tight budgets, and now music houses need to be more flexible and creative in terms of their business models," says David Della Santa, owner/composer of Volume Music + Sound. "What we've tried to do is create an environment where the accent is on value and creativity, not overhead."

Since opening last year, Volume has made good on that statement, with new work for clients as diverse as Microsoft and the Miami-based Million Penny Project, a quarterly fundraising campaign that invites the community and local businesses to collectively donate their financial and professional resources for a cause. While the clients' campaigns are completely different in scope and objectives, Della Santa believes both were attracted to the same thing: a creative approach to crafting current, alternative and edgy TV ad music that sounds licensed, yet is scored to picture.

Jef Loeb, Co-Creative Director/Writer of Brainchild Creative, the San Francisco ad agency that provided creative support for the Million Penny campaign, concurs. "David is wildly creative - and this piece for the Million Penny Project TV spot is a perfect demonstration of that fact," he says. Loeb recruited Della Santa to score "Make Change," a :30 ad helmed by Kenneth O'Brien, in which pennies are positioned on a white background one at a time, until they form the image of two hands placed together in a gesture of giving. 

"Our original plan was to develop an instrumental piece of music that would involve an interesting sonic pattern, to mirror the building block nature of the spot," Loeb explains. "David actually worked that up, but then offered a vocal track, complete with lyrics, as an alternative. After picking our jaws up from the floor, the creative director, the editor, and I immediately agreed that he'd elevated the quality and impact of the spot."

"Jef was looking for something that would make you smile and feel the message of charity and leave those who saw it wanting to hear more," Della Santa recalls. "I really wanted to create a song, with lyrics, and those had to be loosely based on the idea of charity or its benefits. I decided to write from a child's point of view - the penny seems like the youngest of coins - about him growing up and going to a better place in his life. The instrumentation, like a penny, is simple and inexpensive - upright piano, banjo and acoustic drums. Tricia Kanne sings in an indie pop band called Minipop. I prefer using singers who are really in the world of indie music, and her silky crisp voice beautifully reflects the sentiment of the message. We've had so many requests for the entire track we will be recording a full-length version."

What's more, the track has already opened new doors for the client, whose charitable works are only as fruitful as the exposure it can garner: the Million Penny Project has fielded numerous calls about the TV commercial music from several unlikely sources, the office of the Mayor of San Francisco among them. There is now talk of releasing the full-length version of the song on iTunes, with donations benefiting the organization. 

"Nonprofits traditionally suffer in times of economic turmoil," notes Co-Creative Director Carlos Peña, President of brand development and design firm, Pumped, Inc., which launched the Million Penny Project as part of its Pumped for Change initiative. "Having a creative partner like Volume Music Sound on board not only provides our ad with great music, but arms our overall campaign with more potential for exposure." 

While Microsoft and agency McCann SF don't rely on charitable contributions to further their cause, public awareness is still the name of the game. 

For that client, composers Della Santa, John Krogh, and Dan Miller contributed to the scores for a trio of spots: The perfect "Dive" doesn't come easy, and for some kids, pulling off even a passable plunge may require some lessons. MS Excel can help parents assemble a budget that floats. Watching a plant grow may not BE "Exciting," but generating a report using myriad MS Word capabilities sure makes it LOOK exciting. Word is also now a handy tool when you've "Found" a lost pet, expecially a little turtle looking for a home. 

As with "Make Change," the musical throughline was a connection with the audience, and the appeal for Della Santa and company was a freedom to experiment. "The broadcast department at McCann/SF is very supportive of local artists," says Della Santa. "They wanted to see a variety of styles, but preferred not to go out to numerous music houses. Our composers are very versatle and work from their own studios, so we can afford to experiment - and to make it an attractive proposition economically." Volume offered to submit multiple demo rounds and absorb that cost if the agency didn't find what they were looking for. "We spent a couple of weeks trying things out, and I think all would agree the approach paid off."

"In the end, the team was so happy they played the final music as well as a bunch of the demos for the rest of the creative and production department at McCann," concludes Della Santa, whose other notable work includes Tylenol "In Concert" (Deutch/NY), Gatorade "X Factor" (Element 79/Chicago), Boost Mobile "RIP" (Berlin Cameron Partners/NY), Violence Policy Center "Bullet Factory" (Lunar Fish/SF), and Discovery Channel "Shark Week" (Bayles Cronin/ATL). "I love to hear things like that." 

Client: Microsoft

Spot Titles: "Dive," "Exciting," "Found"

Agency: McCann SF
Agency Producer: LeeAnne Weldon
Creatives: Linda Jaskol,Sarah Bruns

Production Company: Biscuit Films
Director: Aaron Ruel

Editorial: Filmcore
Editor: Connor T. McDonald
Editorial Assitatant: James Cohen

Music: Volume Music + Sound
Composers: David Della Santa, John Krogh, Dan Miller

Audio Mix: M Squared
Engineer: Mark Pitchford

Client: Million Penny Project

Spot Title: 'Make Change'

Agency: Pumped Inc.
Creative Director: Carlos Peña
Co-Creative Director/Writer: Jef Loeb, Brainchild Creative

Production Company: Filmiko
Director: Kenneth O'Brien
Co-Director: Carlos Peña

Editorial/Post: Phoenix Editorial
Senior Editor: Bob Frisk
Assistant Editor: Matt O'Donnell
Visual Effects Artist: Phil Spitler
Post Producer: Lindsay London

Music: Volume Music + Sound
Composer: David Della Santa

Audio Post: One Union Recording Studios
Engineer: Joaby Deal

Credits:

Director/writer: David Incorvaia
Production company: Big Fish Film production, Germany
Producer: Robert Gold
DP: Peter J. Krause
Production Design: Claudia Sembach