With a desire to introduce more people to their furniture company in the face of what they concede is a “miniscule” marketing budget, the partners at Blu Dot–John Christakos, Maurice Blanks and Charlie Lazor–decided to create short films on their Web site (www.BluDot.com). Partners/creative directors Chris Lange and Michael Hart of agency mono, Minneapolis, art director and writer respectively, created the concept for Seven Twenty, the first of three short films set to run on the site. Independent director Christopher Arcella helmed and edited the two-and-a-half-minute piece.
The dialogue-free film with an artistic slant features a man and a woman riding a bicycle. The merry pair stops occasionally to take photos of numbers they find in the environment, like the price on a piece of litter and the numbers on the back of two men’s jerseys. Their journey ends in an apartment where the man works on his laptop while the woman sleeps on the sofa behind him.
Cut to a series of photos. These images begin with clocks reading 1:54, 1:55, 1:56, 1:57, but the next numbers, 158 to 251, come from a variety of sources like signs and numbers on buildings, as well as more clock faces. These images correspond to a bonus feature–a downloadable clock with a face that noticeably changes each minute.
THE PLAN: GOOD WORK TRAVELS FAST
Blu Dot has an electronic newsletter that goes out to more than 25,000 subscribers. It received such positive feedback that it prompted Christakos and others within the company to wonder if there was another way to market the company through the Web. They didn’t want to do ads, but thought short films loosely tied to design would be interesting.
“[This project] was actually a solution to a vehicle they already had which was their Web site and newsletter,” Lange related. “They wanted to give their audience something that they’d appreciate and sort of have fun with and also pass along to their friends.”
To get the message out about the short, Blu Dot included the news in their newsletter and has a link on their site below the film that allows people to send it to a friend. The work has also been fodder for bloggers.
“Hopefully it will spread on its own, especially with this downloadable clock that is part of the first movie. The idea there is to have some kind of nice free thing that will lead people to the site,” Christakos said, adding that he also hoped it would introduce the company to people who were unfamiliar with it.
On his foray into the world of filmmaking, the designer noted, “It’s a nice diversion for us and hopefully for people who follow Blu Dot a little bit.”
REAL TIME
Lange and Hart shot the majority of the 720 images needed to create the clock. Lange described the pursuit as fun and somewhat obsessive; he even shot some while on his honeymoon in Italy. Mono’s design director Travis Olson also photographed some of the numerals abroad while on a trip to Japan.
It took a few months to get everything that they needed to create the timepiece, but it was important to them to keep it authentic. “I think if we had started to design it ourselves, it wouldn’t have the character that it has, this found object [feel]. It has a life that not one person could give it,” Lange said.
The remaining two shorts should be up on the site by fall and Christakos hopes to have more after that.
