Advertising agencies shoot :30s and :60s and long form videos are often :90s, yet Unflinching Triumph: The Philip Rockhammer Story from AKQA/San Francisco is a 75:00–it’s a feature length movie!
AKQA’s “client” in the film was the National Association of Staredown Professionals (NASP), the organization behind the professional sport that is the subject of the intriguing mockumentary.
If you suspend your disbelief, you can see the film as a long, long, long form video ad for the NASP, or you can just enjoy it as an original work of comedy.
iSPOT spoke with PJ Pereira, AKQA/San Francisco’s executive creative director, and Mark Decena, the director at Kontent Films/San Francisco, about the film they created and produced exclusively for the web.
At press time, iSPOT learned that AKQA reached a deal with Netflix yesterday to distribute the film via DVD rental, so it is no longer available free online. Also no longer available is J.R McCord’s (the director in the film) manifesto about how he created the movement to distribute ideas on the web without needing to go to traditional channels and a big distributor. A trailer and synopsis for the film are still available to view at www.Unflinchingtriumph.com and clips are available at YouTube.
Interview with PJ Pereira, AKQA’s Executive Creative Director
iSPOT: What was AKQA’s role in the film?
Pereira: The main idea came from here and we wrote the script. We developed the story and then arranged the shoot. But the movie is just a piece of it, it’s a gigantic role-playing game. We created an entire universe the doesn’t really exist and had fun with that.
iSPOT: Why does an advertising agency get involved with a project like this?
Pereira: AKQA is playing a role in the story, like the director. The real director is Mark Decena, but in the movie he’s J.R. McCord. His hair was a different color and he was wearing different clothes. Everything is a character and AKQA played a role, too. We were the agency for the National Association of Staredown Professionals (NASP). That’s the role we played in the story. They’re our client and we worked for them. You have to think of it not as a movie but where everyone is playing a role in that entity, like a mask.
iSPOT: The film had only been playing online. What’s the reason for that?
Pereira: We believe you can distribute content differently today in alternative ways and we proved that it works. Someday a distributor might come along who wants to put it in every theater in the country and someone might want to make DVDs and rent them. That’s okay, we’re not against it, but we may not need it, so let’s do it this way. It’s a simple thing.
iSPOT: AKQA is a traditional ad agency. How does the film help you promote your ad business?
Pereira: It goes back to the role-playing thing. If you suspend your disbelief and imagine that the NASP really exists, we made them known around the world, so other companies will definitely respect that.
iSPOT: Is this the first time an agency has produced a feature film?
Pereira: I think so. I’ve heard about agencies trying to do it, but they never have. Maybe a small or big agency in another country has done it, but if they have I don’t know about it.
iSPOT: What has AKQA done to promote the film?
Pereira: We spent months talking about it, it’s an underground movement and now we’re on the map. We’ve given Philip Rockhammer a fan base and when people see him, they say they saw his movie. It’s mission accomplished. Whatever comes from it, we’re happy, but we’re not expecting anything new. The work is done and we’ll see what happens. We’re not promoting it.
iSPOT: Who from AKQA was involved in creating and producing the film?
Pereira: A big team, including three creatives and two CDs who came up with the concept. We brought in Mark Decena from the beginning. It was a different kind of project and he helped us with the script. Where his work starts and where our work ends isn’t clear for us. It’s more about creating the characters. We’re not trying to change the world.
Interview with Mark Decena, Kontent Films Director
iSPOT: What’s your background as a director?
Decena: I directed the feature Dopamine that premiered at Sundance in 2003 and had a theatrical release, and I directed a short film The Light in 2005. Adam Lau, who was a cd at AKQA called me up and said we have this idea to do a film. We shot a trailer, which sold the idea in November 2005 and AKQA funded the project.
iSPOT: How did you work with AKQA on the film?
Decena: We began shooting it last March. They said okay, you’re on board with this project but you have to assume the identity of J.R. McCord and I had to sign a non-disclosure form. The idea for the agency was showing they could delve into immersive storytelling and they wanted to show their chops on how to virally market it. For me it was great because as an independent filmmaker the biggest stumbling block is so many films get made but they never get distributed. They had the idea to release it online for free, create buzz and see what happens.
iSPOT: How was the film made and where was it shot?
Decena: We pulled the crew together, an inner circle knew who I was, but everyone called me J.R. The actors didn’t know who I was, although they figured it out after the third week on the set. It was shot in the Bay Area, although it was made to look like it occurred all over the country. We shot it in Oakland, San Francisco and some b-roll in Sacramento. One of the interesting things is we shot it with a Panasonic HVX200, which allowed us to film everything tapeless because it was fully digital, so it was ideal for a fast turnaround and distribution online. We didn’t have to digitize the footage, because it came out of the camera. We could download cards and log the scenes and footage and they could start cutting immediately.
iSPOT: What kind of shots were involved?
Decena: One of the biggest challenges was to create events. We had to create three or four major staredown events and it was a fairly big production. It was difficult because there were so many extras and other people involved and we had to make the staredown look exciting. We studied a lot of sports films to figure out ways to build tension. We twisted it at the end to get the main event pushed outside and the climax scene continued in a police car.
