Four live action short films starring Tonya and Donya, two beautiful young women who know nothing about rally driving, are being used to promote the release of SEGA Rally Revo, the off road rally racing video game that debuts Oct. 9. In the videos, the women examine their nails and gossip about their looks as they drive a race car through city streets and offroad terrain.
“The Misadventures of Tonya and Donya” videos were written and directed by Clay Weiner and produced by Mekanism/San Francisco, with no agency involved.
“Sega wanted to find a way to promote the title in a clever, fun way to engage the audience and spread it virally,” said Mekanism president and executive producer Jason Harris. “They liked the idea of Tonya and Donya and the irony of anti-heroes.”
There is live game footage at the end of the videos, but the antics of Tonya and Donya predominate.
Mekanism shot the videos on a stage and on location at an off-road race park in Hollister, CA. “We shot the girls on the stage and green screened them so you can see them head on or from the side,” said Stef Smith, a Mekanism producer. “We mounted a VariCam on the truck and drove it up and down the roads for the location shots.” Each of the videos also features a car crash sequence near the end, which was licensed with stock footage, she said.
“It required building a green screen around the car and shooting all dialogue and performance while they were in uniform seated in the car,” Weiner said. “We composited it later with the driving footage through the terrain and matched the shots with shots out the back and side windows and shots of other cars ahead.”
Weiner cast the videos with two comedic actresses from Los Angeles, Natasha Leggero and Melinda Hill. “They know each other and it was important to find people who have a relationship, so the balance between them comes across,” he said.
Three of the one-and-a-half to three-minute videos, Breakout, Starting Line and Moguls, are playing now, with the fourth scheduled to start this week. They are playing at a Sega games site and a range of other sites, including YouTube, Google Video, Yahoo Video, Revver and Veoh. They are also playing at the actresses’ MySpace pages and video sharing sites that “will create conversations about the films, so they’ll be spread that way,” Harris said.
This is the second campaign Mekanism produced for Sega. It won a Cannes Gold Lion for its mybigball.com campaign that featured “The True Adventures of Chad.”
Apple and Google Face UK Investigation Into Mobile Browser Dominance
Apple and Google aren't giving consumers a genuine choice of mobile web browsers, a British watchdog said Friday in a report that recommends they face an investigation under new U.K. digital rules taking effect next year.
The Competition and Markets Authority took aim at Apple, saying the iPhone maker's tactics hold back innovation by stopping rivals from giving users new features like faster webpage loading. Apple does this by restricting progressive web apps, which don't need to be downloaded from an app store and aren't subject to app store commissions, the report said.
"This technology is not able to fully take off on iOS devices," the watchdog said in a provisional report on its investigation into mobile browsers that it opened after an initial study concluded that Apple and Google effectively have a chokehold on "mobile ecosystems."
The CMA's report also found that Apple and Google manipulate the choices given to mobile phone users to make their own browsers "the clearest or easiest option."
And it said that the a revenue-sharing deal between the two U.S. Big Tech companies "significantly reduces their financial incentives" to compete in mobile browsers on Apple's iOS operating system for iPhones.
Both companies said they will "engage constructively" with the CMA.
Apple said it disagreed with the findings and said it was concerned that the recommendations would undermine user privacy and security.
Google said the openness of its Android mobile operating system "has helped to expand choice, reduce prices and democratize access to smartphones and apps" and that it's "committed to open platforms that empower consumers."
It's the latest move by regulators on both sides of the Atlantic to crack down on the... Read More