By Ken Liebeskind
SAN FRANCISCO --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.”
First-Time Feature Directors Make Major Splash At AFI Fest, Generate Oscar Buzz
Two first-time feature directors who are generating Oscar buzz this awards season were front and center this past weekend at AFI Fest in Hollywood. Rachel Morrison, who made history as the first woman nominated for a Best Cinematography Oscar---on the strength of Mudbound in 2018--brought her feature directorial debut, The Fire Inside (Amazon MGM Studios), to the festival on Sunday (10/27), and shared insights into the film during a conversation session immediately following the screening. This came a day after William Goldenberg, an Oscar-winning editor for Argo in 2013, had his initial foray into feature directing, Unstoppable (Amazon MGM Studios), showcased at the AFI proceedings. He too spoke after the screening during a panel discussion. The Fire Inside--which made its world premiere at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival--tells the story of Claressa “T-Rex” Shields (portrayed by Ryan Destiny), a Black boxer from Flint, Mich., who trained to become the first woman in U.S. history to win an Olympic Gold Medal in the sport. She achieved this feat--with the help of coach Jason Crutchfield (Brian Tyree Henry)--only to find that her victory at the Summer Games came with relatively little fanfare and no endorsement deals. So much for the hope that the historic accomplishment would be a ticket out of socioeconomic purgatory for Shields and her family. It seemed like yet another setback in a cycle of adversity throughout Shields’ life but she persevered, going on to win her second Gold Medal at the next Olympics and becoming a champion for gender equality and equitable pay for women in sports. Shields has served as a source of inspiration for woman athletes worldwide--as well as to the community of... Read More