By Ken Liebeskind
NEW YORK --Prescriptives, Inc., a division of Estee Lauder Corp., has launched a video campaign to promote its mascara, with four videos featuring Jillian Veran, a makeup artist and the director of artistry for Prescriptives, offering makeup tips as she applies mascara to a model.
The videos, which run at a Prescriptives site and YouTube, began playing September 28 in association with the introduction of a new mascara.
The videos, which run a little longer than a minute each, feature humorous dialogue from Veran as she applies the makeup. “They wanted it to be lighthearted and instructive,” said Renée Torrière,
casting director at Shadow Casting/New York, who oversaw the production of the videos, which were shot by Glenn Schuster, who runs Industrial Strength/Montclair, NJ, a production company.
Sari Sternschein, e-commerce director at Prescriptives, said the videos are being utilized to highlight four mascaras that are used to create different looks. “The purpose is to help customers find the perfect mascara, while providing them with expert tips to get the look, using coordinating products, such as eye color and eye liner.”
Schuster said the videos were shot in hi-def with a Panasonic HVX200 camera. “We shot directly to cards, off loaded it to a laptop and backed up the files on hard drive,” he said. “Once it was backed up, we reformatted the cards and continued shooting. There was no videotape involved.”
He said, “They wanted to keep the videos light and the makeup artist had a fun personality. They were amused by the outtakes and the ad lib moments, so we kept them as bloopers.” The bloopers appear at the end of some of the videos.
The videos are intended for “any woman who wears mascara or even the woman who is intimidated by mascara and needs expert advice,” Sternschein said.
The videos are part of an exclusive online campaign for the products. “Since mascara is such a cult product for women, we have chosen to focus our advertising efforts completely online,” she said.
This is the first time the company has used online video advertising. “Video is an amazing asset for us because a consumer can see a product in action, how it applies, what the effect is on the skin,” she said. “It’s a more interactive shopping experience for any customer that researches a product online before shopping in-store.”
Review: Malcolm Washington Makes His Feature Directing Debut With “The Piano Lesson”
An heirloom piano takes on immense significance for one family in 1936 Pittsburgh in August Wilson's "The Piano Lesson." Generational ties also permeate the film adaptation, in which Malcolm Washington follows in his father Denzel Washington's footsteps in helping to bring the entirety of The Pittsburgh Cycle — a series of 10 plays — to the screen.
Malcolm Washington did not start from scratch in his accomplished feature filmmaking debut. He enlisted much of the cast from the recent Broadway revival with Samuel L. Jackson (Doaker Charles), his brother, John David Washington (Boy Willie), Ray Fisher (Lymon) and Michael Potts (Whining Boy). Berniece, played by Danielle Brooks in the play, is now beautifully portrayed by Danielle Deadwyler. With such rich material and a cast for whom it's second nature, it would be hard, one imagines, to go wrong. Jackson's own history with the play goes back to its original run in 1987 when he was Boy Willie.
It's not the simplest thing to make a play feel cinematic, but Malcolm Washington was up to the task. His film opens up the world of the Charles family beyond the living room. In fact, this adaptation, which Washington co-wrote with "Mudbound" screenwriter Virgil Williams, goes beyond Wilson's text and shows us the past and the origins of the intricately engraved piano that's central to all the fuss. It even opens on a big, action-filled set piece in 1911, during which the piano is stolen from a white family's home. Another fleshes out Doaker's monologue in which he explains to the uninitiated, Fisher's Lymon, and the audience, the tortured history of the thing. While it might have been nice to keep the camera on Jackson, such a great, grounding presence throughout, the good news is that he really makes... Read More