Sony PSP’s Syphon Filter: Logan’s Shadow video game features a number of new spy fighting maneuvers that Gabe Logan, the game’s hero, uses to battle the Somali pirates. TBWAChiatDay/LA could have shown the new maneuvers in detail with live game footage. “But we had one random viral idea,” said agency copywriter Rob Calabro. “We thought it would be funny if we had one guy who studied the game so much that he created an online self defense course based on the motion of the game that was completely inapplicable to real life.”
And Agent Kevin 78 DramaHawk was born.
The video campaign for Syphon Filter, which launched Jan. 9, features 13 DramaHawk homemade videos featuring Kevin in his room and outside his house demonstrating the new maneuvers in his own way. In the game, Logan uses a spear gun to attack spies under water. Kevin stores his spear gun under his car and uses it to shoot the oxygen box (“I call it ox box”) of his rival in his backyard. “It doesn’t make sense and he’s a little bit disconnected, but it’s a funny way to show the new moves from the game,” Calabro said.
Six two to three-minute videos show Kevin demonstrating new spy fighting maneuvers. The campaign also includes a series of shorter videos, which Calabro calls “orphans,” which were conceptualized by Matt Lenski, who directed the videos for Epoch Films/bicoastal. “His idea was to have unbranded shorter pieces that would pique the interest of non-gamers,” Calabro said. “They can watch a 10-second video and see that it’s linked to other videos, which they can check out.” Lenski called the orphans “esoteric comments that build into Kevin’s world.”
Kevin’s world turns out to be the guiding principle of the video series. “We made sure to stick to one rule—what would Kevin do,” Lenski said. “He’s the fan of the game and we had to stick to that mind frame.”
Lenski shot the films in Echo Park, Eagle Rock and other East LA locations, “anywhere we could get away with blowing stuff up easily,” he said. In Highly Explosive, Kevin blows up a cantaloupe, a bag of flour and an old car. “We took a Glock 9mm with blanks and rigged the cantaloupe and bag of flour with explosives,” Lenski said. As for how he shot the car explosion, “It proves the art direction was spot on,” he said. “He shot at the car and we tried to make the explosion as fake as possible, like he’d just done the effect on his home computer. It was supposed to look hokey.”
The idea was to make the videos look like Kevin had made them himself and “he wouldn’t spend much on a video camera, so we went out and bought two inexpensive ones,” he said. Sony DCR-HC38 Mini DV camcorders were used.
The six main videos in the series feature game footage clips at the very end. Instead of playing in vivid clarity, they are rough, “because Kevin wouldn’t be able to get high rez QuickTimes but he could shoot it off his PSP screen as he was playing,” Lenski said. “So we shot it off the PSP screen with the inexpensive video camera.”
The videos don’t play on a Sony PSP site. “YouTube is the hub of it,” Calabro said. A YouTube page features the entire series. Yahoo Video, Dailymotion, Metacafe and Pspfanboy are also being used. “We’re trying to keep it very viral. We want it to reach gamers, so we’re also going to play them on game blogs,” he said.
DramaHawk is Johnny Sollis, a New York actor whom Calabro praised for his improvisational skills. “The campaign was so run and gun we couldn’t worry about specific lines. It was do it your own way and he was perfect for that,” he said. “The way we wrote the character was different from where he took it. He didn’t become DramaHawk. DramaHawk became him.”
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