While our coverage of the recently concluded Dallas International Film Festival centered on feature-length films as well as shorts–the former including documentarian Steve James’ The Interrupters (SHOOTonline, 4/1)–there was also some spot fare of note related to the event, namely a promo campaign directed by Scott Rice of Synthetic Pictures, bicoastal and Austin, for TM Advertising, Dallas.
“The Love Of Film Is In The Air,” a centerpiece spot for the campaign of the same title, opens on a man seated on a playground swing, rocking back and forth with sheer delight. The camera then reveals that pushing him on the swing is a horror movie zombie reminiscent of a character from 28 Days Later.
The next slice of life is a woman peddling a bicycle through the park. Turns out she’s on a bike built for two, her passenger being a cowboy straight out of a black-and-white classic High Noon-style western.
Then we’re taken to the malt shop where a gal is sipping on one of two straws buried deep in a delicious frosty milkshake. The pair of lips on the other straw belongs to a 1950s B-movie alien patterned after a character in Invaders from Mars.
And finally a man and woman walk through the park. She’s holding a flower undoubtedly presented to her by her male beau. This couple is clearly in love–that is, until the guy spots someone else not yet seen on camera. That third party is a contemporary war film bomb technician decked out in a protective suit, hearkening back not so far to a protagonist in the Oscar-winning The Hurt Locker. The original man abandons his girlfriend and take her flower so he can present it to the bomb expert.
A message appears on screen which simply reads, “The love of film is in the air,” serving as an invite for viewers to attend the festival and discover an iconic character of their own to relate to and enjoy. An end tag carries the dates for the Dallas International Film Festival along with a list of its corporate sponsors.
Jumping off the screen Each movie character appears to have stepped off the theater screen and into a slice-of-life spot vignette. The characters have a celluloid feel that makes them stand out in each promo scene.
Director Rice said that the campaign appealed to him on different levels. Beyond being attracted to the concept as a movie fan, he related, “The idea that we’d apply a film effect to the movie characters as if they’d just stepped off the screen and into our world was really exciting.”
Special effects makeup artist Meredith Johns and costume designer Lisa Barnes had the key tasks of modeling the cinematic-style zombie, bomb technician, cowboy and intergalactic alien. Post Asylum’s visual effects acumen was also brought to bear to achieve the desired effect.
And cinematographer J.P. Lipa shot with the RED camera to help blend the lines between reality and fiction on location in Austin.
Hal Dantzler, sr. VP/director of broadcast production at TM, said he had worked with Rice in the past and knew he could “take this slightly tongue-in-cheek creative and deliver it in a fresh, modern way. I was particularly impressed with the thought Scott put into how the footage would eventually cut together. The edit was a breeze.”
High bar “The Love Of Film Is In The Air” was one of six spots in the Dallas International Film Festival campaign, for which TM has set the creative bar quite high.
For example, last year Jeremy Bartel of Dallas-based Liberal Media Films, the production arm of editorial house charlieuniformtango, directed a Dallas Film Festival promo titled “The Talk,” which made its way to the short list of the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival.
The TM-conceived “Talk” showed a couple seated at a restaurant table; she broaches the subject of commitment after their dating so many years. He interrupts her and stands up, becoming a pseudo-filmmaker as if he were directing a scene, instructing her to explore her inner motivation and feelings upon learning that her boyfriend is useless and will never commit to anything or anyone. He then sits back down and calls for “action” so that the scene will resume–it does, with her slapping him hard across the face and leaving.
The promo was part of the “When You Love Film, You Live Film” campaign for the 2010 Dallas Festival.
