Directors William Campbell and Will Johnson of Gentleman Scholar craft a new viral video for Ray-Ban’s “Never Hide” campaign. Edited by Steve Prestemon of Whitehouse Post, the piece follows a young Russian couple on an adventure into an abandoned house where they stumble upon a bug metamorphosing into a very unusual creature.
Campbell and Johnson sought to strike the perfect balance between believable and wonderful in the spot. In order to push the intrigue of the story, the directors introduced the idea of the couple speaking in a language that wouldn’t be easily recognizable. They found a couple who not only had on-screen chemistry but spoke Russian fluently.
Next on the docket for the Gentleman Scholar creative team was the creation of the insect. They wanted to make sure that the bug had a dimension of wonderment while still staying fundamentally grounded in reality. As the creature molts and evolves–creating and shedding sunglass lenses, Campbell and Johnson were able to show a variety of different features of the stylish Ray-Ban Clubmaster model, as well as develop an interesting-looking creature.
In order to create that “lost footage you found in the attic” feel, Gentleman Scholar transferred the piece to VHS tape, then pulled the tape out of the VHS cassette, crumpled it, kicked it down the hall, and wound it back up.
TikTok Creators Left In Limbo As Supreme Court Considers Potential Platform Ban
Will TikTok be banned this month?
That's the pressing question keeping creators and small business owners in anxious limbo as they await a decision that could upend their livelihoods. The fate of the popular app will be decided by the Supreme Court, which will hear arguments on Jan. 10 over a law requiring TikTok to break ties with its Chinese-based parent company, ByteDance, or face a U.S. ban.
At the heart of the case is whether the law violates the First Amendment with TikTok and its creator allies arguing that it does. The U.S. government, which sees the platform as a national security risk, says it does not.
For creators, the TikTok doomsday scenarios are nothing new since President-elect Donald Trump first tried to ban the platform through executive order during his first term. But despite Trump's recent statements indicating he now wants TikTok to stick around, the prospect of a ban has never been as immediate as it is now with the Supreme Court serving as the final arbiter.
If the government prevails as it did in a lower court, TikTok says it would shut down its U.S. platform by Jan. 19, leaving creators scrambling to redefine their futures.
"A lot of my other creative friends, we're all like freaking out. But I'm staying calm," said Gillian Johnson, who benefited financially from TikTok's live feature and rewards program, which helped creators generate higher revenue potential by posting high-quality original content. The 22-year-old filmmaker and recent college graduate uses her TikTok earnings to help fund her equipment for projects such as camera lens and editing software for her short films "Gambit" and "Awaken! My Neighbor."
Johnson said the idea of TikTok going away is "hard to accept."
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