BET’s “Follow the Leader” network identity campaign centers around a video from Harpoon Pictures/New York that follows the leader racing through the city to a comfortable living room where he can watch BET.
“Racing” isn’t really the word to use because the actor who plays the leader is Sébastien Foucan, who appeared in the James Bond film Casino Royale, and is the founder of parkour (free running), an extreme sport where participants move as fast as they can over and around any obstacle that comes in their way. To get to the TV, Foucan runs through crowds on a city street, strides across a ship in the harbor, leaps across roof tops and stops to raise his arms in triumph before he scales the face of a building to enter the apartment.
“Free running is not in the States yet, it’s the skateboarding of the future, the cutting edge before it breaks,” said Ola Kudu, BET’s vice president/creative director. Foucan’s opening chase scene in Casino Royale, a demonstration of parkour, “was one of the inspirations for the campaign and we pushed it further,” Kudu said.
The two-and-a-half-minute video began playing at Bet.com/onblast, the network’s video page, on Monday.
The video wasn’t easy to shoot because Foucan moved so fast. “The jumps were dangerous and risky, we had to shoot from three different angles for wide, close and mid shots,” said Michael Abt, Harpoon’s director. “He ran so fast on the difficult terrain, the only way to follow him was in a four wheel drive.”
The film looks like it was shot in an American city, but it was actually shot in Buenos Aires. It was shot there in April with Arriflex 435 cameras, Abt said.
The sound track is a hip hop song, Follow the Leader, by Eric B and Rakim, with echoing that repeats the title.
BET also plans to play the video with viral links at various locations, Kudu said. The long form video doesn’t play on TV, but shorter :30 and :60 second versions are playing on air along with network ids. Still images from the video are being used in print ads in the campaign that launched May 18.
Netflix Series “The Leopard” Spots Classic Italian Novel, Remakes It As A Sumptuous Period Drama
"The Leopard," a new Netflix series, takes the classic Italian novel by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa and transforms it into a sumptuous period piece showing the struggles of the aristocracy in 19th-century Sicily, during tumultuous social upheavals as their way of life is crumbling around them.
Tom Shankland, who directs four of the eight episodes, had the courage to attempt his own version of what is one of the most popular films in Italian history. The 1963 movie "The Leopard," directed by Luchino Visconti, starring Burt Lancaster, Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale, won the Palme d'Or in Cannes.
One Italian critic said that it would be the equivalent of a director in the United States taking "Gone with the Wind" and turning it into a series, but Shankland wasn't the least bit intimidated.
He said that he didn't think of anything other than his own passion for the project, which grew out of his love of the book. His father was a university professor of Italian literature in England, and as a child, he loved the book and traveling to Sicily with his family.
The book tells the story of Don Fabrizio Corbera, the Prince of Salina, a tall, handsome, wealthy aristocrat who owns palaces and land across Sicily.
His comfortable world is shaken with the invasion of Sicily in 1860 by Giuseppe Garibaldi, who was to overthrow the Bourbon king in Naples and bring about the Unification of Italy.
The prince's family leads an opulent life in their magnificent palaces with servants and peasants kowtowing to their every need. They spend their time at opulent banquets and lavish balls with their fellow aristocrats.
Shankland has made the series into a visual feast with tables heaped with food, elaborate gardens and sensuous costumes.... Read More