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.”
Director Hans Emanuel Joins Caviar For Commercials and Music Videos
Production company Caviar has signed director Hans Emanuel for U.S. commercial and music video representation. The film and advertising director fuses his keen--and Berlinale Film Festival Award-winning--eye for cinematic storytelling with a commercial background across multiple genres including beauty, automotive, dance, and visual effects-heavy projects, to produce creative for clients like Kia, Nivea, Nissan, L’Oreal, BMW and more.
Caviar executive producer Salim El Arja noted, “Hans has a unique ability to blend stunning visuals with heart and humor, rooted in his confidence as a craftsman. This allows him to focus on drawing exceptional performances from actors--including celebrities--and crafting films that are not only visually striking but also deeply engaging and often hilariously comedic. His sensibilities align perfectly with Caviar’s vision, and we’re excited to collaborate with him on work that pushes creative boundaries.”
Emanuel added, “Caviar is a renowned name, certainly since I began my career. They have a solid reputation for quality work, and I’ve always respected them as a company. Life is about where destiny makes you flow with the people you need; thanks to a series of projects, I was introduced to Florence Jacob with Caviar Paris first, and the rest is history. I feel they can support my career growth with their comedic expertise and filmmaking prowess.”
Prior to joining Caviar, Emanuel had been repped by production house Stadium. He was born and raised in Santa Monica, Calif., to a Mexican-German mother, benefiting from a culturally diversified upbringing that carried through his education interests. Knowing he wanted to be a filmmaker from the start, he began his career in the luxury and beauty field,... Read More