Online video advertising is frequently repurposed from TV spots, but the original version of the video that plays at www.hbovoyeur.com originally appeared as a projection on the side of a building on the Lower East Side of New York. In fact, the piece of branded advertising is the side of a building — it shows occupants of a Manhattan apartment building moving about, allowing viewers to be voyeurs into their private lives.
“HBO was looking for a branding campaign that wouldn’t be related to programming, they were interested in doing something that speaks to the brand,” said Brian DiLorenzo, director of content and executive producer at BBDO/New York. “They’re known for story telling and innovative execution and this was a different way to tell a story. We had the opportunity to do it in a non-traditional way and use different media platforms.”
The four and a half minute video features 30 actors in 12 spaces that look like their apartments. “It looks like a crafted doll house,” DiLorenzo said. “You see them moving and each apartment has a connectedness, so the individual stories have an arc to them.”
The site is designed to give viewers “tools to explore it more richly,” DiLorenzo said, including a choice of music that plays with the video. Stephanie Diaz-Matos, music supervisor for Search Party/New York, said the company created six pieces of music for the main apartment complex and found a variety of composers who wrote dance music, indie rock, electronic music and more. “It was a musical strategy to maximize the interactivity of the web,” she said. “It shows how the music affects the picture while you’re watching it.”
Producing the video was an elaborate process because there were so many stories involved in adjoining apartments that had to be told simultaneously in a short time span. “The action was happening between the floors and the timing had to be right,” said Jake Scott, director at RSA USA/bicoastal. “There was a time map everyone was working with and it became a matter of the assistant director calling out the timing of the beats as he watched the shoots. It was more like conducting an orchestra.”
In one of the stories, an elderly woman collapses and dies in her apartment and her ghost ascends to the upper floor where a psychopathic mass murderer has a man tied to a chair. “Everything happens simultaneously, there are some big and small events,” Scott said. “We had to find ways to make them coincide. As simple as some of it seems, like walking up the stairs, you have to know how it interacts with the rest of the building. The added problem was how to balance the action so you’re not drawn to one area of the building. The eye tends to go toward the bigger stories, so we had to balance the performances.”
Post production by Asylum/Los Angeles was a mammoth project that involved stacking the apartment sequences to make them appear as if they were in the same building. “Instead of undertaking the seemingly impossible task of shooting all four floors at the same time, one floor was re-dressed four times, then the shots were stacked on top of one another in post,” said Tim Davies, Asylum’s VFX supervisor. “All of the apartments needed to be stabilized and had the lens distortion removed to keep them square as they were stacked on top of each other.”
There were a number of other effects Asylum utilized to show individual scenes, including the CG animation of a skeleton with its rib cage and skull that fell from the ceiling of the apartment of the woman who killed people and kept their bones under her rug.
If you look carefully at all the scenes you could say “Only in New York.” Or maybe “Only on HBO.” “HBO didn’t want to promote its programming but promote an awareness of HBO and the type of things they do,” DiLorenzo said. The video represents “ground breaking stuff with Flash that does streaming content and music you can change on the fly that hasn’t been done before.”
The voyeuristic aspect may be unique for advertising but it’s computer related, he said. “Computers are voyeuristic by nature. People Google each other to find information on things that people want to hide, so putting the voyeur concept online seems a pretty natural fit.”
HBO Voyeur was projected onto the wall of a building on Ludlow and Broome Streets in New York on June 28 and the site went live the same day.
DGA Feature Nominees: Audiard, Baker, Berger, Corbet and Mangold
The field of feature nominees for the Directors Guild of America (DGA) Awards spanning two categories is set. Nominated for the DGA honor for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Theatrical Feature Film for 2024 are: Jacques Audiard for Emilia Pérez, Sean Baker for Anora, Edward Berger for Conclave, Brady Corbet for The Brutalist, and James Mangold for A Complete Unknown.
The DGA also revealed the nominees for the Michael Apted Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in First-Time Theatrical Feature Film. The first-time narrative feature directors are: Payal Kapadia for All We Imagine as Light, Megan Park for My Old Ass, RaMell Ross for Nickel Boys, Halfdan Ullman Tondel for Armand, and Sean Wang for Diddy.
“2024 has been a truly extraordinary year for storytelling--and today’s nominees have created audacious and unique films that expand the possibilities of cinematic excellence,” said DGA president Lesli Linka Glatter. “I am thrilled to congratulate all our nominated directors for their brilliant work, which is visionary, inspirational and speaks to the depth of the human experience. To be chosen by one’s peers is the true marker of outstanding directorial achievement and what makes these nominations so very special.”
The winners will be announced at the 77th Annual DGA Awards on Saturday, February 8.
Here’s a fuller rundown of the nominees in both DGA Award categories:
THEATRICAL FEATURE FILM
Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Theatrical Feature Film for 2024 (in alphabetical order):
JACQUES AUDIARD
Emilia Pérez
(Netflix)
SEAN... Read More