Four live action short films starring Tonya and Donya, two beautiful young women who know nothing about rally driving, are being used to promote the release of SEGA Rally Revo, the off road rally racing video game that debuts Oct. 9. In the videos, the women examine their nails and gossip about their looks as they drive a race car through city streets and offroad terrain.
“The Misadventures of Tonya and Donya” videos were written and directed by Clay Weiner and produced by Mekanism/San Francisco, with no agency involved.
“Sega wanted to find a way to promote the title in a clever, fun way to engage the audience and spread it virally,” said Mekanism president and executive producer Jason Harris. “They liked the idea of Tonya and Donya and the irony of anti-heroes.”
There is live game footage at the end of the videos, but the antics of Tonya and Donya predominate.
Mekanism shot the videos on a stage and on location at an off-road race park in Hollister, CA. “We shot the girls on the stage and green screened them so you can see them head on or from the side,” said Stef Smith, a Mekanism producer. “We mounted a VariCam on the truck and drove it up and down the roads for the location shots.” Each of the videos also features a car crash sequence near the end, which was licensed with stock footage, she said.
“It required building a green screen around the car and shooting all dialogue and performance while they were in uniform seated in the car,” Weiner said. “We composited it later with the driving footage through the terrain and matched the shots with shots out the back and side windows and shots of other cars ahead.”
Weiner cast the videos with two comedic actresses from Los Angeles, Natasha Leggero and Melinda Hill. “They know each other and it was important to find people who have a relationship, so the balance between them comes across,” he said.
Three of the one-and-a-half to three-minute videos, Breakout, Starting Line and Moguls, are playing now, with the fourth scheduled to start this week. They are playing at a Sega games site and a range of other sites, including YouTube, Google Video, Yahoo Video, Revver and Veoh. They are also playing at the actresses’ MySpace pages and video sharing sites that “will create conversations about the films, so they’ll be spread that way,” Harris said.
This is the second campaign Mekanism produced for Sega. It won a Cannes Gold Lion for its mybigball.com campaign that featured “The True Adventures of Chad.”
Supreme Court Allows Multibillion-Dollar Class Action Lawsuit To Proceed Against Meta
The Supreme Court is allowing a multibillion-dollar class action investors' lawsuit to proceed against Facebook parent Meta, stemming from the privacy scandal involving the Cambridge Analytica political consulting firm.
The justices heard arguments in November in Meta's bid to shut down the lawsuit. On Friday, they decided that they were wrong to take up the case in the first place.
The high court dismissed the company's appeal, leaving in place an appellate ruling allowing the case to go forward.
Investors allege that Meta did not fully disclose the risks that Facebook users' personal information would be misused by Cambridge Analytica, a firm that supported Donald Trump 's first successful Republican presidential campaign in 2016.
Inadequacy of the disclosures led to two significant price drops in the price of the company's shares in 2018, after the public learned about the extent of the privacy scandal, the investors say.
Meta spokesman Andy Stone said the company was disappointed by the court's action. "The plaintiff's claims are baseless and we will continue to defend ourselves as this case is considered by the District Court," Stone said in an emailed statement.
Meta already has paid a $5.1 billion fine and reached a $725 million privacy settlement with users.
Cambridge Analytica had ties to Trump political strategist Steve Bannon. It had paid a Facebook app developer for access to the personal information of about 87 million Facebook users. That data was then used to target U.S. voters during the 2016 campaign.
The lawsuit is one of two high court cases involving class-action lawsuits against tech companies. The justices also are wrestling with whether to shut down a class action against Nvidia.... Read More