“What’s the deal?” the tagline of Comcast’s new campaign to promote its TV, phone and Internet bundle, is expressed in a series of TV :30s by two Canadian actors who get into a variety of humorous situations that are, well, too crazy for them to deal with.
Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco, and bicoastal Anonymous Content, the agency and production company behind the campaign, expanded the TV effort with “Duet,” a three-minute webisode in which the two sing a karaoke version of Air Supply’s “Out of Love” on an old stage, interspersed with stock footage that mocks their vocal efforts.
“It’s a goofy duet with the two guys singing it,” said Nick Spahr, Goodby’s art director, who traveled to Vancouver for the shoot. “We conceived the set design with reference to old videos from the ’80s, we built the sound stage and shot them with one big camera movement across the stage.”
Jeff Baron, the executive producer from Anonymous, said the singers and the three accompanying musicians were shot live with a 35mm camera, rotating star filter and an uncoated lens. The stock footage was added by shooting all the action in front of a green screen and replacing the green background with the stock footage during post. The soundtrack was recorded during the live shoot and the actors re-recorded it in a studio.
Close-ups and mid range shots of the singers were used, with frequent shots of the three musicians interspersed in the background. The stock footage sequence appears near the end, with discordant shots of a roaring fire, a couple sitting on a couch scratching their dog’s belly and horses galloping across a field. Meanwhile, lyrics of the song appear near the bottom of the screen for the karaoke effect: “I’m all out of love, I’m so lost without you.”
The actors who appear in the webisode, David Milchard and Donovan Stinson, are popular from the TV campaign, and the webisode also appears on their MySpace page. “The long form webisode goes deeper and gives the guys more personality,” Spahr said. “Viewers get to know the guys, it gives them more to play with. And it gives the campaign life outside of the TV commercials.”
The humorous webisode plays at http://www.whatsthedealwithussingingthisduet.com and will be posted at YouTube this week, Spahr said.
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