“Click,” a :30 for Unilever’s Country Crock that runs online and on TV, combines live-action and motion-control footage to show a sequence of empty and food laden plates that promote the company’s philanthropic effort SpreadtheSharing.com. At the site, consumers are asked to click on an empty plate and contribute their stories of sharing. For each story, Country Crock will make a donation to America’s Second Harvest, the nation’s food bank network.
The spot begins with a live-action shot of empty plates on place mats on a dinner table. It segues into a motion-control sequence of plates that fill up with food at the click of a mouse. The sequence fuses with the Country Crock logo, which was shot live action as the spot concludes.
The spot relied on “gently applied motion control,” according to Alex Fernbach, Owner/Director/Cameraman of ARF & CO/Hoboken, N.J., the production co. that produced the spot for Stone & Simons Advertising/Southfield, Mich. “We built a large platform designed with an initial series of place mats and food. As the camera tilts down to look at the food we matched the first place mat into the matrix of place mats. As the camera tilted up, we added additional place mats and as it tilted down again we made our change into the sea of place mats. We did 40-50 motion control camera passes with empty plates. They were replaced with food at the post house, so food pops up at the click of the mouse.”
Guy Atzmon, designer at rhinofx/New York, explained how the shots of empty plates suddenly had food on them in response to the click. “They shot one pass of empty plates with multiple passes of different food on the plates, and we brought in the food in post. We switched to the take of food on the plates,” he said, explaining that it was a computer-generated image that used the real shots of food. The spot concluded with separate layers of plates that formed the Country Crock logo that transitioned to the actual logo. “It was a computer-generated transition of the logo made of plates to the live-action version,” he said.
Victoria Webb, vice president/account supervisor at Stone & Simons, lauded the production team on the spot. “Country Crock usually runs traditional commercials. This was a tech departure for us and the team was fantastic,” she said. The spot began running at Spreadthesharing.com and YouTube before its April 2 TV launch date.
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