What happens when an affable man asks a young woman for information about her breasts so he can inform her about a new bra-fitting website? If you watch Talking Headless, the new video ad for Zafu.com, you’ll find out.
The :52 video, now playing on a range of sites, is the first video ad for Zafu, a year-old site that provides personalized information about the proper bra for women who answer a few questions.
The spot was produced without an agency by Kontent Films/San Francisco, a production and development company. David Munro, the director who created the spot, cast it with John Dilley, another Kontent director, who plays the research scientist. “He’s nerdy and charming. If he was too rigidly scientific, it would take away from the humor,” Munro said. Chantal Carlon, a 10-time national Tae Kwon Do champion, plays the woman. “We canvassed the local karate gyms to find her,” he said. “For the role, she needed to be a kick boxer.”
In the spot Carlon literally kicks the head off Dilley after he asks her about her breasts. In a split second, we see Dilley’s head rolling along the parking lot, after a shot of his headless body is shown. “We shot it with the talent and swapped out full length dummies that had a model head based on the lead actor,” Munro said. “A shorter person wore a neck suit with shoulders built up to head height for the headless shot.” The alternative would have been to “throw a green screen over our unfortunate hero and do the headless bit in post but with too much realism it’s not funny, so we went very low tech.”
He shot the video with a Panasonic HVX200 camera with a mini-adaptor with prime lenses. The video was shot in Livermore, CA., “because it’s tricky to light in San Francisco, so we went outside the fog belt in the East Bay,” Munro said.
The video began playing at YouTube on August 28 and has been viewed over 15,000 times. It was seeded at 25 to 30 other sites, including Google Video, Grouper, Guba, Veoh, iFilm and Yahoo Video, according to Rob Holloway, Zafu’s CEO.
“Most people like the execution,” Holloway said, but he doesn’t know how successful the video will be yet. “It’s too early to say and you get polarized opinion.”
One thing it should do is prohibit men from asking women about their breasts. “We found it works better online,” the spot concludes, as Dilley’s decapitated head tries to inform another woman about the website.
Ron Cicero and Bo Clancey Launch Production House 34North
Executive producers Ron Cicero and Bo Clancey have teamed to launch 34North. The shop opens with a roster which includes accomplished directors Jan Wentz, Ben Nakamura Whitehouse, David Edwards and Mario Feil, as well as such up-and-coming filmmakers as Glenn Stewart and Chris Fowles. Nakamura Whitehouse, Edwards, Feil and Fowles come over from CoMPANY Films, the production company for which Cicero served as an EP for the past nearly five years. Director Wentz had most recently been with production house Skunk while Stewart now gains his first U.S. representation. EP Clancey was freelance producing prior to the formation of 34North. He and Cicero have known each other for some 25 years, recently reconnecting on a job directed by Fowles. Cicero said that he and Clancey “want to keep a highly focused roster where talent management can be one on one--where we all share in the directors’ success together.” Clancey also brings an agency pedigree to the new venture. “I started at Campbell Ewald in accounts, no less,” said Clancey. “I saw firsthand how much work agencies put in before we even see a script. You have to respect that investment. These agency experiences really shaped my approach to production--it’s about empathy, listening between the lines, and ultimately making the process seamless.” 34North represents a meeting point--both literally and creatively. Named after the latitude of Malibu, Calif., where the idea for the company was born, it also embraces the power of storytelling. “34North118West was the first GPS-enabled narrative,” Cicero explained. “That blend of art and technology, to captivate an audience, mirrors what we do here--create compelling work, with talented people, harnessing state-of-the-art... Read More