A small town bank promoting small business loans is doing it in a small way–through lemonade stands. Umpqua Bank, which operates 144 branches in Northern California, Oregon and Washington, is providing lemonade stands to children in eight bank markets and promoting it with a viral film that focuses on a seven-year-old boy’s quest to start a lemonade stand.
‘Lemonaire’ “is a perfect metaphor for the business that brings the idea to life in a fun way,” said Jim Haven, creative director at advertising agency, Creature/Seattle, which created the film that was produced by Teak Motion Visuals/San Francisco.
The five-and-a-half minute film follows the exploits of the young boy, who comes up with the idea of opening the lemonade stand and visits the bank to get it financed before he starts his business. The film is shot inside and outside the boy’s home and at the bank, where a friendly banker approves the loan.
“It illustrates the idea in a way that can be more emotional,” Haven said. “People think of small business loans as not that exciting to talk about, but the film talks about the business through the metaphor of the lemonade stand. The entertainment pays them back for spending time listening to what you have to say.”
Creature worked with Teak to cast the film, selecting Elliott Carr to play the boy, whom Haven said “was one of the most professional actors I’ve ever worked with.”
The film was shot in the Fabulous Forties neighborhood in Sacramento, a leafy suburb that provided an exceptional locale for the lemonade stand.
Dave Laden, an independent director who works for Teak, said the film was shot with a Panasonic HVX2000 camera and recorded to disc. “There were 100 different set ups for the two-day shoot, lots of moving parts, three locations and lots of characters, so it was fast and furious,” he said.
“We could have shot it on film but we had budget constraints,” he said. The camera he used was ideal for the small screen and gave it a filmic look, he noted.
Greg Martinez, executive producer and owner of Teak, said, “The biggest part was keeping it charming. The director does quirky ads and this was a different project for him. It had to be more charming.”
The film began playing at www.Lemonaire.com on June 14 and it also plays at YouTube. It’s the first time the bank has used a film in its advertising. It runs as part of a campaign that also includes radio, direct mail and point-of-sale.
Raoul Peck Resurrects A Once-Forgotten Anti-Apartheid Photographer In “Ernest Cole: Lost and Found”
When the photographer Ernest Cole died in 1990 at the age of 49 from pancreatic cancer at a Manhattan hospital, his death was little noted.
Cole, one of the most important chroniclers of apartheid-era South Africa, was by then mostly forgotten and penniless. Banned by his native country after the publication of his pioneering photography book "House of Bondage," Cole had emigrated in 1966 to the United States. But his life in exile gradually disintegrated into intermittent homelessness. A six-paragraph obituary in The New York Times ran alongside a list of death notices.
But Cole receives a vibrant and stirring resurrection in Raoul Peck's new film "Ernest Cole: Lost and Found," narrated in Cole's own words and voiced by LaKeith Stanfield. The film, which opens in theaters Friday, is laced throughout with Cole's photographs, many of them not before seen publicly.
As he did in his Oscar-nominated James Baldwin documentary "I Am Not Your Negro," the Haitian-born Peck shares screenwriting credit with his subject. "Ernest Cole: Lost and Found" is drawn from Cole's own writings. In words and images, Peck brings the tragic story of Cole to vivid life, reopening the lens through which Cole so perceptively saw injustice and humanity.
"Film is a political tool for me," Peck said in a recent interview over lunch in Manhattan. "My job is to go to the widest audience possible and try to give them something to help them understand where they are, what they are doing, what role they are playing. It's about my fight today. I don't care about the past."
"Ernest Cole: Lost and Found" is a movie layered with meaning that goes beyond Cole's work. It asks questions not just about the societies Cole documented but of how he was treated as an artist,... Read More