A new Tostitos website, www.nolaf.org, presents the snack chip as fun, something the National Organization for Legislation Against Fun (NOLAF), would like to get rid of. But viewers of the NOLAF videos might be enticed by the images of the chips dipped in cheese sauce, or they may laugh so much they’ll reach for a bag.
“Fun: A Societal Scourge,” is the one minute thirty-one second video that is one of 30 viral videos that play at more than 50 sites to drive consumers to nolaf.org, according to Todd Crisman, group creative director at Element 79, the agency that created the videos, which were produced by Mekanism, San Francisco. YouTube, Revver, Vimeo, Facebook and Digg are a few of the video sharing and social networking sites that are playing the videos. “Fun” also plays at the Orientation area of nolaf.org.
The video features a NOLAF director who explains how the organization is “dedicated to putting the un in fun” and illustrates examples of fun he wants to eliminate, from a toy monkey to a red rubber ball to Tostitos, “the corn based savory snack that everybody likes, and I hate.”
“Nolaf shines a light on the fun of Tostitos through the lens of the organization that is bent on destroying fun,” Crisman said.
The video was shot in December at the Alameda Naval Air Base in San Francisco, in a “decrepit building,” according to Mekanism director Tommy Means. “We were going for a very designed look, like it was one of the old educational health and safety films for the BBC from the ’70s that was shot on a grainy 16mm Bolex.” He used a Panasonic VariCam with a 35mm adaptor and Cooke lenses. “We used different filters to get that tobacco look and extracted the grain from it in post.”
Scott Parkin, the actor who played the NOLAF director, was a key to the film. “Casting was critical and we looked at 500 actors for an improvisational comedian who could carry the weight,” Means said. “He’s a middle age bald guy and after we yelled, ‘Action,’ we had no idea what he’d say. We had funny scripts to start with but we told the client we found an improv genius so you might not see what’s in here and they gave us the flexibility to run with it.”
“Fun: A Societal Scourge” is part of a campaign that features over 40 minutes of video on the website, from a series of clips featuring Parkin to others focusing on seven consumers in a classroom who ask Parkin questions about how they can assist in the unfun campaign. Visitors click on each consumer to hear the questions.
The website and a series of Free the Fun TV spots are elements of an integrated campaign that “gives consumers a different involvement with the Tostitos brand than they’ve ever had before,” Crisman said. “The videos were created to immerse consumers in a brand experience and engage them immediately, so they don’t run away. We wanted to be as funny as we could and fresh, making sure at the end of the experience people walk away smiling and understand that Tostitos was behind it.”
The campaign also included print, with both TV and print starting in early January before the web videos began playing April 18.
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Writers of “Conclave,” “Say Nothing” Win Scripter Awards
The authors and screenwriters behind the film โConclaveโ and the series โSay Nothingโ won the 37th-annual USC Libraries Scripter Awards during a black-tie ceremony at USCโs Town and Gown ballroom on Saturday evening (2/22).
The Scripter Awards recognize the yearโs most accomplished adaptations of the written word for the screen, including both feature-length films and episodic series.
Novelist Robert Harris and screenwriter Peter Straughan took home the award for โConclave.โ
In accepting the award, Straughan said, โAdaptation is a really strange process, youโre very much the servant of two masters. In a way itโs an act of betrayal of one master for the other.โ He joked that โYou start off with a book that you love, you read it again and again, and then you end up throwing it over your shoulder,โ crediting author Robert Harris for being โso kind, so generous, so open throughout.โ
In the episodic series category, Joshua Zetumer and Patrick Radden Keefe won for the episode โThe People in the Dirtโ from the limited series โSay Nothing,โ which Zetumer adapted from Keefeโs nonfiction book about the Troubles in Ireland.
Zetumer referenced this yearโs extraordinary group of Scripter finalists, saying โprojects like these reminded me of why I wanted to become a writer when I was sitting in USCโs Leavey Library dreaming of becoming a screenwriter. If you fell in love with movies, or fell in love with TV, chances are you fell in love with something dangerous.โ
Special guest for the evening, actress and producer Jennifer Beals, shared her thoughts on the impact of libraries. โIf ever you are at a loss wondering if there is good in the world,โ she said, โyou have only to go to a... Read More