Automakers have been at the forefront of efforts to advance broadband video advertising, but Mazda takes a step back with “The Awesome Adventures of Wild Child,” which is reminscent of famous movies from the past with car chase scenes.
“We took the major ideas, like a fruit cart being hit, from The French Connection and the ’80s hijinks movies,” said Dan Ravine, creative director at Sarkissian Mason, the New York agency that worked with Go Film, the production company, and Matt Lenski, an independent director, who is now a director at Epoch Films.
The spot, which is an ad for the MazdaSpeed3, a compact car, doesn’t feature real cars at all, but a bright red slot car that winds through a city at trailblazing speed, ramming into the fruit stand, knocking the door off a sports car and flying over two police cars that are positioned to stop it as pedestrians look on with amazement.
The spot is designed to look like a movie trailer with the Awesome Adventures title screen and credits at the end. Ravine said the goal was to run it in movie theaters, but it hasn’t been done yet.
“Mazda came to us and said we’re doing a new car for the younger demographic, youth oriented, fast and furious,” Ravine said. “We tried to shy away from the obvious by using a model of the car on an old race track. We went through old movies and came up with the idea for the over the top car chase, an action film that’s not straight ahead action, but with funny scenes, too, like the car spinning out in the parking lot.”
Lenski called the project a “dream come true to build a mini city and race slot cars through it.” It involved “an interesting production method because we did everything on a small scale. We used different cameras, different lenses, different speeds and shot it in overcrank in slow motion to give it the illusion that it’s going normal. We followed the frame per second conversion ratio for shooting at a smaller scale and had an amazing time shooting it.
“Lens flares and overhead shots were used to show off the car, but it was still a model,” Ravine said.
“The entire piece is built with film trickery,” Lenski said. “When the car shoots out from a shopping container, we built a close up shot of the container facing straight down and the camera pointing up, so it’s gravity pulling the car down.”
Lenski also lauded the sound effects, created by Ear Goo, New York, which included engines, screeching tires and horns to help make the piece authentic.
The spot, which plays at Mazdausa.com, was distributed on blogs and YouTube.
Robert Wherry, Go Film’s executive producer, said the company launched an online division, which it calls GOON, after it completed work on the Wild Child spot.
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