To support Skin Cancer Awareness Month in May, Olay is running a video public service announcement (psa) online that shows a nearly naked man receiving a skin exam on the streets of New York, where passersby smile or in some cases walk on by with barely a notice.
“Watching them not react at all was the funniest part of it all,” said Peter Ostella, senior producer at Saatchi & Saatchi/NY, which created “Street Screenings”. Bicoastal/international Believe Media was the production company.
“You imagine they’d be more shocked,” said Whitey McConnaughy, Believe’s director, who said citizens of any city besides New York would have been.
They would have been shocked to see a grown man on the sidewalk of a major city in his underwear, which occurs in the film, as the man receives the skin exam from a doctor, who is fully dressed in a white lab coat. The man giggles as the doctor examines him and hugs him in the end, which establishes the goal of the film–to promote skin exams. “The notion of putting him on the streets nearly naked is mortifying to some, but what’s more mortifying is if you don’t get a skin exam,” Ostella said.
McConnaughy used Panasonic DVX100 cameras for the shoot, using two to shoot pedestrian reactions, with one positioned across the street from the skin exam. Shooting the main action from across the street was done “to show where it was in relation to the city,” McConnaughy said. Another camera was hidden in the doctor’s office area shooting out, he noted.
Actors were hired to do the two main parts. “I gave them direction for each take, then we took a break and did another take with subtle changes,” he said.
The soundtrack is an orchestral instrumental piece from a band called Spain Colored Orange.
Barney Miller, who edited the film for Company X/NY, said, “We got great takes of the actors mixed with great reactions to make an entertaining PSA.”
The 1:22 PSA runs at www.skincancertakesfriends.com, which is sponsored by Olay. It also plays at YouTube and :30 and :15 versions of it run as pre-rolls and post-rolls at ABC.com and other sites, Ostella said.
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