By Ken Liebeskind
NEW YORK --To promote the new version of AMP Energy that blends the energy drink with electrolytes that launched March 23, BBDO New York created a long-form viral video in which a group of young people march down a narrow West Village street singing, “We will not be ashamed.”
“It’s like a morning-after drink, and after a long night of partying when you’re all dehydrated, it helps you out,” said Peter Kain, a creative director at BBDO New York.
“Walk of No Shame,” the one minute forty second viral that was produced by Biscuit Filmworks , features a cast of young people who sing about their confusion after waking up disheveled and declare their shamelessness after getting cans of AMP Energy from a street vendor.
The viral began playing online May 5, with a 60 second version playing on cable TV.
All the characters in the spot sing, but none will be getting recording contracts from their performances. “We weren’t looking for people who could sing well, but they had to have a presence to carry it off,” said Tim Godsall, the Biscuit Filmworks director.
Mary Wood, founder of Frisbie Music, which coordinated the recording, said, “The trick was to get the performance and arrangement right so the humor would come through. The agency made it clear they wanted the performance to be less than perfect, so they sound like real people, not professional singers.”
Godsall shot it on film with an Arri SR3 16mm camera “to make it a little more rich, instead of a homemade YouTubeness to it,” he said.
“We moved fast enough to wing it and do it on a fairly constrained budget with a lot of people in it,” he said. “It was shot on the streets of New York which made it a challenge, like a train running along at 100 mph with a few bolts falling off, but it worked in the end.”
Wood said they cast for “distinct voices” that didn’t sound professional and used a single piano player to accompany them, after trying guitar and full band versions. Godsall said he needed to have the song changed in at least one spot, “to add some breathing room, so we could get the actors from one place to another and they could sip the drink. They retooled it so we had a longer song and pulled some lines in the final edit.”
The video shows consumers holding cans of AMP Energy, but it’s hard to discern the brand and there’s no product tag at the end. But the website features branding images and YouTube posts the product name above the video screen, Kain said.
The shoot was fun for Wood because of the imperfection of the performers and for Godsall because of the fast pace of the New York shoot. The fun for BBDO is to create a successful ad that reintroduces a familiar product. Sixty and 30-second versions of “Walk of No Shame” are being used as TV spots on MTV, Spike and other cable networks, Kain said. The viral video runs at www.walkofshame.com, a site developed by Tribal DDB. It’s also on YouTube, where it’s been played over 149,000 times. It’s additionally playing on other video sharing sites. “They wanted a web component because their audience is on the web,” Kain said.
SCHROM x Yacht Club and Be Electric Studios Launch Electric XR for Virtual Production
SCHROM x Yacht Club, a full-service live-action, tabletop, and postproduction company, has teamed with Be Electric Studios, a soundstage, equipment rental, and virtual production company, to launch Electric XR, a virtual production collective.
Industry veteran Thomas Rossano will lead the new venture, which provides advanced virtual production solutions across multiple facilities. He brings over 25 years of experience in live-action, tabletop, postproduction and talent curation to enhance Electric XR’s offerings as a resource for brands and agencies, as well as other production companies in need of virtual production solutions. Additionally Rossano continues to serve as EP at XR New York (XR-NY), a role he’s held since December 2022. SCHROM x Yacht Club originally established XR-NY to help provide XR services for third-party rentals. While XR-NY will continue to function independently for SCHROM X Yacht Club, it now operates under the Electric XR umbrella.
Rossano’s expertise spans producing live-action commercials, branded content, interactive and experiential content. In addition to leading Electric XR, he holds responsibilities at SCHROM x Yacht Club which include driving business development, collaborating with sales reps and expanding the company’s creative talent network. Rossano’s career includes serving as an exec producer at Hungry Man for about 11 years, right from that company’s inception. He then went on to become a partner at Station Film where he also had a lengthy tenure. Later he was a partner at PRISM. Then after the pandemic hit, he became a freelance EP for nearly two years, looking into opportunities in virtual production, which led him to XR NY and now Electric XR. Over the years, he has produced high-profile... Read More