By Emily Vines
Women who are ready to step up their game on the dance floor, or who just want to have a fun workout, can now learn to shake it like a hip-hop star on NikeWomen.com. For the Nike Rockstar Workout–Hip Hop, R/GA, New York, presents celebrity choreographer Jamie King with pop singer Rihanna in an interactive music video for her song “S.O.S.”
In addition to studying King and Rihanna during the video, which isn’t airing on television, visitors to the site can watch instructional videos where King teaches the dance steps. The work is part of a global campaign meant to inspire women to dance, but it is also supposed to motivate women to buy clothing and footwear from the spring ’06 fitness dance collection.
This is the fourth installment of the Nike Rockstar Workout, all of which have featured King and are available on NikeWomen.com. Compared to the previous workouts, which were heavy on instruction, this edition was meant to be more inspirational with a music video as the centerpiece. It’s an interactive video because as it plays, visitors can chose to learn the moves or shop the video.
There are three tabs below the video–Rihanna’s Moves, Jamie’s Moves and Combo Moves. Each tab will take visitors to instructional videos featuring King and dancers. There are four series in each section as well as an “All Together” option. At any point, one can click on “Back to the Music Video” and pick up right where she left off.
“We thought, ‘Wouldn’t that be interesting, if we actually created a music video and gave people the opportunity, after they’ve seen this amazing music video, to actually learn the moves,’ because the way that music videos are edited these days, it’s very hard to see the moves in their entirety,” R/GA associate creative director Jerome Austria said. He was also director for the “S.O.S.” video and art director on site.
With the “Shop the Video” option, women can take a closer look at the clothes Rihanna and the other dancers are wearing. During the music video or afterward, viewers can click on the link to get details on the items and purchase them.
To take the content with them, fans can download it to a PSP or iPod. If viewers want to put the content into a Web log, they can do that too. Staffers at R/GA put code on NikeWomen.com that will allow people to put the music video into blogs. Of course, visitors can also e-mail a link to the site to their friends.
Those who are interested in a tangible version of the workout can register for a free DVD that features the music video, instructional videos and extras. The site will also help women find a Nike Rockstar Workout–Hip Hop class nearby at a 24 Hour Fitness gym.
A quiz allows women to delve even deeper into the experience. The quiz will determine a woman’s dance personality with categories that include: Twista, Old Skool, So Smooth, Extra Spicy, All Star, Superfreaky, Too Cool and Krumpalicious. To isolate these types, King selected dancers with unique dance styles and then the creatives at R/GA coined equally unique names. Each personality has accompanying wardrobe suggestions.
FINDING THE RIGHT PARTNER As the creatives at R/GA were developing the concept for this initiative, they had some recognizable pop stars in mind, but it was up to Nike to make the final call. “Rihanna was a great choice because she’s really known for her dance skills and her physical fitness,” Austria shared. “She’s also popular around the world, especially in Japan, which was really important because this was a global campaign.”
On why he directed this project, Austria said the online delivery played a significant role in the decision. “Because there are such specific technical requirements around the Web, R/GA as an agency didn’t really feel comfortable putting that in the hands of another director so that’s sort of where I came in,” he explained.
Of the technical challenges he faced, file size was one of the largest. The video had to be small enough for easy downloading. Compressionist Keith Yan was able to achieve that goal and make the content accessible to many.
Ensuring a high-contrast visual aesthetic so that compression would be easier was a primary goal during filming. Compression, Austria explained, works better when fewer colors are used. “Since we used a high-contrast palate, we were able to crush the color palate down but still maintain the high quality, but get the file size down so that it could be readily downloaded by the users,” he said. All of the content for the site was shot over the course of three days at Birmingham Senior High School in Van Nuys, Calif.
Austria also opted to shoot the footage in HD. Since the end product was going on the Web, he said it made more sense than shooting on film. It also allowed him to achieve a high shoot ratio, the amount of footage one can shoot in a given amount of time. “It gives it more of a modern feel than sixteen millimeter,” he added.
R/GA Digital Studio, the in-house division that is dedicated to film and video production, produced the video content.
Austria is quick to point out that though this is a high-end music video, above all else it is advertising. “Rather than a pure music video to be used for Rihanna, I think the more innovative way to look at it is it’s essentially a commercial that we created for Nike…We’ve created a music video that really showcases Nike’s products and you can interact with it deeply.”
Banner ads, blogs, in-store videos and word-of-mouth are driving traffic to the site.
Review: Writer-Director Andrea Arnold’s “Bird”
"Is it too real for ya?" blares in the background of Andrea Arnold's latest film, "Bird," a 12-year-old Bailey (Nykiya Adams) rides with her shirtless, tattoo-covered dad, Bug (Barry Keoghan), on his electric scooter past scenes of poverty in working-class Kent.
The song's question — courtesy of the Irish post-punk band Fontains D.C. — is an acute one for "Bird." Arnold's films ( "American Honey," "Fish Tank") are rigorous in their gritty naturalism. Her fiction films — this is her first in eight years — tend toward bleak, hand-held verité in rough-and-tumble real-world locations. Her last film, "Cow," documented a mother cow separated from her calf on a dairy farm.
Arnold specializes in capturing souls, human and otherwise, in soulless environments. A dream of something more is tantalizing just out of reach. In "American Honey," peace comes to Star (Sasha Lane) only when she submerges underwater.
In "Bird," though, this sense of otherworldly possibility is made flesh, or at least feathery. After a confusing night, Bailey awakens in a field where she encounters a strange figure in a skirt ( Franz Rogowski ) who arrives, like Mary Poppins, with a gust a wind. His name, he says, is Bird. He has a soft sweetness that doesn't otherwise exist in Bailey's hardscrabble and chaotic life.
She's skeptical of him at first, but he keeps lurking about, hovering gull-like on rooftops. He cranes his neck now and again like he's watching out for Bailey. And he does watch out for her, helping Bailey through a hard coming of age: the abusive boyfriend (James Nelson-Joyce) of her mother (Jasmine Jobson); her half brother (Jason Buda) slipping into vigilante violence; her father marrying a new girlfriend.
The introduction of surrealism has... Read More