Karate Kop, the viral video Lucky Brand Jeans is using to promote a holiday in-store sale, is a throwback to the blaxploitation films of the 1970s, with the main character a take-off on legendary icons like Shaft.
“It’s a comedic satire of the ’70’s B movie trailer,” said Scott Cohn, creative director at Night Agency/New York, which created and produced the one minute and twenty-seven second video. “We don’t consider it to be a direct selling spot. It’s an entertaining buzz piece to spread the word about the special offer.”
It’s actually the second film in a series, the first being a take-off on horror movies from the ’70s like Friday the 13th. “’70s movies are a fun aesthetic, they come with their own set of cultural references, which are pretty well established and easy to work in and execute,” Cohn said.
The cultural references exploited in Karate Kop are the slick black cop and laid back white guys whom the cop confronts as they try to take advantage of special deals on hip clothes, which of course aren’t as good as the one they can get on Lucky Brand Jeans. The cop assaults a group of deadbeats before walking away with the cool chick who thinks he’s sexy.
Baron Vaughn, a comedian from New York, plays the karate kop.
Night shot the film in November in New York, “downtown near our office,” Cohn said. It was shot with a Panasonic HVX200 camera in DVCproHD, edited in Final Cut Pro with post work in Adobe After Effects. “We shot it at 60 frames per second at 720p to do some basic speed and scaling effects, and to help us achieve a film look,” Cohn said. “The rest of the film degradation was done in After Effects.”
Shooting a film for the web is different from a TV shoot. “We focus on the foreground and don’t use too many complicated frames,” he said.
He also said shooting satires of ’70s films works well on the web. “It’s one of the reasons we chose the B movie theme. We can do it without complicated equipment and production values, so it’s probably the same as when they were shooting the movies in the ’70s,” he said.
The film plays at www.karatecop.com, a Lucky Brand Jeans site. It will also play at a range of fashion sites Cohn named in a media buy, including fashionista.com, racked.com, thebudgetfashionista.com and catwalkqueen.tv.
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