By Ken Liebeskind
NEW YORK --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.
First-Time Feature Directors Make Major Splash At AFI Fest, Generate Oscar Buzz
Two first-time feature directors who are generating Oscar buzz this awards season were front and center this past weekend at AFI Fest in Hollywood. Rachel Morrison, who made history as the first woman nominated for a Best Cinematography Oscar---on the strength of Mudbound in 2018--brought her feature directorial debut, The Fire Inside (Amazon MGM Studios), to the festival on Sunday (10/27), and shared insights into the film during a conversation session immediately following the screening. This came a day after William Goldenberg, an Oscar-winning editor for Argo in 2013, had his initial foray into feature directing, Unstoppable (Amazon MGM Studios), showcased at the AFI proceedings. He too spoke after the screening during a panel discussion. The Fire Inside--which made its world premiere at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival--tells the story of Claressa “T-Rex” Shields (portrayed by Ryan Destiny), a Black boxer from Flint, Mich., who trained to become the first woman in U.S. history to win an Olympic Gold Medal in the sport. She achieved this feat--with the help of coach Jason Crutchfield (Brian Tyree Henry)--only to find that her victory at the Summer Games came with relatively little fanfare and no endorsement deals. So much for the hope that the historic accomplishment would be a ticket out of socioeconomic purgatory for Shields and her family. It seemed like yet another setback in a cycle of adversity throughout Shields’ life but she persevered, going on to win her second Gold Medal at the next Olympics and becoming a champion for gender equality and equitable pay for women in sports. Shields has served as a source of inspiration for woman athletes worldwide--as well as to the community of... Read More