Samsung is promoting its new sh100 wi-fi enabled camera by taking it on a road trip across the country, handing it from person to person from the West Coast until it reaches New York City. Hybrid agency/production house Mekanism has a crew following along in an airstream trailer filming mini-documentaries about the journey and so far they have visited San Francisco, Los Angeles, Palm Springs, Tempe (AZ), Austin, Houston, New Orleans and Miami. The Mekanism folks are currently heading up the Mississippi River to Chicago, Ann Arbor, Cleveland and then onto New Jersey and New York.
Along the way, Mekanism will be creating three documentary films outlining the journey and the pictures captured as four friends hand the camera to people they run across. The first mini-documentary–Don’t Be Afraid to Get Lost–has just been wrapped, chronicling the first leg of the sojourn.
Tommy Means is creative director for Mekanism on the project. Mekanism’s Tony Benna serves as director, part of the creative team and shares editing duties with Ethan Indorf who is also the DP. Benna additionally handled 2nd camera duties. Katie Matson and Beth Shulman served as exec producer and line producer, respectively, for Mekanism. Design director was Mekanism’s Dieter Wiechmann.
The overall campaign–dubbed “The Samsung Coast-to-Coast Photo Post”–is already yielding a significant amount of content, including photo galleries on Picasa and Flickr, Twitter feeds, a YouTube channel and a tumblr blog–all Samsung branded. Prior to Mekanism starting this campaign, Samsung Camera USA had no digital presence. At press time the client has more than 50,000 Facebook fans and counting. The Facebook page and the road trip experience thus far can be seen here.
Here’s the first mini-documentary, Don’t Be Afraid to Get Lost:
USC Annenberg Report: Female Protagonists Reach Parity With Men In Top-Grossing Films Of 2024
For the first time in recent history, the percentage of top-grossing films featuring female protagonists equaled the percentage of films with male protagonists, according to a pair of annual studies released Tuesday.
Movies like "Wicked,""Inside Out 2" and "The Substance" lifted Hollywood's theatrical releases to gender parity in leading roles in 2024. Of the 100 top domestic grossing films in 2024, 42% had female protagonists, and 42% had male protagonists, according to a report issued by the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University.
The USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, which also released its annual study Tuesday, found that 54% of the top 100 films at the box office in 2024 featured girls and women as protagonists. That's a massive jump from just the year prior, when 30% of films featured women in lead roles. In 2007, when the USC annual study began, that figure was just 20%.
"This is the first time we can say that gender equality has been reached in top-grossing films," Stacy L. Smith, founder of the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, said in a statement.
"In 2024, three of the top five films had a girl or woman in a leading role, as did five of the top 10 films — including the number one film of the year, Disney's 'Inside Out 2,'" added Smith. "We have always known that female-identified leads would make money. This is not the result of an economic awakening but is due to a number of different constituencies and efforts — at advocacy groups, at studios, through DEI initiatives — to assert the need for equality on screen."
Other metrics suggested the gains in leading roles masked still-endemic disparity throughout Hollywood. The percentage of female characters in speaking roles... Read More