Two of the latest video advertising contests are being sponsored by the Piaggio Group USA, in an effort to promote Vespa scooters, and by CBS Home Entertainment, in a campaign to sell Twin Peaks DVDs.
On Nov. 9, Rex Hermogino was named the winner of the Go Green Vespa Video Challenge for his two-minute music video, “Vespa, Vespa.” CBS’ The Twin Peaks Coffee Blend Competition will accept entries until Dec. 1 with a winner to be chosen later in the month by David Lynch, the Twin Peaks director.
The Vespa challenge was produced by matrixx/Los Angeles, a production and branded entertainment company. “We took a user-generated video contest and put some unique twists on it,” said Van Vandegrift, executive producer at matrixx. “We used it to advance the message of Vespanomics and position the brand.” Hermogino’s video had lyrics that promoted Vespanomics, which assert that Vespa scooters are low carbon emission gas savers that decrease traffic congestion and are fashionable.
matrixx promoted the contest on social networking and video sharing sites, including MySpace, Facebook, YouTube and Google Video and smaller niche sites, such as Girlbike.com. Over 100 entries were posted.
Hermogino, who won the Yahoo! Talent Show last year for a series of music videos, shot two versions of his winning video. “I shot a short one, but then I thought it’s such a catchy song, I should make it into a full song and shoot the music video,” he said. “So I went back to my recording studio and laid some more tracks, then came up with ‘Vespa, Vespa,’ which is the title of the song.”
Two friends, Dan Doyle and Sam Vo, shot Hermogino on his scooter as he drove around San Diego, encapsulating the “fun in the sun” lyric. He won a new Vespa for his video.
The winning video is being posted on a number of sites and DVD copies of it will be sent to dealerships for in-store play, Vandegrift said. In addition, Hermogino performed his song at the International Motorcycle Show in San Mateo, Calif. on Nov. 16, which is playing at YouTube.
In an effort to promote the CBS/Paramount release of the Twin Peaks Definitive Gold Box Edition, a DVD that includes both seasons of Twin Peaks and the original pilot for the show, Mammoth Advertising/Brooklyn, NY created the Coffee Blend competition, which provides contestants with coffee-related clips from the show that can be used to make mashups or music videos.
“Coffee was the most salient element of the show and we incorporated it into an engaging campaign to interact with the property,” said Tom Cunha, Mammoth’s vice president. “We selected a series of clips featuring coffee and users can go through the gallery and create their own montage.”
David Lynch’s Signature Cup coffee and the Definitive Gold Box Edition DVD box set will be given to the three winners, who will be selected by Lynch. Twenty-five video entries have been received so far, Cunha said.
The contest runs on the jumpcut.com site so that its video editing features can be used by contestants, he said.
Lensing and Designing Brady Corbet’s “The Brutalist”
Cinematographer Lol Crawley, BSC and production designer Judy Becker collaborated for the first time on The Brutalist (A24) and emerged as Oscar nominees in their respectiveย disciplines. Their work on the film has also earned major recognition elsewhere on the industry awards circuit. Just this week, Crawley won the British Society of Cinematographersโ Feature Film Award. He also is currently a nominee for both an ASC Award and a BAFTA Film Award. And Becker received nominations for a BAFTA Film Award and an Art Directors Guild (ADG) Excellence in Production Design Award. Crawley and Becker, though, traversed distinctly different paths to The Brutalist, being on opposite ends of the collaborative continuum with director and co-writer Brady Corbet going into the film. Crawley had already shot two features for Corbet prior to The Brutalist--The Childhood of a Leader (2015) and Vox Lux (2018). In sharp contrast, The Brutalist marked Beckerโs first time working with Corbet. Becker recalled seeing The Childhood of a Leader and immediately wanting to design for Corbet. Describing herself as โstunnedโ by the film, she related that it reflected Corbetโs talent as a filmmaker, his ability to work within a budget on a period movie and still deliver an end product that looked fantastic while brilliantly telling a story. Becker noted that a big budget period film replete with tons of set dressing, over-dressed locations and the like misses the mark for her. She asked, โWhy waste that money?โ But when Becker sees a period movie with a pared down budget that looks so good, โIโm really blown away.โ Based on The Childhood of a Leader, Becker told her agent that sheโd love to... Read More