New Old Spice Internetvention Campaign

Old Spice has recently started a new ad campaign called the "Internetvention".  The old spice internetvention or internet intervention, starts off as the most ridiculous advertisement for an "executive spray tan party". When I first saw this ad, Old Spice really had me fooled into believing this ad was an actual ad for a spray tan party. But if you keep watching, the ad shuts down and the Old Spice man makes a return appearance. Here is the advertisement.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YfpBbPDVZA



I got to say Old Spice really did a good job with this ad, it had me in complete shock and awe. Old Spice is known to have come up with amazing ads before but this one had the biggest shock value in my opinion.

Old Spice Commercials are Black Magic.

So today, like most friday afternoons I spent searching the web looking for interesting things that I could possibly write a blog post on. Normally I'm looking for small interesting tid bits from movies, or running themes in TV shows. But recently while watching videos on YouTube I remembered some funny commercials a couple years back that starred this guy.

                                                                   "Hello Ladies..."

I remembered two iconic Old Spice commercials that I had seen and it wasn't until I watched them recently that I appreciated the difficulty of the commercial. So as a preamble before you watch this scene, just remember that it is all done in one take and there is no CGI whatsoever (except for the diamonds)... Enjoy.

So that is a very impressive commercial. The amount of bells and whistles and things that have to be timed perfectly is unreal. The moving sets, the props and everything needs to be in perfect synch. Here was the one thing that made me watch this commercial over and over again was the fact that I could not figure out how the hell he managed to get on the horse. I mean it is a completely continuos shot and he never even breaks stride. My best guess is he is on wires the entire time and they hoist him up after he exits the boat set. But really I still have no clue. Comment if you know how they did it.

Now if that commercial wasn't amazing enough Old Spice outdid themselves by making another one of these commercials even more elaborate than before. If you have the time, I really suggest you watch this.

 

In an interview with the star of this commercial Isaiah Mustafa he claimed that this took place on location on top of a lake. When he walks on water they put clear plastic panels underneath the water. The cake he catches, is a real cake, and the table saw he uses, is a real saw. If all of that wasn't fantastical enough look closely when he jumps into the hot tub. He is wearing bermuda shorts beforehand, and after the walls of the tub collapse he is wearing jeans and boots. Now Mustafa claims that the pants are real, and although he does not reveal the secret of how they did it. He said that no animation was used on the pants. I myself am skeptical.

I decided to post on advertising this week because I think it is very interesting that some really impressive stuff can be done not just for film and television.

Interactive Filmmaking on the Internet

The Internet is revolutionary. We all know that. Look at YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter and imagine your daily life without them.

It's a new medium that opens up huge possibilities for filmmakers. However, the web is often an afterthought for many filmmakers and especially student filmmakers.

Pretty much every feature length film has a website. Some of them are standalone works of interactive art. ParaNorman, a recent animated film, has an amazing interactive website built in HTML5 that allows audiences to get a feel for its characters and animation.

ParaNorman's site lets audiences take a virtual tour of the movie even before it was released last month. It's built on HTML5, which is the new internet standard for replacing Adobe's Flash.

HTML5 is completely run inside of the browser and is therefore more stable than Flash, making it possible for better and faster interactive animations.

Flash still has its uses of course. It's also been used in the past by many websites that haven't updated.

Released in 2008, CrimeFace is an interactive movie built on Flash. It adds a new depth to the film using a controllable interface around the actual film to provide more information about characters, props, and other elements of the fim.

A new genre of interactive films has entered the market: interactive music videos. Bands and musicians like Arcade Fire, ABBY, Bobby Womback,  Chairlift, Ellie Goulding and Miranda Lambert have all released impressive interactive HTML5 songs. 

Old Spice teamed up with Vimeo to make an interactive short video where you can make music by moving Terry Crews's muscles in different ways.

If you're interested in creating an interactive film, a handy web script called Popcorn.js works wonders and is worth a checkout.