If you haven’t heard of Poptent.net, it’s an online “user-generated” advertising site that matches brands with filmmakers competing with each other for cash prizes. (a la doritos ads…)

Well, last fall, Poptent asked 25 filmmakers to direct in a private competition for Dannon’s new Oikos Greek Yogurt. The winning video would potentially screen at this year’s Super Bowl after a re-shoot so that John Stamos could star in it.

Dannon wanted to introduce their new greek yogurt in a way that would stand out among Super Bowl ads. Their motto was “Possibly the best yogurt in the world”, and the premise they wanted was a “taste adventure”.

I set out in this competition to make an animatic for a Super Bowl spot. I didn’t have John Stamos and I didn’t have a budget. I had my girlfriend, my equipment, a rented yoga studio, and a couple CL posts for two actors. I wanted something to stand out and be memorable.

After going through a few ideas. (many of which ended up being similarly produced by other filmmakers in the competition) I decided on the idea of a fantasy world similar to Willy Wonka’s chocolate river… I knew John Stamos had broadway experience and I LOL’d at the idea that Stamos would be belting out a broadway-style song during the Super Bowl. So I set out to script a broadway-esque, Willy Wonk-ish taste adventure that would certainly stand out among other Super Bowl ads. While still carrying the action and insanity of UGC ad.

This is the concept I wrote and directed, everything was shot on green screen and then layered over food footage I shot on a table-top green screen (some green foam papers in the toy section of HEB). Not a bad outcome for four days of work and only myself doing all production and post. (yes, those actors never set foot in a grocery store OR a blueberry wonderland!)

I wrote the song feeling it would fit, but after shooting, it became obvious that I had tried to squeeze too much into a :30 spot. I feel this would have been more fun as a :60, but I should have just removed a verse…

Although we didn’t win, I would still like to see John Stamos singing in something like this, it definitely would have been a memorable Super Bowl spot, even if it isn’t in line with the target audience. (but then again, Super Bowl isn’t in line with the target audience…)

Either way, it’s always a blast just grabbing the camera and putting together something creative…

Production Stills:

Special thanks to my girlfriend Amanda for help in finding and renting the yoga studio, and Bettye Jo Shyrock for playing an awesome scooter enthusiast.

Concept, direction, green screen, and motion-graphics by Brent Graham.

PS ~ Here is the video that won: Congratulations to Neymarc Visuals, I think they produced a very professional spot that’ll make the target audience smile.

http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/super-bowl-backlash-five-most-debated-commercials-138099

CASA of Travis County speaks up for children who’ve been abused or neglected by empowering our community to volunteer as advocates for them within the CPS court system.

This was done in 48hours for the 2012 Alamo Drafthouse FilmFrenzy Reel Change festival

After meeting with CASA’s marketing director, I brainstormed various concepts, ruling out most ideas that showed the children as victims. After watching many child-focused PSAs, I knew I wanted to keep it positive and inspirational… Then I stumbled upon the idea of “Let’s have a conversation, just us adults.” Which felt very strong in getting attention, while setting the focus on our target audience, the adults. Once we’d settled on our focus, we jotted down various ideas of child potential and innocence, the root of why we have children and do our best in raising them to be good human beings, and from there we wrote this beautiful script.

Having only 48 hours isn’t much time, so we set out filming b-roll of children playing at Zilker park. We were sure to get releases from their parents so everything was legal and respectful. Producing a film on this very sensitive topic makes it pretty hard to get footage of kids. But I promised I would keep the kids faces out of the film.

Framing artistic and balanced compositions while not showing kids faces isn’t that easy, but I think we pulled it off very well. I also filmed our friend’s children, choosing to show their faces as their parents were okay with it. I feel that their faces and delightful expressions really add to the emotion of the spot. Most people don’t notice that they only see two kids faces the entire spot, they walk away feeling like they actually saw a bunch of kids. So I think we accomplished that fine line between privacy and intimacy that we were hoping for.

The studio shoot came together brilliantly. Using our iPad as a teleprompter, real-life CASA volunteer Jennifer C. did a wonderful job expressing the emotion of the script without pandering to our adult target audience. I will admit, the camera loves Jennifer under the Rembrandt lighting I chose for this shoot. It really couldn’t have worked out better.

In the end, we produced a very professional spot in less than two-days(I slept Friday night, and slept in Saturday, a rarity for a 48hr…) that the administration at CASA absolutely loves. Although we didn’t win the film-festival, we’re extremely proud to have helped a worthy non-profit focus their complex voice down to a very powerful 3:30 video for marketing and awareness.

Music by FNDMNTL – Impatient for Toast
Thank you to Dany (sorce) Gagnon for releasing his beautiful song for this cause.

Here’s our interview as we turned in our film:

As a package deal, Apple and I spend a one and a half week period producing half-a-dozen+ creative “slice of life” spots. This means that I’m sometimes having to shoot while “scripting” during each day-per-spot shooting schedule. The locations are locked and the talent has been picked, but the actual client’s injury story VO and the actual day-shoots are roughly completely un-scripted until that shooting day. This fast-paced production style trained me to think fast on set with both my camera and my copy.

Below are just a few of the creative spots I’ve directed and/or shot/scripted for Apple Productions and Bart Durham… (pardon the youtube, I’m linking directly to BD’s official youtube channel so as to give them the views.)

Wilcox had a new spot created each month. Their budget allowed for a half-day green screen shoot with the talent and another day for the keying and motion-graphics production. They’d send photos of the furniture specials that month and a name for the sale. I’d get to do everything else.

Because Wilcox had a smaller television budget, I had the pleasure of writing, directing, and editing their spots.
Below are just a few spots I produced for them.

At the time, they only had this video demonstrating their product:

I felt I could do better in promoting their product and decided on a cheeky infomercial akin to the very famous Oxy-clean infomercials we’ve all seen before. (RIP Billy Mays)

After roughly three days of research and brainstorming, I wrote a light-hearted script I was happy with that did a good job of simplifying the product benefits, along with clearly and simply informing customers on why a natural detergent would improve the lives of mothers who choose cloth diapers for their baby.

With my HDSLR and my green screen in hand, I asked my friend Hilton to star in this production as he has the best Australian accent of any of my friends. I borrowed another friend’s game room as a make-shift studio and filmed both a wide and a close-up of the script. Keying out the green background while masking and protecting the green product bags, I then added various graphics and text in After Effects to accompany my script and further demonstrate the various product benefits.

They loved the spot at my asking price and looked forward to using it! However, after a few days (and, I believe a consult with their newly-hired PR agency in Chicago) they decided to renege on their desire to purchase this spot.

To this day they are still using the original video they started with, and have not contacted me about using this spec spot I created for them. Oh well, you win some… you lose some.

Regardless of not making the spec sale, I think this is a great example of clear and simple copy demonstrating the benefits of a new and somewhat hard to communicate product. Considering the entire concept and production all happened within a week, I think this is a pretty decent spot for one guy and his camera.

Hope you like it!

And if you do use cloth diapers. Consider checking out RockinGreenSoap.com

Bake Sale [48hr]

48 Hour Film Project: Film de Femme

As luck would have it, my second local 48hr entry AGAIN drew “Film de Femme” genre. This time I wanted to have some fun with guns. So of course a church Bake Sale was the obvious choice for a gun fight… Cindy and Cindi are two church friends, same name, spelled differently. Who would have thought that one little letter could be the center of a mistaken identity spy shootout.

Family Matters: As Days Go By

Alamo Drafthouse Filmfrenzy

The Alamo Drafthouse and Fantastic Fest teamed up for “Film-making Frenzy”, a local Austin film competition. This competition focused squarely on remaking a television show as a movie. For this short I teamed up with Comedia-A-Go-Go, a comedic sketch group from San Antonio. They developed the brilliant idea of remaking “Family Matters” into a Michael Bay Bad Boys styled blockbuster. I was happy they sought me out as director for this film. It’s always nice to work with others who respect your work and they knew they wanted lots of high-action moving camera. I used everything from dollies to jibs and steadicam on this short. I really enjoyed doing the special effects to turn a photo of a house into a very Bay-like explosion in the end. Please enjoy.

No Man’s Land

48 Hour Film Project: Film de Femme

This was my first local film competition. I drew the genre of “Film de Femme”, which means that the film must have a strong female lead. I’ve always loved films about post-apocalyptic society and decided that the best “Film de Femme” would be one that takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where the men have died off, leaving only sexually frustrated women and their clones… But what would happen if these friendly women discovered that there was ONE man left? Would society again fall? Watch to find out!

Chili

Commissioned short

While this short is not of my writing. I was very excited as this was my first paid job directing someone else’s creativity. The short went extremely well, and took about a day to film. It was an amazing experience translating someone else’s concept into a viable production.

The Green Pixels [48hr]

The DV Challenge: Jealousy Theme

For my second short film I enlisted my brother’s “acting” ability. We made this short in one afternoon. The theme of ‘jealousy’ seemed to allow for so many story ideas, I ended up going with one of planned obsolescence and consumerism having an affect on our older technology. I wanted to give life to an inanimate object to experiment with what a ‘character’ really is. In the end the short turned out well, and looking back I’ll always laugh at the ridiculous nature of this short. Enjoy.