This series is important to me in many ways, but the most important was learning the value of screenplay writing, and pre-production. Armed with my new Panasonic GH3 and Voigtlander 0.95 prime lens, the goal was to tell the story of how ads were creeping into your inbox via the data that was leaking to ad vendors, and how it could be prevented. I set out to write a 4-part Ad Series featuring the oGler, a character created as a stand in for Google.
How to
oGle
The challenge was to take as much comedy as possible without getting into too much trouble (being sued was definitely not in my future plans) with them, highlighting the features that made Office365 a viable solution to the new problem of ads beginning to appear in Gmail because of web searches and the possibility of emails being read by big Brother.
The casting method was simple. Find volunteers around the office to play the roles as best as they could receive the direction. What I didn't expect was it to be so good in the end. It was a pleasure and honor to work with Charles and Chris to bring this to light. Of course, this was all before I had any lighting equipment or color grading knowledge, so it stands on its own as a testament to just getting the look you want. It was just by happenstance that the building owners for our parking lot installed new led's to assist with getting the right look and feel down. Divine Providence? I think so.
Ad # 2
oGler - Havoc
2nd times a charm... This ad focuses on how the Doc system can wreak havoc on office (mis)communications, and how O365 is a much better play for connectivity and consistency of running successful business operations. It was funnily ironic historically documenting the riddance of an annoying office printer/scanner in the process and worrying drivers as they watched people running out of the building with a bank on the floor below us. The police responded accordingly as we let them know that the bank wasn't being robbed by a guy in hulk gloves, and that proper permission was granted.
