Our particular spot wasn’t chosen though it was a “Staff Pick.”  Looking at the nine spots Clinique chose and recently debuted on their facebook page, they were looking for more of a slice of life piece than an actual commercial which is what we delivered.

If you’re an aspiring film-maker and you haven’t checked out Poptent yet, do yourself a favor and sign up.  They a have a lot of different assignments available, with better odds of earning some money than say the Doritos contest I’ve done the last two years.  Even if you don’t sell an ad, the deadlines and creativity that stems from these projects are good practice to hone your skills.

Let me know what you think.

• Directed by Dara Cuoco
• Concept by Cheri Waterhouse
• DP/Editor/Graphics/Colorist: Paul Cuoco
• Music by Sue Paine

Featuring (in order of appearance)

• Carol-Ann Plante (& family)
• Dara Cuoco
• Gina Chai
• Susan McCord

Click here to view the embedded video.

It’s in High Definition by default, so If you have trouble viewing it, please click on the “HD” in the bottom right corner to lower the resolution for easier playback.

Please share this with your friends, click on the “like” buttons, post it on facebook, and retweet the links!  The bigger the audience we build now, the bigger the impact the film can have when it premieres in a few weeks.   Composer Peter Tinari and I are finishing up the music and sound,  and the film will be complete soon.

For more frequent updates follow us on Facebook, Twitter, or the film’s website.

Thanks as always for your support.

Sincerely,
Paul Cuoco
Writer/Director – The Specimen

We’re at it again.  Doritos announced in late September that they were doing the Crash the Superbowl contest again.  With the success it’s been, why wouldn’t they?  I had a lot of fun last year pulling an entry together at the last minute, and worked with some great people and decided to do it again this year.

I developed the concept with my voice actors from last year’s entry, Michael Musa and Steve D’Arcangelo, based on the idea that there is a personality for every flavor of Doritos.  The script came together pretty quickly, but the actors really shined, bringing energy and ideas that made this shoot the most fun I’ve had in a while.

After finishing the initial spot I realized that I had a lot of great material, both planned and improvised that I couldn’t fit due to time in the original version.  I hated it not to see an audience so I re-purposed the concept and footage of the personalities to make two more commercials which I think are equally as strong standing on their own. We’ll find out the first week in January who the finalists are, and if we’re among them.

EDIT 1/3/11 – Since the finalists have been announced I now have the videos embedded here.

Below are links to each of the commercials we submitted for Crash the Superbowl 2011.  I wasn’t able to embed them in the website this year, so you’ll need to sit through or skip the website intro video to get to the actual commercial. If you have any trouble simply type the title of each one into the search bar in the gallery.  Please comment if you can on each one to let me know what you think.  It will also help raise our profile.

What Flavor Are You?

Click here to view the embedded video.

Original link: http://www.crashthesuperbowl.com/#/gallery/?video=2583

Sweet N Spicy

Click here to view the embedded video.

Original link: http://www.crashthesuperbowl.com/#/gallery/?video=2588

Say Hello To My Cheesy Friends

Click here to view the embedded video.

Original link: http://www.crashthesuperbowl.com/#/gallery/?video=2595

Credit where credit is due:

• Concept by: Paul Cuoco, Steve D’Arcangelo, and Michael Musa
• Shot, Cut, Directed by: Paul Cuoco
• Production Design: Steve D’Arcangelo

Starring:

• Michael Musa as The Flavor Technician
• Matt Mangum as The Cool Rancher
• Peter Tinari as Cheesy
• Dara Cuoco as Sweet N Spicy
• Lab Extras: JK Koepfli, Steve D’Arcangelo

Locations:

• Horse Ranch courtesy of Amanda Buchan
• Hot Tub courtesy Steve Czarnecki

A special thanks to my crew who donated their time and energy:

Alex Pino, Drew MacDonald, Peter (and soon to be) Angela Tinari, and JK Koepfli.

If you’ve read all this as opposed to skipping to the video, then double thank you.

Completed astonishingly, in under two years, King Kong 360 3-D officially opens today. A unique collaboration between Peter Jackson and Universal Creative, the attraction transports you to Skull Island for a showdown between Kong and a V-Rex who’d like to make you dinner.

Stories and Reviews about the attraction:

• LA Times
• USA Today
• Hero Complex
• Yahoo! News
• FearNet
• Theme Park Insider

I spent most of the last two years developing, tweaking, and perfecting the immersive 3-D projection system for the attraction, that includes 16 2K resolution projectors, unique lensing, and 2 custom compound curve screens that stand 40′ tall and 187′ long.

The first challenge was deploying a 3-D film to guests riding in a linear tram.  This meant that most guests will be watching the film from an off axis position, a big no-no for most stereoscopic systems.  Not only that, in order to have image 360 degrees around the guests meant having screens opposing each other, which opens up issues of light contamination from one screen to the other, or cross-talk as it’s commonly referred to.

To solve these issues, I first mocked the system up, in Howard Hughes Spruce Goose hangar in Playa Vista.  Working with 3-D consultant Peter Anderson, and Electrosonic Systems , we fine tuned screen shape, texture, and gain to come up with a system that played to the guests off-axis viewing position, while mitigating the cross-talk.   The system was also used by Peter Jackson, Weta, and the Universal Creative team to view dailies and 3-D tests which due to the size and complexity of the system,  couldn’t be viewed any other way.

King Kong Mock-up System

Once complete we rebuilt the screens from scratch and moved the system to the show for integration.  In the last few weeks as we approached the finish line, Peter Jackson, Matt Aitken and the team at Weta outdid themselves creating an amazingly beautiful stereoscopic  short film that makes the experience. The original sound designer, Brent Burge and mixers Mike Hedges, and Peter Lehman mixed the 22 channel final audio in the space, which really made it come alive.

Now with all the technical challenges behind us, the attraction is open to the public, and the response has been tremendous.  Standing in the back of the space as guests cheer, scream, and applaud really is the projects best reward.  Eliciting that visceral, emotional response from the audience is what it’s all about, whether I’m making a film or an attraction.

To learn more about the project, I have embedded some behind the scenes videos provided by Universal, or you can watch them at the official website.

A second PSA shot on a Canon 7D. You can see the first PSA here.

Shot completely hand-held with no stabilizer or viewfinder, same as before.

Footage for this was all 720/60p converted to Cineform and interpreted as 24P for slow motion and edited in Premiere CS4. Onlined in After Effects and color correction with Magic Bullet Looks.

Voice over by Dara Cuoco
Music: “Fruity” by Jane Pow

For more information on Walk MS and Multiple Sclerosis please visit: walkmssocal.org