Lost in Val Sinestra Case Study

pre-production

This very special campaign and cur-

rent darling of ours at stories AG, ad-

vertises the Video On-Demand system

of Swisscom TV - providing its sub-

scribers with over 1000 top movies on

demand.

For once, a client had the guts to fully

trust its agency and filmmakers to do,

whatever they think is necessary to

create a great viral campaign. The only

prerequisite: it had to be groundbreak-

ing, state-of-the-art, awe-inspiring

stuff, drawing the web’s attention to

Swisscom’s Video on Demand System.

For everything else, the brave people

at Swisscom gave free reign. A rare

and wonderful opportunity for every-

body involved to show how creativity

and media impact can be achieved at

the same time.

By using Facebook Connect, the cast of

a fictional movie trailer is put together

from 10 Facebook friends and person-

alized in a matter of seconds. Visit the

Lost in Val Sinestra website, select a

language and connect with your Fa-

cebook account. Your friends’ profile

pictures and names (in audio, video

& text) are then cleverly incorporated

in the storyline of a stunning, fictional

horror-movie trailer.

story

concept

Shortly after the first brief, the great

minds at Contexta came up with the

basic idea: a fictional photo-romance

story in which you and your best face-

book friends star in - spread automati-

cally with help of your facebook ac-

count and its contacts of your friends.

This mechanism provided the funda-

ment for the trailers viral activity and

exponential spread.

We first defined the different elements

that would be interactive. We opted

against 3D mapping of faces, since the

technology was not ready yet to cre-

ate convincing results. We were going

for a totally realistic movie experience.

With random Facebook photos from

thousands of sources, it was very im-

portant that we would find a believa-

ble storyline. When do you see people

on photos in movies? When they went

missing. Hence, the mystery genre

seemed perfect for our purposes.

The next hurdle was the type of viral

we wanted to spread: what would be

the most engaging, sexy thing for our

audience to see? What have they never

experienced before? What would they

love to do? Answer: to star in a Hol-

lywood movie. Almost anybody likes

the idea to star next to a good-looking

movie actor. So instead of just send-

ing a funny viral around, we wanted

to create an experience, where you

would be directly involved. And even

better: by involving your best friends

in the finished movie, we already gave

you a great reason to send the viral on.

But virals have to be short in order to

be seen, not feature film length. We

had to find a format that was short and

believable, but still with major Holly-

wood-appeal. A short film would have

been a possibility, but would have felt

too small, even if done well, it’s still a

short movie - the little brother of Hol-

lywood. So the idea of the fictional

movie-trailer was born: short, believ-

able, loud and grand and many times

even better than the movie it’s pro-

moting.

And there it was: a classic mystery

movie trailer featuring you and your

friends.

A common movie trailer is made of

over 100 cuts, many different scenes

taken from all over the full length mov-

ie with many different cast involved.

It’s a basically a Best Of of a 4 month

shoot with millions of dollars spent. So

how do you produce a believable trail-

er for a movie that does not exist - on a

budget? In contrary to how the trailer

looked in the end product, we had a

limited budget for the trailer, compa-

rable to a medium priced swiss com-

mercial.

We had to find a clever way to shoot

as many locations and different shots

in the shortest amount of time. Oth-

erwise the trailer would look silly and

not convincing. Instead of writing

a story first, and then painstakingly

finding the matching locations all over

Switzerland - producer Yves Bollag

and director Tobias Fueter opted for

the opposite approach: find a great,

breathtaking Hollywood-type location

first - write the matching story later.

The before mentioned freedom that

the client provided us with, made this

possible. There were no preconceived

ideas about anything, so we could

focus on choosing what was best for

production and ultimately best for the

product.

On a sunday walk in the swiss alps,

director Tobi Fueter rediscovered the

old hotel in Val Sinestra, after it was

featured for the first time in an older

mystery film over a decade ago direct-

ed by Riccardo Signorell. The location

was perfect for our purposes: huge,

eerie and very production-friendly.

And best of all: a ghost was already

living there. Ever since the late 70s it

was supposedly haunting the old ho-

tel. Ghost hunters have tried to prove

it, various media have reported about

it. This would later provide us with the

perfect lead-in for a catchy PR-action

just before the launch of the actual

movie trailer.

Writer, director, DP and production

designer stayed for 3 days in the ho-

tel and together created the whole

story. Being on location while writ-

ing provided us with all the minute

details and necessary elements for all

shots very early on in the production

schedule. The hotel was so huge, that

it provided many very different loca-

tions with just a few minutes between

them: from the grand dining room to

the creepy cellars, everything was in

walking distance.

Casting was done in England: due to

the international nature of the trailer

the project was completely created in

english. Our excellent cast provided

the needed English horror flair.

production

During 3 days of shooting on location,

inspired director of photography Mi-

chael Saxer and 2nd unit DP endless-

ly working Tobias Dengler captured

an astounding 140 shots in feature

film quality - all shot on the Canon 5D

Mark II. The first unit was responsible

for all the feature story shots with the

actors. The second unit was charged

with shooting all the detail sequenc-

es needed to sell the feeling of a big

movie.

The shoot was a happening in itself: on

the first floor we ate, on the 3rd floor

we slept and on the first, second and

all subfloors we shot day and night.

Nobody was able to leave the place, it

was shooting only. A director’s dream.

Visual FX supervisor and Title Designer

Kevin Blanc together with Web- and In-

teractive Supervisors Michael Volkart

and Michael Hinderling from Hinder-

ling Volkart were present on set for all

shots, where we would later include fa-

cebook photos. Tracking markers were

carefully set, mobile device screens

adjusted, and custom scrabble pieces

shot in painstaking stopmotion pho-

tography. Their assistance was crucial

on the set and provided the necessary

common ground for communication

in the intense postproductiom weeks

to follow.

At the same time a ‘Making Of’ in the

style of a typical Hollywood ‘Featurette’

was shot on another floor. Everybody

was briefed to behave and answer to

questions of reporters as if this was an

actual Hollywood movie coming soon

to a cinema near you. This ‘Making Of’

would later be distributed to press

and television stations as part of a full

featured ‘Electronic Press Kit (EPK)’ for

the upcoming feature film ‘Lost in Val

Sinestra’.

And yes: late at night we heard strange

screams coming from the cellar.

post

For the ‘thrill factor’ feature our editor

had to cut three scenes in three differ-

ent ‘thrill’-variations. The scenes were

shot in three intensities. The flash plat-

form would then pick the matching

scene based on the user’s thrill factor

selection and insert it seamlessly into

the final movie.

Even the soundtrack was personal-

ized: we recorded over 200 of the most

popular swiss names with the deep, in-

tense voiceover. Those names were all

cut to exactly the same length. If your

name would match one of the 200 pre-

recorded names, the flash platform

would select the matching name and

have the voice speak your name in a

sentence in the movie. If not, a generic

sentence would play back.

The scrabble sequence was the big-

gest riddle to solve: we wanted your

name to appear on a scrabble board in

one of the scenes. We recorded a clean

plate of the scrabble board. The words

on the scrabble board were carefully

selected so they provided all the vo-

cals. Then every single character of the

alphabet was shot as a scrabble piece

seperately. With this footage and some

math-magic/logic, Hinderling Volkart

was able to spell your name and put

it at the right place on the scrabble

board.

The basics of the technical side of the

project are not that complex: technics

like tracker marks, green screens and

trackable lights have been on our sets

for years. For the film crew the shoot

was nothing new. It was the complex

flash programming and the smooth

integration of the facebook connect

experience coupled with the high as-

piration for the project and the clever

realization of many ideas that intensi-

fied the process.

While shooting the original footage,

well defined place holders were care-

fully put into the scenes where the

custom content was supposed to go.

After the shoot, the place holders were

tracked and rotoscoped and distrib-

uted to the web designers. Half trans-

parencies such as reflections and vol-

umetric effects were important to put

over the place holders to create real

time video rendering and integrate the

custom content with the shot footage.

Stories AG and Hinderling Volkart AG

worked closely together in combining

the movie footage and the random pic-

tures from Facebook into one believ-

able movie piece. The pictures load-

ed over Facebook Connect and were

placed behind the prepared footage

dynamically through a Flash platform

with the data from the tracked place

holders. The Flash platform provided

the necessary flexibility and video ro-

bustness. We created templates for

color correction, crops and blurs. So

no matter what picture was provided

by the Facebook, it would always look

good in the final movie.

PR & release

After 7 weeks of long nights the web-

site was ready to go live. We released

the theatrical short teaser announcing

the website: www.lost-in-val-sinestra.

com - and posing key tease questions

like: ‘Where are your friends.’ or ‘Where

is Room No. 5?’ We sent the EPK to the

press, gave interviews about the movie

and even inspired a bunch of belgium

ghosthunters to visit the hotel and

look for ghosts. The result was consid-

erable buzz in and around Switzerland

about the release of a new movie fea-

turing James Bond supporting actor

‘Carl von Malaisé’.

The moment the website went online,

it exploded with users: just 4 days af-

ter launch the project counted over

48’000 daily visitors and growing ex-

ponentially due to its automatic distri-

bution system. Facebook itself had to

take measures to reduce the load on

their servers.

On the 5th day world famous tech blog

‘TechCrunch’ called it ‘double rainbow

awesome’ and our numbers exploded

again.

Over the next few months, users all

around the globe became filmmak-

ers and created their very own mov-

ie trailer. They spread them through

Facebook, Twitter, put their brilliant

work on youtube and vimeo and raved

about it and its creator Swisscom in

their personal blog spots.

But one question remained: ‘Where

have all those lost friends gone?’ The

question that was first raised in the

cinema teaser campaign was finally

answered by spreading the secret -

again virally over the ‘Lost in Val Sine-

stra’ Facebook site and blogs - coupled

with a contest for people who would

find the solution. The secret of the

whereabout of your friend could be

found in every single movie created: if

you look closely, you can find several

clues in the movie trailer. Several times

thoughout the trailer it is mentioned

that the ghost and the disappeared

friends are in ‘Room No.5’. And also

several times in the trailer we see the

same number sequence: 024305. This

is a timecode. If the user moves the

trailer to 2 minutes 43 seconds and 5

frames, he lands on a scene in the ho-

tel hallway. On the right side, there is

a key with the number 5 on it. Click on

the key while the movie is playing and

an alternative ending will seamlessly

play back, revealing your friends. All

along they have been watching Swiss-

com TV with the Ghost of Val Sinestra.

The user automatically enters the con-

test to win a weekend in the haunted

old hotel. And the ghost tells us more

about the great features of Swisscom

TV. Go to www.lost-in-val-sinestra.

com and try it out yourself!

conclusion

The ease of which the campaign could

be spread created an unexpected-

ly strong viral effect. Just 4 days af-

ter launch the project counted over

48’000 daily visitors and growing, and

Facebook itself had to take measures

to reduce these numbers. To this day,

more than 250’000 movies were cre-

ated and spread to over 2 million visi-

tors. All this happened with a budget

of CHF 40’000.- for media spending.

The project has won the FWA Site of

the Day award and and still delivers

to a steady 30’000 visitors each day

to date. It has enjoyed numerous lo-

cal and international media attention

and continues to be a favorite project

among the people involved.