A few weeks ago while documentary filmmaker Jessica Yu was in Toronto premiering her debut feature narrative film PING PONG PLAYA, the massive “Swap Your Ride” ad campaign she directed for Ford started sweeping across the country. If you’ve had your TV turned on one of the major networks the past week or so, chances are you’ve seen some of these “Swap Your Ride” Ford spots — real people, swapping their rides for a week and they have no idea they were getting a Ford — sound familiar? That guy, with the glasses on his head? Blue shirt? The other “Can I keep this?” Guy at the end?

Yeah, they’re everywhere. And even though these little spots won’t be hailed as the next “Happiness Factory” of car advertising and honored with dozens of creative filmmaking awards, the entire “Swap Your Ride” campaign was so massive and executed so well… it’s pretty amazing. The whole slight-of-hand Jessica Yu and the production team pulled on all the participants (over 80 people in 4 cities) by withholding the fact they were actually filming a Ford campaign, that they didn’t know they’d be driving a Ford and as far as getting a true “consumer message” across — it seems Ford couldn’t be more happy with quips like “I got bad news for the Suburban”.

On directing the spots, Jessica Yu says:

“The challenge of the project was in orchestrating a situation that would elicit honest reactions from our participants,” Yu said of directing the spots. “Over the course of the shoot you could see how the participants embraced the role of being ‘consumer experts’. Unlike a conventional campaign, we were able to document the way people use their cars in real life and that discovery process made it fun.”

Press release here.

Want to Swap Your Ride? Visit here.

Timoner’s seven-year-in-the-making-rock-doc DIG! won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize a few years ago and put her on the “scene” and this time around she’s taken her study of Anton Newcombe’s brainwashing abilities (on himself and those around him) and harnessed some of those themes in her new documentary film called JOIN US.

JOIN US reveals America is the world’s breeding ground for Cults and religious fanatics, and JOIN US is a documentary that follows a group of individuals trying to separate themselves from this troubled reality. Stirring, emotional, and raw — JOIN US peeks inside the controversial and “hush-hush” world of religion and cults.

Check out the JOIN US website.

Technorati Tags: ondi_timoner, dig!, join_us, documentary, films, trailers, cults, religion, movies

So, in honor of my older brothers who introduced me to the excellent killing skills of John Matrix, Nathaniel Poe (aka Hawkeye), Hudson and Hicks and last but not least, John J. Rambo — I give you the trailer to JOHN RAMBO.

Technorati Tags: john_rambo_trailer, trailer, movies, john_rambo, sylvester_stallone, sly, rambo

Alongside Palance’s one-armed push up and Benigni’s “Vita é bella” frolic around the Shrine, Jessica Yu placed herself among Academy Awards lore with that witty little one-liner when she took home Oscar for her doc short BREATHING LESSONS: THE LIFE AND WORK OF MARK O’BRIEN. Years later, Jessica Yu is taking her comedic touch into the feature world with her debut fiction narrative, PING PONG PLAYA.  PING PONG PLAYA premiered yesterday at the Toronto International Film Festival.

The screenplay was written by Jessica Yu and Jimmy Tsai (shown here with film producers), who plays C-dub in the film. This is Tsai’s first acting job; as Yu shared with the audience after the screening, Tsai is an accountant. Never did he dream that he’d be playing the lead role in his first screenplay. Yu is well known for her documentary background. In this first feature, she continues to make her audience laugh at all the right places. Yu mentioned that making the transition from documentary to narrative film was not too difficult. She enjoyed the collaborative process, which is slightly different from documentary.

Now, Jessica Yu has been directing documentaries for years (IN THE REALMS OF THE UNREAL and LIVING MUSEUM are highly recommended for all you doc fans), that’s no new news, but her fictional chops have also been at work; Yu has directed episodes of Grey’s Antaomy, ER and The West Wing, to name a few of her non-doc endeavors.

Looking forward to hearing more about this PING PONG PLAYA and hopefully checking it out later this year with its release.

Check out the paddle-scrumptious PING PONG PLAYA website here.

Props to the TIFF doc blog.

Technorati Tags: jessica_yu, ping_pong_playa, documentaries, toronto_film_festival, in_the_realms, movies, nonfiction

I think this series of spots (more on the YouTube) has some great stuff going on and I’ll be digging around to see who the director is, because if it is not Richard Kelley, someone blatantly ripped off his signature use of odd, interesting sound design/music with LSD-like visuals… which isn’t a big deal, because people rip of stuff all the time.

Nice ads though.

Speaking of Richard Kelley, check out this clip from his new movie SOUTHLAND TALES.

UPDATE: The spots’ director is Noam Murro. Now, let’s go back to our awesome daily rituals.

Technorati Tags: richard_kelley, southland_tales, state_farm_insurance, wind_damage, commericals, donnie_darko,

Ad giant Wieden + Kennedy of Portland, Oregon has a nice insider blog that makes any visitor feel creatively inferior and extremely jealous of what seems like a job at Coke’s Happiness Factory. Anyway, awesome Coke commercials aside, W+K recently did the new Nike “Quick is Dead” campaign, which harnessed the amazing visual talents of fiction filmmaker Michael Mann. If you haven’t seen the Mann directed spot “The Plan”, watch it here. Beyond that masterful :60, W+K has some great stuff going on with interactive content and web features:

W&K and Ensequence partnered to create an iTV element available to Dish Network subs with DVRs where viewers will be able to navigate through the ad to learn about the product and watch additional footage. iTV will also allow viewers to experience the ad from Tomlinson’s point of view. A digital application, via W&K and R/GA, includes interactive video content at Nike.com.

This news report goes into a little more detail and shows what Dish Network subscribers (all 230 of them) get to access:

Personally, I think this is pretty great stuff and see a lot of people wanting to access these “special features” like the training and interview footage with the athletes themselves. Ah, so, why limit it to the freakin’ Dish Network?

Anyway, you can access all these goodies at the Nike website anyway, so check it out quick before you’re dead.

Technorati Tags: michael_mann, nike, w+k, wieden_kennedy, tomlinson, commericials, advertising

Because I read the original Jon Krakauer INTO THE WILD novel and it was awesome. Nonfiction at its best. Powerful, powerful stuff with true-to-life Robert Jordan as the main character.

This Krakauer fellow seems to really be an outdoorsman because he almost died climbing Everest and wrote about it in his book INTO THIN AIR. INTO THIN AIR was also awesome; I finished it in two days while on a high school leadership camp in Washington D.C., but that’s a whole different survival story (the leadership camp, that is).

So, this brings me back to INTO THE WILD, the Sean Penn movie based on the novel, INTO THE WILD, by famed nonfiction author/near-death surviver Jon Krakauer. You see, while I loved the original book and have waited years for its cinematic companion, I’m afraid.

I’m afraid Sean Penn will turn this amazingly inspiring true story and turn it into a blob of film. Now I’m not some Sean Penn hater, but I did see the PLEDGE and barely remember it because it was barely mediocre. So, you see, while I enjoy Sean Penn the actor, I feel his directing talents tread in the shallow end of the gene pool.

And now this Sean Penn character has secured the rights to the novel, adapted it and turned it into his movie. And that’s it for INTO THE WILD — no more movie versions after this one. Sean Penn has the one chance to make this into the great film that it should — that it deserves to be — and I just hope he hasn’t created some wandering, half-baked mishmash. Anyway, check out the clip here and judge for yourself.

Technorati Tags: into_the_wild, sean_penn, jon_krakauer, into_thin_air, nonfiction, movies, clips, moviefone, chris_mccandless

Adfreak tipped me to a great viral site from Cadbury Milk, via Fallon / LONDON, that has Phil Collins’ drumming soul transfered into one of Sigourney Weaver‘s friends from the late 80′s.

Check out the site here.

For more Phil Collins, go here.

For more Sigourney Weaver, go here.

Technorati Tags: cadbury, gorilla, phil_collins, viral, drummer, in_the_air_tonight, fallon

I caught a pretty interesting trailer for a doc called DEEP WATER on the YouTube today. Now, I’d never heard of Don Crowhurst but I did see TOUCHING THE VOID, which I recommend, highly (go rent it instead of PERFECT STRANGER). Anyway, this DEEP WATER seems pretty intense, visual and a mix between DEAD CALM and GRIZZLY MAN.

Technorati Tags: documentary, film, deep_water, don_crowhurst, trailers, cinema, movies, touching_the_void,

This darling baby will hopefully grow up to be an insightful, witty, precious blog for ad-freaks and doc-geeks around the world; a harbor to find safe passage into the world of advertising and documentary film. So, why DocuChick? Who is our audience? Who cares about me or my internship or job or my love for doc films?

Possibly… nobody.

But people do like to surf the web and look a funny, interesting stuff – like a shirtless Matthew McConaughey or this trailer to HANDS ON A HARD BODY:

Anyway, my friend Brennen was onto something when he asked me who will visit this little blog of mine? Well, hopefully my friends, who will in turn share some of my videos/posts with their other friends… and the proverbial viral ball will roll. But there is a chance no one will care about me, but I will try and avoid that by making friends in the vast blogosphere. Friends like:

Advertising For Peanuts… I really like this blog for some reason. Maybe because I have frequented this mr LittleJohn for the past couple of years… It’s my go-to stable for general ad-commentary-blogging.

Anyway, this isn’t meant to be my fist real post… I’m just a baby blog slob.