DORITOS BLAZE VS. MOUNTAIN DEW ICE

THIS ONE TOOK SOME YEARS OFF MY LIFE...

In September 2017 I was an intern at Goodby Silverstein & Partners when a project pitch hit my desk which unbeknownst to me at the time, would be an introduction into the advertising world far beyond anything I could have anticipated. I was asked to create an animatic of a talking head of Kevin Spacey rapping Eminem's Rap God… easy, what could go wrong.

After months of tweaking the pitch was gaining momentum, then the Kevin Spacey scandal happened. Long story short, a mad talent scout ensued leading to animatics constantly tested with actors and comedians alike. Such names include, Edward Norton, Keagen Michael Key, Zach Galifianakis, Kate McKinnon, Aziz Ansari, Brian Cranston, Robin Wright, Benicio Del Toro, etc (So many more). I honestly probably made over 200 of these animatics to show to the people of Frito Lay and Pepsi. (Not even half of which made it into testing). Long days and nights were a daily the norm.

The method to streamline the whole process was to put a willing participant in front of green/blue screen, have them rap (or mouth the lyrics), and then comp their mouth onto the subject. Pretty straight forward.

This was my personal favorite out of all of the candidates... (Fun Fact - That's actually my mouth there) 

Eventually the powers that be decided on Peter Dinklage and Morgan Freeman. All that hard work was finally coming to an end. As a super newbie to the industry you can understand my enthusiasm to have all that time and effort mean something. We finally got word that after many months of back and forth, both Pepsi and Frito Lay agreed to push forward and start filming in December 2017. I like to think that even though the commercial itself was done by another special effects company (name withheld), that my hard work, animations, and trial and error resulted in two giant corporations offering up the many dollars and cents to make it a reality.

Leading up to the big game there was a push for a social presence. Teaser videos were released and I took on a job to apply the brand(s) Snapchat filter to footage from the shoot. A fun project that the actors and artists posted to their own social platforms generating hundreds of thousands of views.