Dec 01 2009
how twitter led me to Lemonade
Update: The “Lemonade” movie premiered in Boston last night (Nov. 30th) and reports are coming in. The first is from the Boston Business Journal. The second from the Adrants blog. Edward Boches weighs in on “The sweetness of lemons”. Philip Johnson writes in Adweek about the ad industry rallying around one of their own.
New Hampshire Public Radio’s “Word of Mouth” interviews Erik
The Christian Science Monitor has a feature on how Erik Proulx job loss led him to make Lemonade.
The latest update (12/29/2009) is a segment on the CBS Evening News.
I confess. I’m a Twitterer. I can blame it on this blog.
Once I started blogging I wondered if I was cultivating a tree that would one day simply fall in the woods without being heard. So I looked for ways to share my pictures and the behind the scenes stories. That prompted me to explore the world social marketing. Which led me to the Please Feed the Animals and the movie “Lemonade”.
The beginning is a bit mysterious. I started by following some writers for Ad Age which somehow led to following the Twitter stream of Erik Proulx. He’s a laid-off advertising copywriter that created a support blog for the recently unemployed advertising professionals called Please Feed the Animals.
Detail of make-up brushes (still from the video)
Erik’s Twitter stream mentioned that he was looking for good stories about life after being laid-off. He was collecting recollections about the initial trauma and the opportunities that were created by their new time and freedom. How ad people turned lemons into lemonade would become his documentary film.
When I discovered that Erik was filming in Los Angeles, I tweeted back, asking if I could help. My original thought was that I would shoot some stills that could be used to promote the film. But I had acquired a Canon 5D MKII camera – a hybrid still/high definition video camera and have been playing with the video capability. So shooting some video was also a possibility.
Kurtis Glade became a documentary filmmaker (still from the video)
Erik had progressed from shooting with his own little video camera to enlisting a top director and production team. But there were some scenes that needed to be shot before the production crew arrived in Los Angeles. I was enlisted to shoot a story was about a surfing camp that teaches kids and teens with Cystic Fibrosis how to surf as a form of therapy. Next there was a manicure session in a salon with a writer “that lost his job and changed his gender.”
David Cohen lost his job and changed his gender
I was on my own shooting the surf camp and did a 50/50mix of stills and video. When director, Marc Colucci arrived, he wanted more video than stills for the manicure session with David Cohen.
The video shooting continued the next day where I ended up shooting second video camera during the more formal studio interview shoot. My role was to look for details and go for second angle close-ups of hands and faces that could be used to add variety and editing options. These video snips were mixed in with the interviews captured with a Red camera.
Jeanne Schad became a coach (still from the video)
The resulting Lemonade film has generated a great deal of internet buzz. Promoted through Twitter and Facebook, the trailer now has over a 100,000 viewers and the final edit is close to completion.
You can follow the Twitter streams of the people mentioned by using their Twitter ID.
Erik Proulx @eproulx, David Cohen @identityTBD, Kurtis Glade @kurtisglade, Jeanne Schad @jeanneschad
There is much more to share about the Cystic Fibrosis surf camp that I’ll save for another post.
Mark Harmel
