Cranium
So summer is almost at an end, and I didn't post once in all that time. So I thought I should get back into posting here before school starts back up, and I will do so by posting about one of the two big events that happened to me over the summer months. (The second one, my con report from Chicago this year, will come soon.)
So here now is the story of how my friends and I were invited to be in a commercial for Cranium.
It all started when I received a message via Youtube from a guy whose production company is in charge of putting together a commercial for Hasbro of real people playing the boardgame Cranium.
(I'm guessing that he found me due to this video below, which shows my friend Nikki drawing while we were playing some Pictionary at her house a couple of years ago.)
Anyway, we were asked to film ourselves playing Cranium as a sort of "audition" for the real deal. So I started trying to gst some people together to play the game. It was originally going to be me and seven of my co-workers because I thought it would be relatively easy to get a group of teachers together over the summer. But when many of them couldn't make it, I invited a few other folks, and the group ended up being me, my co-worker Sean, my brother Nate, his girlfriend Angie, and my friend Marc. We got together on a Wednesday night and played Cranium for a couple of hours while filming it. I then uploaded the video to my computer, did a quickie edit in Windows Moviemaker to take the best four minutes of clips (they wanted to see videos under 4 minutes) and then submitted it to them for their perusal.
Here's a rough cut of the video with the very best takes of us having fun. For the final version I had to cut the bits with the play-doh golf course and DNA.
(And here are two outtakes from the same evening.)
Anyway, we submitted our video, they liked it, and they selected us to shoot for real to possibly be included in the commercial. Of all the people they asked only 40 groups were then chosen to actually shoot for the commercial, so it was a very cool thing indeed to be selected.
I then had to get everyone together again to play the game a second time, this time using the camcorder they were going to send me to record it with. It was a Flip Ultra HD camcorder, and I got to keep it when we were finished.
Also included in the package they eventually sent me were: two 8gb flashdrives to store the footage on, one to send back and one as a backup; a $100 Visa gift card to buy snacks with; plastic cups to put our drinks in (opaque for continuity purposes and to avoid product placement issues); a new copy of Cranium; some paperwork to fill out; and a prepaid Fed/Ex envelope to ship the flash drive and paperwork back in.
(You can see a video of me taken with the new camera on the day we got the package here.)
So about a week after I got the package from the Cranium people, I got everyone together again on July 31 to shoot for real. This time our friend Nikki (Marc's wife) and my wife Sarah joined us as well because we HAD to have more than six people and in our first group we only had five.
Here's some photos of that night:
the snacks we bought with the $100 GC
And us:
The second shoot, honestly, was not quite as good as the first, but I think there were a few choice moments in there that have a chance to make the commercial. And the deal was that, just for being part of the shoot for the commercial, we each will get $100 ($125 for me, because I got an extra location fee since it was my house we would be shooting in). If any of the footage we shot actually gets used in the commercial, anyone seen in that footage will get an additional $1000!
Now we're just waiting to hear back if we actually got in the commercial or not (supposedly we'll find out at the end of September). So we'll see how it goes, and in the meantime I'm going to keep using my new fancy camcorder to take video of all kinds of goofy things. :)
So here now is the story of how my friends and I were invited to be in a commercial for Cranium.
It all started when I received a message via Youtube from a guy whose production company is in charge of putting together a commercial for Hasbro of real people playing the boardgame Cranium.
(I'm guessing that he found me due to this video below, which shows my friend Nikki drawing while we were playing some Pictionary at her house a couple of years ago.)
Click to viewAnyway, we were asked to film ourselves playing Cranium as a sort of "audition" for the real deal. So I started trying to gst some people together to play the game. It was originally going to be me and seven of my co-workers because I thought it would be relatively easy to get a group of teachers together over the summer. But when many of them couldn't make it, I invited a few other folks, and the group ended up being me, my co-worker Sean, my brother Nate, his girlfriend Angie, and my friend Marc. We got together on a Wednesday night and played Cranium for a couple of hours while filming it. I then uploaded the video to my computer, did a quickie edit in Windows Moviemaker to take the best four minutes of clips (they wanted to see videos under 4 minutes) and then submitted it to them for their perusal.
Here's a rough cut of the video with the very best takes of us having fun. For the final version I had to cut the bits with the play-doh golf course and DNA.
(And here are two outtakes from the same evening.)
Anyway, we submitted our video, they liked it, and they selected us to shoot for real to possibly be included in the commercial. Of all the people they asked only 40 groups were then chosen to actually shoot for the commercial, so it was a very cool thing indeed to be selected.
I then had to get everyone together again to play the game a second time, this time using the camcorder they were going to send me to record it with. It was a Flip Ultra HD camcorder, and I got to keep it when we were finished.
Also included in the package they eventually sent me were: two 8gb flashdrives to store the footage on, one to send back and one as a backup; a $100 Visa gift card to buy snacks with; plastic cups to put our drinks in (opaque for continuity purposes and to avoid product placement issues); a new copy of Cranium; some paperwork to fill out; and a prepaid Fed/Ex envelope to ship the flash drive and paperwork back in.
(You can see a video of me taken with the new camera on the day we got the package here.)
So about a week after I got the package from the Cranium people, I got everyone together again on July 31 to shoot for real. This time our friend Nikki (Marc's wife) and my wife Sarah joined us as well because we HAD to have more than six people and in our first group we only had five.
Here's some photos of that night:
the snacks we bought with the $100 GC
And us:
The second shoot, honestly, was not quite as good as the first, but I think there were a few choice moments in there that have a chance to make the commercial. And the deal was that, just for being part of the shoot for the commercial, we each will get $100 ($125 for me, because I got an extra location fee since it was my house we would be shooting in). If any of the footage we shot actually gets used in the commercial, anyone seen in that footage will get an additional $1000!
Now we're just waiting to hear back if we actually got in the commercial or not (supposedly we'll find out at the end of September). So we'll see how it goes, and in the meantime I'm going to keep using my new fancy camcorder to take video of all kinds of goofy things. :)