Tool & RPA Get Dental for Film Fest
With the release of yet another original and edgy multimedia campaign, RPA and Tool continue their fourth year of partnership in promotion of the annual Newport Beach Film Festival. This year’s package – on the power of film to elicit emotion – is the latest in a succession of traffic-stopping campaigns that have propelled the Festival to a power seat in the crowded film-festival circuit and includes a short film, print art, interstitials, program dividers, and digital art.
“Great film has the power to change you,” said co-founder and director of marketing Todd Quartararo. “Year after year, RPA and Tool have crafted campaigns every bit as powerful and unexpected as the films that make up the Newport Beach Film Festival, pushing the emotional envelope and helping to set us apart from other festivals, continuing to position ourselves as a forum for great films, and growing to a size that few could have imagined.”
At the heart of the campaign is “Mandible,” a shocking short film directed by the standout Tool duo of Erich Joiner and three-time Academy Award-winner Robert Richardson (Django Unchanged, Inglourious Basterds, Shutter Island, Kill Bill: Vol. 1 & 2). The 7:00 short portrays a vengeful dentist, who with his sadistic sidekick tears a patient’s teeth out as a penalty for not flossing. Peppered with revealing thought montages and balanced with moments of beguiling calm, “Mandible” is a lucid exemplar
RPA Newport Beach Film Festival Print Campaign
of the power of film, a point underscored by the dentist who closes the film, looking from his mutilated subject to ask, “Are you repelled? Appalled? Amazed? Amused? We’re particles of light on the screen, but we can make you feel anything.”
“We wanted to demonstrate the power of film by taking audiences to a heightened state of emotion and then pulling them back to reality, reminding them that they’re watching particles of light on a screen,” said RPA Creative Director Scott McDonald. “We forget that many of our memories, sorrows, romantic urges and inspirations have been generated by something that is actually not there. Film is incredibly seductive. Watching can be a transformative experience that changes your worldview. This is what the Festival is all about. We wanted to create an artful, provocative piece that demonstrates that idea and also pushes the boundaries of what a festival promotion can be. And we definitely had the dream team to do it.”
As in years past, RPA and Tool took a renewed creative approach, determined to push boundaries and craft something that would shock even the seen-it-all film set. This year’s advertising breaks away from the traditional 60-second format, evolving into a seven-minute showpiece that communicates the power of film.
The film will live on the Festival’s site as well as YouTube, and a :60 teaser will run before select films at the Festival. Signs throughout the Festival will remind the diverse audience of the power of particles of light to make people angry, ecstatic, sad or aroused. The campaign also includes theater, print, digital, outdoor boards, a program book and interstitials. Print will run in the “Los Angeles Times,” “Los Angeles Magazine,” and “Esquire”. Social-media activations will include an integrated Twitter and Vine campaign featuring six-second videos.
The Festival will run throughout Newport Beach and Costa Mesa, beginning April 25 and concluding May 2.
