Most of us are hooked on Facebook. Even if we don’t appear “active’ we are still stalking someone or untagging photos of ourselves in compromising situations, and I’m not just speaking of myself. There are only two people on earth who should really hate it, but even the Winklevoss twins have their proprietary mugs on Facebook and more friends than they could ever hope for in real life – x 2.
So let’s be proud of our Facebooking, embrace it for the fun, ironic, narcissistic and socially transformative thing that it is, just as Ogilvy Mumbai has done for Vodafone’s Blue Phone made specifically for the Facebook addict.
India only lags behind the US and Indonesia when it comes to active Facebook users (over 31 million). There is an enormous market for such a phone but not enough space to shoot the commercial, which is why director, Prakash Varma, of Nirvana Films in Bangalore chose Platypus Productions in Cape Town to co-ordinate it in one of the monstrous sound stages belonging to Cape Town Film Studios.
The idea required a large space because of the theatrical theme that meant filming an enormous stage and seven complete live scene changes with a revolving cast of 35 dancers, actors and singers.
It is essentially a musical, the lead playing a Facebook addict who narrates his online life with song and dance. It starts in Farmville and the show opens on him rising in the morning to put on his wellies and take a walk on his farm, then changing – as the background rolls up and the cast of farmers and animals dance off – to another scene, and another: He takes us through his hoards of hangers-on in the guise of puppets on string; his success at the game, Gangster, after being helped into a trench coat and fedora by two bonnie lasses and blasting away his competitors in front of a transformed backdrop of 1920s Chicago. His friends who broadcast their exotic travel photos through the windows of their city apartments – all wheeled on with another scene change – and so on and so on, aided on the odd occasion by French maids who “refresh’ your “screen’ with feather dusters and a cheeky swagger.
Scene change by scene change, it’s a tight, entertaining production made all the better for the theatrical purity of it and wonderfully ironic for the digital world it brings to life.
By Anton Crone
Screen Africa Magazine – February 2012
