A while back we were in a meeting with one of our oldest clients, Redstone Federal Credit Union. Someone in the room asked "What's your favorite commercial that you've ever done for us?" Even though we've done countless spots for them (probably well over a hundred) that was an easy answer: the "Movie Trailer" campaign.
This goes back quite a few years. Redstone tasked us with creating a campaign to attact younger members. To reach this target market we created this batch of "faux movie trailers" for a non-existent film called "Membership." Since these were only targeting the young-adult demographic and were airing only during the nighttime "soaps" on the CW network, we decided to really play that up — with improbable story lines, over-the-top cheesy acting, and of course... evil twins (with actor Joel Dutton in a challenging dual role).
We're a bit sad that these were created just before TV stations in our market started accepting HD spots, so they were produced in standard definition... but we got over that.
The production was shot over two days in a variety of locations: at Redstone, a local bar, an alleyway, the interstate overpasses right outside the Fantastic Plastic building. and in the studio. Fortunately director Todd Terry has a lot of quirky things and brought in props from home, including a pay telephone (remember those?), darkroom equipment, and his vintage British motorcycle.
We knew a young hip cast wasn't quite enough, we wanted to make sure we had exactly the right voice. The first question we asked was "Who can we get that sounds like the 'King of Movie Trailers' Don LaFontaine?" Well, the answer to that was obviously to use the guy who sounded more like Don LaFontaine than anyone: Don LaFontaine himself.
With literally thousands of movie trailers under his belt, we were thrilled that Don embraced the idea and was happy to do a parody of them. Great guy, and a peach to work with. Sadly, this was one of Don's very last sessions before his untimely passing.
It was really hard, but we resisted starting any of these scripts with "In a world..."
