IOW: Future shock … and bra?!
Trust us, folks. We’ve now seen the future and it won’t look particularly pretty unless, according to the new spots created by Joe Taylor, Bill Kephart, and company, one trusts the Alleyoop.com service to strengthen one’s skills and emerge quite employable from one’s schooling years. As we’ve reported before, Kephart and Taylor have successfully entered videos in corporation sponsored “challenges” on PopTent.net, which awards the top winners with cash purchases of the work and acts as a sort of “clearing house” for marketing concepts the sponsors can use down the line. In this instance, the dynamic duo were invited by PopTent along with several other regulars to submit spots promoting the value of Alleyoop, a product of education giant NCS Pearson geared towards high school students. To wit:
Both videos hinge on a “back from the future” conceit set cannily in that long-standing cornerstone of learning, the library, and we presume these shot in the Danville Public Library since fellow filmmaker Mike Boedicker helped out and appears briefly in the one below. The “boy” version, “Future Shock,” features Brian Coutant as the student and Kehpart as his “gingerfied” older self who materializes to warn him against using Alleyoop lest he want to become legitimately successful versus a happy-go-lucky L.O.S.E.R. The “girl” version, appropriately titled “Future Girl,” stars Sammy Smalley as the student and Cara Maurizi as her, um, highly decorated adult self who appears to encourage Alleyoop tutelage:
As of this writing, “Future Girl” has been chosen as one of five finalists; PopTent and NCS Pearson will presumably announce the two winners shortly. Good luck to everybody!
~ Jason Pankoke
p.s. We trust that Kephart will refrain from bra-burning in protest even if his hysterical L.O.S.E.R. turn didn’t make the cut. That crazy thing probably has a future in C-U filmmaking somewhere…