Content Velocity Reimagined

Personalized Movie Trailers Created by Mustache and Cognizant Interactive Take Adobe Summit by Storm.

Mustache, part of Cognizant Interactive, made a big splash at Adobe Summit by producing custom, visually rich movie trailers featuring attendees.

This year, 100 lucky Adobe Summit attendees saw something they’ve never seen—themselves starring in a movie trailer. The experience was powerful and meaningful, thanks to the magic of advanced video editing and a team of innovative “doers and makers” at creative agency Mustache, part of Cognizant Interactive.

Mustache is known for its high-impact video content, which is why Cognizant Interactive turned to the agency to create a breakthrough experience for its booth at Adobe Summit 2019.

“We wanted to demonstrate the power of making meaningful content at speed and scale, which is essential to addressing today’s demands for different experiences,” says Brittany Crawshaw, Creative Director at Mustache. “Our idea was to create epic custom movie trailers in real time—something personal and high quality that people would be excited to share.”

The key was finding a way to work with unprecedented speed, producing amazing, compelling film trailers that people could view and share within hours of being on set. It was a high bar for success, but Mustache is known for pulling off ambitious ideas.

https://player.vimeo.com/video/326939682?color=ffffff&title=0&byline=0&portrait=0

Creating the video foundation

Without an actual movie set, stock video was crucial for creating the #MeTheMovie experience. Mustache partnered with the Adobe Stock team to gain access to an extensive library of footage, ultimately using 20 to 50 Stock clips in each trailer. The team also used Motion Graphics templates from Adobe Stock, which made it easy for editors to add and customize text elements such as titles and quotes.

“When we first looked through Adobe Stock, there was a massive amount of high-quality content,” says Will Bystrov, Senior Creative Director of Post Production at Mustache. “That’s when we realized we could produce professional-quality trailers because the stock video available to us had a very high production value.”

How Mustache produced 100 custom videos in 3 days

The Mustache team transformed the Cognizant Interactive booth space at Adobe Summit into a live production studio, complete with professional camera, lighting, and green screen. Giant screens looped a promo video to attract conference goers, and it wasn’t hard to generate excitement.

“Within a few hours, we had a line of 40 people waiting to participate,” says Dylan Edgar, Executive Producer of the Integrated Production Group at Mustache. “There were just 6 of us in post-production, but we had the logistics, workflows, and technology down to a science, so we were able to produce 5 trailers per hour.”

Participants started by choosing their genre—sci-fi, action, crime thriller, or indie art house flick. They then completed a questionnaire, providing fun details such as personal strengths and spirit animal. After spending a few minutes with a hair and makeup artist, they performed a few simple movements and expressions in front of the camera.

Meanwhile, the team from Mustache worked their magic. A screenwriter wrote a personalized script and shared it with voice-over talent standing by to record in a sound studio in New York City. Raw footage went straight to editors onsite, who used Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe After Effects to composite the green screen shots with the Adobe Stock footage and pull all the pieces together into an action-packed trailer.

“Building on the robust capabilities of Adobe apps, we developed a solid workflow that allowed us to create each trailer in 30 or 40 minutes,” says Will. “The same amount of work could take half a day otherwise. That speed and efficiency enabled us to upload the final film and send a link to participants within 90 minutes of their experience on set.

“Being able to search for Adobe Stock footage and edit graphics from within Adobe Premiere Pro in real time was incredibly handy for the team,” he adds. “We kept a shared library of assets, so everyone had access directly within the editing interface.”

The power of content in driving experiences

The #MeTheMovie experience was a big hit at Adobe Summit 2019, reaching 79% of attendees and directly engaging 58%. On social media, the content and related coverage performed 20% above average in posts and shares for Cognizant Interactive with all organic earned media. All told, Mustache and Cognizant Interactive saw 2,900 engagements and 15.9 million impressions on #MeTheMovie content.

It was a powerful demonstration of how meaningful content can drive larger-than-life experiences that engage and delight people—and how companies can make a big impact when they focus on content velocity.

“As we think about new ways to integrate content into experiences, we’re opening up a whole new avenue of opportunity to wow people,” says John Limotte, CEO and executive creative director at Mustache. “With on-the-fly content creation, we can start to bridge the gap between creative teams and the experiences people want today.”