The TriBeCa ReActor
Tribeca Film Festival
Issue 40 | September 2016
Agency
J. Walter Thompson New York
Creative Team
Global Chief Creative Officer Matt Eastwood Chief Creative Officer Brent Choi Executive Creative Directors Aaron Padin Greg Erdelyi Copywriter Kate Delaney Art Director Itai Inselberg Project Manager Juliana Orozco
Production Team
Digital Designer Jennifer Usdan McBride Director of Digital Designer(s) Katie Bourgeois Soyeon Yoo Emely Perez Hyunseo Yoo Art Buyers Suzanna Shields Senior Executive Producers Mary Ellen Verrusio Executive Producers Zeynep Cingir Producers Liam Golding Jen Lash(Digital) Nick Orsini (Digital) Post-Production Company The Mill Post-Production Company City New York City
Other Credits
Client Account Director Oswaldo Barbosa Client Account Manager Haley Rankin Agency Planning Director Matt Baker
Date
March 2016
Background
New York is a city where you can do anything, any time. So attracting busy residents to the 15th annual Tribeca Film Festival isn't a walk in the park.
Historic perception of the festival as an event for the elite film incrowd (actors, directors, producers) compounded the difficulty.
The festival organisers wanted to do something different, something eye-catching, something that reflected both the spirit of New York and the festival itself.
Idea
The 'ReActor' was a nine-foot, freestanding, interactive game kiosk, which was taken out onto the city streets.
Equipped with facial recognition, voice recognition and motion-sensor technologies, the ReActor allowed ordinary citizens to test their acting skills against celebrities in iconic movie scenes and then, in real-time, drop those scenes into the movie itself.
Films used included When Harry met Sally (no prizes for guessing which scene), A Few Good Men, Dirty Dancing, The Sixth Sense and Star Wars.
The game element meant the ReActor could score their performances and display them to the gathering crowds.
Their best takes were automatically emailed to the participants for social sharing and those who scored highest won free tickets to films in the festival on the spot.
The ReActor was an interactive kiosk that let people test their acting skills They had to act out famous scenes from famous movies The machine rated their acting skills with a score
Results
Single ticket purchases increased by 45% in dollar value, exceeding the sales goal by 20% or $300,000. Opening day sales were 38% up on the previous year.
Via the ReActor, hundreds of tickets were given away or earned, and thousands of videos shared.
The ReActor achieved mass media coverage, including in Fox News and The Huffington Post.
Our Thoughts
Who doesn't fancy themselves as a movie star, New Yorkers especially? Who doesn't practice famous lines in the bathroom mirror?
Of course we do. At its heart, the ReActor played to the vanity we all have, those dreams of Hollywood stardom.
This is just a lovely simple idea, capturing the spirit of movies. One clever bit was opening up the kiosk, so anyone could see what was happening. The second was allying it social media technology, allowing wannabe stars to send their best efforts to friends and family.