The Adobe@Adobe Video Production Team was on hand at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, helping out with two major Adobe initiatives being put on by Adobe’s Social Media Team at the event. Adobe was a leadership sponsor of the film festival this year, and helped celebrate independent film, storytelling, while helping to share stories about how Adobe’s industry leading video tools help bring new ideas to life.
PillowTalk Interviews
The first initiative, PillowTalk, was a series of live-streamed, and on-demand interviews with a number of filmmakers, actors, and artists. The series was unique in that it invited the guests to be interviewed in bed, in a less formal setting to discuss their films, and what they see coming up next in the industry. The A@A Video Production Team provided their technical production skills to broadcast out these interviews over YouTube Live, reaching over 1.4 million viewers of these videos. Taken from an unusual top-down perspective, the interviews were extremely well received by both guests and fans alike, as the interviews took place on a bed right inside the extremely busy Airbnb Haus, allowing onlookers to watch the interviews live. It was a lot of fun, and provided a fresh, relaxed interview environment, that seemed in-tune with the atmosphere of the always amazing Airbnb Haus. The A@A Team continues to help with Adobe’s expansion into social live-stream experiences, as that medium continues to be a fun and interactive way to reach customers.
Make It Experience featuring Adobe Post
Between PillowTalk interviews, and in partnership with Airbnb, attendees were invited to jump into bed themselves, to take a photo memory of their Sundance experience, while getting the chance to bring their photos to life with Adobe Post, Adobe’s newest mobile app that builds stunning graphics in seconds. The Adobe@Adobe Video Team was able to develop an efficient workflow that allowed attendees to take a photo in bed, and then share that photo to an iPad, which allowed editing of the photo in Adobe Post. The workflow then automatically applied a branded Adobe & Airbnb border to the image, and shared the photo back to the user via Twitter, email, or iMessage. The activation was a huge success, with over 3000 people being photographed over the week. Despite the complexities of moving digital assets around so quickly, for so many people, the workflow was still able to easily able to handle the crowds, and help people get their shared photo in a timely manner. The solution utilized a couple of third party technologies such as a CamRanger wireless DSLR remote control that allowed camera control from an iPad (as the Canon 5D MkII we used was ceiling mounted), as well as a great iPad application called “Workflow” that allowed for easy automation for what would have been manual tasks, like adding a custom border to a photo, or sending a Tweet or email. The magic of Adobe Post ensured that everyone’s photo turned out looking great, and we utilized the Creative Cloud for our photo gallery of final images! Of course, the impact of this social engagement was measured in Adobe Social, where Adobe was able to greatly exceed their 2015 numbers for brand reach.
Once again, it was an honour for the A@A Team to be included in these activities at Sundance 2016 (while getting the chance to catch a couple of wonderful films as well!), and we are pleased that we were able to help expose new people to some of Adobe’s amazing technology, while helping to strengthen the Adobe brand. Looking forward to helping out again in 2017!
