Instead of running 30 second ads, the Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF) is trying to engage the minds of its captive audience with a film shot by agency TBWAVancouver.
Called The Warden, the film is divided into 16 scenes–representing each of the 16 days of the film festival with a different scene played in cinemas each night.
After the scene airs at the cinema it is posted the next day on the website TheWarden16.com. Each is released in a non-linear fashion to let the audience edit them together in the right sequence–or however else they feel they should fit.
The idea, said Paul Little, TBWAVancouver’s creative director, came from shows like 24 where the audience often doesn’t figure out who the characters are until the second or third episode of the season.
Little describes VIFF attendees as “savvy film fanatics that come out and see a good chunk of the 16 days of the film festival. [The Festival] has challenged us over the years to bring the audience into the experience a bit more and get them involved with the trailers, so we gave them a story that they have to help figure out.
“I think people really like to figure out the gaps in their minds,” he says.
The trailers run between 45 and 60 seconds long and will run until the end of the festival Oct. 15.
