Lotrimin recently turned to the Tongal community to create a series of fun and engaging educational videos answering people’s burning questions about athlete’s foot and jock itch in an approachable, light-hearted way. Kevin McMullin of Boy and Star and his tireless production team got their foot in the door with an exciting Pitch that promised to turn the educational format on its head.
Using the same host throughout, Lotrimin wanted to create a series of :30-second videos targeting people experiencing these issues for the first time (Uh oh, someone forgot their shower slippers again, didn’t they?), along with a separate series of :15-second social videos targeting people who are all too familiar with athlete’s foot, but need a friendly reminder as to why they should choose Lotrimin for their recurring foot fungus.
In today’s world, it’s simply not enough to spew facts and information; you need to capture the audience’s attention quickly if you want them to stick around. Each of the videos cleverly toes the line between being informational and entertaining. See for yourself here:
We asked Kevin how he and his sure-footed team managed such a feat - meeting all the requirements laid out in the Lotrimin brief, and having fun while doing it. Kevin also gave us the scoop on his upcoming feature film, Low Tide, which comes out in theaters next Spring!
Maddie: First, tell us a little about yourself and how you got started as a filmmaker.
Kevin: All the kids on my block had baggy jeans and bowl haircuts. This was 1990s New Jersey and skateboarding culture had arrived. My older brother wanted to be Tony Hawk, but my mother knew he would hurt himself. They compromised on rollerblades, as long as he wore pads and a helmet.
I’d tag along as he’d jump stairs and grind railings with the neighborhood kids. When they graduated to a quarter-pipe, they decided they had to immortalize it. This happened exactly when home computers had started coming with built-in, non-linear editing software. So I picked up my family’s mini DV camcorder and started splicing together little skate videos. By middle school, I had graduated to music videos and short films. My brother put up his blades about a year later, but I’m still filming!
There’s Kevin McMullin!
MM: Let’s be real, the educational format can be a bit boring. How did you go about making it fun and engaging without sacrificing the information you needed to get across?
KM: The project brief specified that the brand wanted some levity, which really attracted us to the project. We wanted to produce content that was self-aware without being self-conscious and decided that adding some physicality to the more traditional talking-head format of educational videos would help with humor. We could only afford to construct a tiny locker room set, so props became an important way to not only make the suite feel bigger visually but also help delineate content. It was fun to brainstorm all items that might exist in a locker room, especially since the brand was open to featuring outdated technologies (slide projector, tube televisions, VHS tapes, etc). These dynamic visual aids also provided the actor something tactile to engage with.
MM: For this project, you were tasked with making two videos: a 60-90 second educational video and a 15-second social video targeting two different audiences. How did you organize your shoot to capture both?
KM: The brand expanded the scope of the project to include a suite of three educational spots along with one 15-second spot, and we shot for two days with one prep day. Our biggest challenge on this project by far was constructing the locker room set in a single day with limited resources. Our production designer, Jessica Ray Harrison, and her team did an incredible job building the world. Our DP, Andrew Crighton, lit the entire space, which meant we could jump around easily between wide shots and close-ups. Consistent lighting across the suite allowed us to film all dialog-heavy chunks for each respective video at once before we moved into our specialty shots (special fx, action shots, or prop heavy inserts).
MM: Casting was a very important piece of the puzzle. You needed the host to relate to two different segments of Lotrimin users. How did you find the perfect host for these videos?
KM: Casting is crucial and so many great actors came in and read for the role. Andy Peeke actually could not make our first in-person audition and submitted a self-tape instead. But even in shaky, dimly-lit iPhone footage, it was immediately clear how charismatic he is. Andy also has experience as a host and as a stand-up comedian, so he has a unique ability to be informative without seeming didactic. His humor is relatable and disarming. More than a few takes were unusable because the crew was laughing too loud off camera. I think the Lotrimin spots were a great showcase for him.
MM: We heard you took some time off from Tongal to make a feature? What has that whole experience been like? How long did it take you to make this film and where/when can we see it?!
KM: I did! It’s called Low Tide and I am not allowed to say much more at this time, but the film will debut Spring 2019 before it opens theatrically later that year. I was very lucky to have had the chance to work with so many truly talented folks and am very excited to share the completed project soon. I graduated from Columbia University with my thesis short First Prize about a boy and his pet dinosaur. It’s a dark fable that features puppets, animation, and live-action altogether. It ultimately opened a few doors writing for TV and also directing commercial work. Around that time, I started on Tongal and got the opportunity to manage bigger sets, work with new crew members, and build out a portfolio. Every year I’d save up just enough money to spend a stretch of time writing and would fly out to LA for the Tongies, stay an extra week on friends’ couches and try to knock on doors. Eventually, I finished a script that some people liked enough to fund. It snowballed quickly and we were filming Low Tide summer 2017. It’s a low budget film, so that old triangle graph of good, fast, cheap certainly applies; you only get two out of three! We are actually still working -- finishing the sound design now in anticipation of its Spring 2019 premiere. Much more soon!
