Power team Meghan Frederico and John Tomma have been killing it on the Tongal Leaderboards. From their winning Wildcard UNO video The Parking Meter to the adorable collection of Lego Duplo spots, Extraneous Noise can now call themselves the winner of Tongal’s largest ever first-place prize purse. Not to mention their Secret Wedding Toast Lady video, which can be seen in movie theaters and Facebook feeds across the country. Ex Noise’s advice for other Tongalers? Carefully read through the Creative Brief, get talent releases signed and, of course, trial and error. Read how bean bag chairs and a stick-on mustache played into their Tongal success – and helped them pay off most of their start-up debts – below.
Caleb Light-Wills: Who is Extraneous Noise?
Extraneous Noise: Extraneous Noise is Meghan Frederico and John Tomma. In general, Meghan directs and edits, and John produces and does sound design, though our entire workflow is highly collaborative.
We’ve been working together for about three years. We got our start producing live music videos, added small business videos, and now are working almost exclusively on branded documentaries, commercials, and music videos. (Thanks Tongal!!)
CLW: What is your production background like?
JT: My only formal education in filmmaking was a documentary filmmaking class I took about ten years ago in college. This was long before DSLRs so we were stuck with DVX100s. I found the image quality completely uninspiring at the time so I forgot about filmmaking for the next seven years. Then DSLRs arrived...
MF: I never studied film in school. I was a government & psychology major, and after college I spent a year working at the Harvard Kennedy School. Part of my job involved programming our human rights film series (The other part of my job was conducting research for an incredible book that was later adapted into an incredible documentary, Sergio). But at that point any interest in film was pretty hands-off, and it wasn’t until after I met John that we stumbled into filmmaking.
CLW: What was the first Tongal project you participated in and what was the result?
EN: We submitted a few (deservedly) non-winning ideas to a couple projects in June, and sort of forgot about it until we saw the UNO project brief. Meghan got a little nostalgic over the card game, and since it was a lovely summer day we dragged bean bags onto the roof of our building and spent an hour brainstorming. All of the success we’ve had over the last 8 months is a direct result of that hour on the roof!
Our “parking meter” idea ended up being one of the idea round winners for UNO. Even though it was only $200 (less than most of the pitch budgets these days), we were super excited that if a good idea wasn’t overlooked, a good video wouldn’t be either. It inspired us to turn around and use the $200 to finance what would be our wild card winning video, which in turn helped us win our first pitches, and so on....
CLW: I didn’t notice the first time I watched it, but there’s something interesting about the casting of that piece (UNO).
EN: Initially we planned on casting a friend of ours as the meter maid character, but on the day before the shoot, he broke his toe in a soccer match. He was barely able to walk, much less roller blade. So we bought a mustache, which is apparently all that’s needed to make an actor seem like a completely different person! Props to Jesse Mangan for his hilarious interpretation of both roles!
We filmed the video at Revere beach, north of Boston on a strip of road with no parking meters. The meter you see in the video was one we purchased off eBay. We got a lot of weird looks from the locals. We shot for about 3 hours, and a woman who lived across the street spent the entire time finding the perfect placement for her Mitt Romney sign. She tried every square inch, but probably mainly as an excuse to watch us.
It was raining off and on all day and pretty windy, so she must have started feeling sorry for us. Near the end of our shoot she came over with hot tea for us, and then warned us not to vote for Obama. “I know you did last time, you dummies”. It's confusing when someone gives you tea while also yelling at you.
CLW: What happened from there?
EN: Even though the Scope project didn’t actually involve filming the music at Voodoo Fest, it seemed tailor made for us with all of our experience filming at music events and navigating the unique challenges of event videography. We went all out and created an entire website for the pitch - definitely our most elaborate pitch yet.
Going down to New Orleans was pretty awesome - neither of us had ever been there. It was also our first time working directly with a big brand and an agency. We really enjoyed meeting the Scope team and working with Einav, Shelby, and Todd from the agency Publicis.
We actually were so busy moving around the festival and filming the activities Scope was hosting, we probably only watched about an hour or two of music over the three days, but the ones we did see, Jack White, Metallica, and Bootsy Collins were great.
It was definitely one of our most fun projects - it’s pretty awesome to be paid to film a lot of people having fun and asking them to do crazy things like spit Scope out at 240 frames per second.
CLW: You guys are up to $150k in lifetime earnings, $105k of which was earned this year, including our largest ever 1st place prize for LEGO DUPLO; are you guys going to be the first seven-figure Tongal producers?
EN: We’re still amazed we reached six figures, let alone starting to think about seven figures. Duplo was really unexpected! We were lucky to hit Tongal at the time that we did as brand names and prize pools have gotten so much bigger than they were in the past.
In fairness, our earnings are a little deceptive. We’ve spent over $50k producing our Tongal videos. We almost always spend the entire pitch budget and our minimum guaranteed award on cast, crew, gear, and locations, and sometimes more than that. We’ve been very lucky to only have lost money on one project so far. That said, even when considering the production expenses, our Tongal wins have really turned things around for us.
It’s really exciting that the average project purse and season prize pools seem to still be rising. We managed to reach six figures in about six months, and I have a feeling you’re going to see the time it takes for other new producers to reach that point will be even faster. It’s awesome that Tongal has the potential to create a viable business model for a lot of independent producers.
CLW: What has been your favorite Tongal Project?
MF: Secret was a really special one because I got to work with our lead actress Christie Nittrouer, who, in addition to being a brilliant stand-up/performer/writer, has also been my best friend since age 6. We’ve always enjoyed working on stuff together, it seemed like a great time to use the pitch money to fly her in from LA.
JT: Most recently, our Star Wars Pringles and Glide wildcard videos were a lot of fun to shoot. We cast improv actors in both. It was a good thing we didn’t need to record audio for most of the shoots, since we were laughing so much.
CLW: Most challenging?
EN: Our Secret spot was probably the most challenging. A couple days before the shoot, we got feedback from the client that they’d prefer we set the video in a more “relatable” environment like a wedding (rather than a performer in a green room, getting ready to go on stage). With that one change in concept, our budget shot up from $1500 to $4000. Somehow we managed in less than 72 hours to find a mansion, cast a ton of extras, and create the illusion of an actual wedding reception. To add to the stress, we had two actresses we had lined up to play the bride cancel on us - one let us know late the night before the shoot, and the second just never showed up. Our production assistant, Lizbeth MacQuarrie ended up being the bride. Her dress was created 10 minutes before we shot her, and was secured with binder clips!
CLW: Any advice you could offer those trying to break through and convince a sponsor to trust them with a budget?
Producing a wild card video is definitely the best way to establish yourself on Tongal. Think strategically about which projects you submit to. A project like Pringles Star Wars is going to be incredibly competitive. Your best bet is to go for a project that generates less interest, has a smaller award package, or has more than one wildcard slot. Don’t feel like you have to spend a ton of money producing a wildcard. Remember that a great idea is more important than high production value. A hilarious video shot on an iPhone is going to beat out a boring video shot on an Epic. There are numerous examples of wildcards beating pitch winners (FCR’s hilarious Dunder Mifflin video!). If you’ve got a great idea and make the best of whatever limited resources you have available, you’ll have a real chance.
Even if your wildcard doesn’t win, you’ll be able to use the video when you make subsequent pitches. Tongal can give you a private link to include if the video isn’t public. We had a large portfolio of work before we ever started working with Tongal, but the fact that we had a wildcard submission (UNO) helped us get our first three pitches (Scope, Polly Pocket, Logitech) since it gave the brands confidence we could produce good work within the Tongal system.
CLW: What’s next for you guys?
EN: We’re excited every time a new project gets posted on Tongal, so at very least you can expect some more wild card videos from us, as well as videos for Duracell, IAMS (puppies!), and Gorilla Glue. We have a couple music video treatments that we’re looking to shoot, are in pre-production on a short documentary series profiling Boston taxi drivers, and are batting around short film ideas.
Our tenure in Boston is actually coming to a close, so this summer we’re going to be auditioning some new cities to station ourselves in. Meghan will be in Brooklyn and John will be in the Bay area, both producing videos and shipping hard drives back and forth to each other. We’d love to meet other Tongalers in the area(s)!
