That meant a crew including Mr. Tran, Taco Bell's agency
Deutsch L.A. and the campaign's director
Jason Zada of Tool North America spent all day Sunday racing around
Los Angeles. Editing clips in a cargo van, the team received a
police escort from famed music venue The Wiltern to an East L.A.
laundromat to downtown's entertainment hub LA Live.
Another wrinkle: the filmmaking would not cut corners. While the
time constraints meant that they weren't shooting each 10-second
clip for perfection, they were aiming for authenticity. No crying
over the fact that 24 hours after the campaign went live, it will
be gone like anything else posted to Snapchat.
Mr. Tran said the brand was committed to using social networks
the same way people do. That meant a camera rig typically reserved
for big-budget film work sported an iPhone. Huddled around a cargo
van outside the East L.A. laundromat, right before uploading the
first clip to Snapchat, Mr. Tran and the Deutsch team spent about
five minutes going over how to horizontally shoot with an iPhone so
that finger-drawn illustrations appear right-side up on the
social-messaging service (They needed to have the phone's home
button on the left.)
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Roughly 20 minutes after Mr. Tran posted the film's first and
second clips, the group was on the MTV Movie Awards' red carpet at
LA Live to film the money clip. The Snapchat film's star was to run
the red carpet just as the pre-show festivities were wrapping so
that when the video hit Snapchat a couple hours later, people would
say, "Whoa, that just happened!"
"Guys, we have 10 minutes. Let's go," shouted Deutsch LA
producer Win Bates at 6:10 pm PT.
"No, you have five minutes," responded an MTV employee whose own
team needed to start tearing down the red carpet.
A little after 7 pm PT, the first 69 seconds of Taco Bell's
Snapchat movie posted.
