Homecoming Series Launch
What We Did
First, we signed a confidentiality agreement in blood. The Amazon facility revealed Julia Roberts and Sissy Spacek did the same, so naturally, we didn’t hesitate.
Under this bond of secrecy, we went soup to nuts to pineapples for the Homecoming Season One launch campaign. We were already fans of the breakout podcast, so meeting Heidi, Walter and company in the flesh was a thrill.
How We Did It
We can’t “explicitly” say anything about this. But maybe the “clues” below will give you an “idea.”
Our concept toyed with the ominous discord you feel when you’re alone, but you’re not really alone . . .
Lynne Cohen & Evelyn Bencicova’s artwork inspired our “Empty Spaces” concept, which dovetailed perfectly with the show’s dystopian production design.
Mr. Robot creator Sam Esmail’s unique vision for signaling the flashback / flash-forward elements in the show had us in an aspect ratio timeloop that we decided to mirror in our campaign.
Stepping onto the set for the Empty Spaces shoot was surreal. Meeting Julia, Sissy, Shea and the other cast members was straight up bonkers. The only talent missing was an endangered bird, whose squawk was featured into the plot. Needless to say, we were disappointed when our attorneys told us we weren’t allowed to have it on set, so we settled for shooting a goldfish. He had a hard out at 5, but with Julia nailing everything on the first take, no OT there. WOOT WOOT.
The footage was fire. We knew we wanted a soundtrack to match. David Bowie, Diplo, Jimmy Buffet—a few of the artists we explored to bring the footage to life. Finally, Radiohead’s Everything in Its Right Place got the green light. We collaborated with Feature Trailer Sound Mixer, Jon Krupp, on his epic Universal soundstage. He certainly filled the void of our empty spaces diegetically (hooray for ten dollar words)!
Here’s a snapshot from the two days we spent on set. Or was it two years? We lost track since we were jumping between past, present, and future. If you squint hard enough, you’ll see our Creative Force, Michelle Simunovic, who wrote/crafted the concepts, and Kevin Joelson from the directing duo, The Joelsons. They helped shoot the launch campaign we edited for FX Atlanta awhile back. We figured since that went pretty okay, this would too.
The rest—as they say—is history.
Our Results
With so much magical footage to play with, our Team went to town on the hero trailer and a series of character vignettes focusing on the A-list talent in the show.
Homecoming crushed it with a 98% on the Tomatometer and a follow-up Season Two!
