The theatre has had a growing problem. A glowing problem, really. As our phones become more a part of our minute-to-minutes lives, the lines of etiquette need to be reset. This is true for many environments for different reasons. At a theatre it usually comes down to the shear amount of light that a phone puts out into a dark surrounding. A mere check of the time provides a distraction. And not just for the immediate neighbors. It is surprising just how noticeable cell phone use is from the stage.
Naturally the level of disruption depends greatly on the type of performance. A one-man show is going to be affected much more than a rock show with an array of constantly changing lighting effects. Some bands actually prefer that the audience take pictures and even video of shows.
But in general, what we’ve labeled as “vapid cell phone use” needs to stop.
Rather than just continue to ask nicely, we’ve decided to have some fun with it. This is where the ghosts come in. Just in time for Halloween, we’re bringing in a couple resident spirits to help get the point across.
The creation of this campaign (seen at the bottom of this post) has been hugely rewarding for me personally. The whole thing is the brainchild of Nick Barbieri. Nick had the original concept and coordinated the shoot. My job was to help bring it to life. It was the first time I’ve art directed a shoot with this many moving parts. Marc Brown was our photographer and he was amazing to work with. A long-time pro in the journalistic style (he shoots most of our big performances), this was a new opportunity for him to work in a directed setting.
Finding our ghosts and theatre-goers was easy. They are mostly Paramount employees with a couple of the fine folks from next door at the Stephen F Austin Hotel. We also brought in a wonderful make-up artist, Tara Cooper, to work on our ghosts, played by Aaron Ward and Brooklyn Henson.
The shoot itself was a blast. I hope that is obvious from the results. Everyone involved did something that pushed the quality up a level. Truly a group effort.
Once the shoot was over it was on me to turn Aaron and Brooklyn into those legendary apparitions. That was almost as fun as the shoot itself.
And finally, the images that we released into the world. I can’t get enough of these photos. Just take a minute and check out all the facial expressions going on here. Click on the images to get a bigger version.
The Paramount’s page about the campaign.
Some love from austin360.
