Vimeo made Rodents on Turntables a Staff Pick. Nearly 5 million views later, the viral video for Live Nation continued to play at concert venues across the country and helped build Live Nation’s video screen network. Division of Labor was the advertising agency and production company and I came up with idea while staring at their record collection. And no, the rodents did not run on the agency record collection.

LIVE NATION CONCERT WISDOM

Concert Wisdom was an idea that came from the need to create as much content as humanly possible. We’ve all seen enough concerts and to unwritten rules. As a freelance copywriter in San Francisco, I just wanted them written.

Ode to Pete was written for Pete Townshend. He was smashing guitars before anyone. But we thought it’d be fun to smash every kind of instrument we could get our hands on. Then we shot it all at around 1500 frames per second.

  • The rodents were traned for two full weeks by professional animal traners. We originalyl called it Hampsters on Turntables, but then learned that hampters don’t run as well as mice and rats. As a freelance copywriter in San Francisco, I’ve been coming up with ideas and writting scripts for over 20 years. And I know there’s no use in coming up with ideas you can’t make within budget. I’ve also directed a number of TV and video campaigns so I can advise and plan for how production will need to work. The animals traners in this case also brought a baby deer to the shoot. I never really figured out why but the deer shat on the floor of the office, which was pretty funny too.

  • It was fun watching the little girl try to smash her violin. You’d think those things would just shatter, especially because she got pretty aggressive with it. But they’re tough. It took a couple tries to get the thing to really break apart. The most fun to smash was the guitarron. As a freelance copy writer in San Francisco, I’ve worked on a lot of film productions. But watching that thing explode on contact was tremendously satisfy, I won’t lie. Also, watch closely as the xilaphone keys go flying. One of the keys flies within millimeters of the very expensive camera lens. And I found out later that the agency had to cut camera insurance to make budget, so tragedy was very nearly averted.

  • Yes. Put your damn phone down and enjoy the show. Someone else with better seats and a steadier hand is shooting a posting a better video than you anyway.