OLYMPIKUS GATHERS FILMMAKERS FROM 32 COUNTRIES TO TAKE PART IN ITS MOST INNOVATIVE COLLABORATIVE PROJECT EVER: THE PEOPLE’S CUP

By Natalia Pegoraro

Thirty-two filmmakers from 32 countries have been asked to take part in the most innovative project of the company's thirty-five year history. Following a worldwide trend, Olympikus will present a collaborative documentary entitled “The People's Cup," a 20 minute short film that reveals the inspiration that will unite peoples from all over the world and in Brazil four years from now during the planet's greatest sporting event: the World Cup. The scenes were filmed by up-and-coming filmmakers in each of the countries that competed in the most recent world championship in South Africa, using fans' excitement as a thermometer and as point of view.


The completed film is set to debut this Thursday, October 21 on the website www.acopadaspessoas.com.br and on Sunday, October 24 in a first-time uncut 20 minute version on Brazilian ESPN at 7:30 p.m. It will be rebroadcast on October 26 and the 28. “The People's Cup” will also be released simultaneously in all of the countries participating in the project. The 32 filmmakers involved will each be given a kit containing brochures, posters and DVDs of the film so they can organize a premiere in their own country.


“The People's Cup” brings together images of each nation's football fans in their respective countries, organized in such a way as to suggest that people around the world are watching the same match. The film does not chronologically follow the stages of South Africa's World Cup i.e. it doesn't differentiate the championship's first from final matches. The film's connecting thread is a sequence of all the emotions involved in a football match. From devotion to the national anthem and the expectation before the opening whistle, to the intense battles waged on the field before the explosion of a goal being scored. In Brazil, images were filmed in Rio de Janeiro and Recife by directors Renato Martins, Guga Rocha, Gabriel Santucci and André Markwald. Only the scenes of Côte d'Ivoire and North Korea's fans were shot outside their countries of origin, in South Africa itself, the headquarters of the 2010 World Cup.


Olympikus' project “The People's Cup” serves as proof that it is increasingly possible to communicate with audiences in ways that don't involve interrupting programs with advertising breaks. “Once again we have created unique and significant content for people that generates their spontaneous interest in seeking it out on different media platforms. Entertainment is the key word here,” said Márcio Callage, Oympikus' marketing manager. “Only a sports brand with inspiration as its main theme could use this new form of communication in a large scale project about Brazil's greatest passion. Our intention is to leave a veritable legacy for Brazil, in anticipation of all the emotions we are sure to experience right here at home, four years from now," he concluded.



The Project

“The People's Cup” was created and carried out by BOCA, an advertising agency that has identified a strong trend towards the creation of collaborative projects with trans-media content. “We first hear about the filmmakers through online social networking and recommendations. They have all previously published work and were not hesitant about taking part in a collaborative project like this one,” said Everson Klein. “This documentary seeks to portray the moments when different people filmed in different ways and cheering for different teams become very similar. We have used the inspiration from each one of them to build a mosaic of emotions surrounding a single event. It was a daily match-to-match challenge, trying to understand how to get the best out of each participating country. We worked practically 24 hours a day due to the different time zones involved in the project," he explained.


The filmmakers were given different instructions in accordance with the stage of the World Cup and their nation's profile. Among them were requests to capture emotions like love, anger, victory, faith, hope, joy, sadness, anxiety and compassion. The feelings that make football a unique experience. With more than 300 hours of footage, the equivalent of 500 DVDs, the final editing of the short film involved a group of producers, a screenwriter, an editor and a journalist, who together compiled the material to be used for the film's final cut.


The audio production behind “The People's Cup” is also noteworthy. B Produtora de Som was given the responsibility of putting it together based on the briefing of sensations that each moment of the film suggests to spectators. In addition to the material shot by each of the directors, some sound was recorded later in the street, where any kind of sound could serve as a point of reference. Lightposts, fences, traffic and pedestrians were combined with unusual instruments like the sound of violin bows on guitars, cups of water and trays carrying grains of rice to add even more emotion to the scenes.


After the first stage of recording, it was necessary to outline a complete communication strategy to advertise material of such great magnitude, resulting in a trans-media project that combines a wide variety of platforms.


Campaigns on TV and in movie theaters, magazines and on the Internet are all part of the project's media package. In addition to exhibition of the complete film on Brazilian ESPN, it will have 22 trailer insertions of 1 minute each between the 20thand the 25th. It will also be shown on Brazilian TV on Globo network's two largest audience programs: October 24 on Fantástico and October 25 on the Evening News, as well as movie theaters across the nation. The trailer will be able to be seen on YouTube's homepage on October 21 and will be available for sharing on Facebook that same day. Print media will include double page ads in Placar magazine.


The project also includes public relations planning that includes special film release kits being given to opinion makers for distribution at film schools, film clubs and select producers. In addition, special actions are being prepared for São Paulo and Porto Alegre, such as the circulation of post cards about the project and advertising posters around the city, respectively.


Project website allows for Internet user collaboration


Starting October 21, a complete version of “The People's Cup” will be available on the website: www.acopadaspessoas.com.br. There, visitors will be able to feel they are a part of this large-scale collaborative project, feeling for themselves what it is like to create their own film, using a special tool. Users will type words that interest them into a search field (in either Portuguese or English), like Goal, Vuvuzela and Brazil, for example, and the website itself will put together an approximately 30-second-long film with images shot by the filmmakers and others registered on the website.


In this way, users will have the opportunity to create a film that is completely different than “The People's Cup” generating content with maximum personal significance that can be shared with friends through social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and Orkut.


Anyone can edit their own film or watch Olympikus' short film online, which will be marked in a large map on the website. In this way, the most recent films will be available for anybody visiting the website around the world.