One of the biggest concerns amongst web content creators is that branded entertainment will destroy artistic expression as product integration increasingly compromises story and vision. However, producer/directors Alex Johnson and Lance Weiler of the Workbook Project (WBP) are attempting to do just the opposite with RADAR, which premiered on yesterday on Babelgum.
RADAR, produced by WBP Labs, is a weekly three-minute, made-for-mobile and web series that goes behind-the-scenes of innovative projects and events across different creative disciplines. Season Two highlights include episodes about the live art event Art Battles, 3D printing startup Makerbot/NYC Resistor, performance artists Undetermined Measurements and Mark Horowitz’s Google Maps Road Trip. Johnson, a former interactive strategist at Adventure Pictures and advertising agency Deep Focus, is taking the lessons she learned there and using them to support and showcase cutting edge work. In the case of RADAR, the brand is the art itself. Says Johnson, “My background is in branded content and in advertising, so it’s really working with the contributors to put their product on a pedestal and ask ‘How can we help you?’”
By contributors, Johnson means the subject of each piece. RADAR refers to them as such because each is integrally involved in the making of their episode. By treating each subject as a collaborator, RADAR directors are able to go deep behind the scenes of the creative process, share material with the contributors and work out the best way to showcase the group or event. Explains Johnson, “Rather than being reportage or news, where we just cover something that’s happening, we try and talk to the contributors and figure out how do we take this to the next stage in terms of representing what they do in an interesting and visually engaging way. And sometimes that’s actually putting on an event ourselves or helping them do that.”
