At Saturday’s PDF unConference, I caught a fascinating discussion led by Beka from the NotAnAlternative arts collective/production company about setting up street actions with an eye toward getting them the most online exposure possible.
She showed the group a great short film of a fun bit of cultural disobedience that she’d helped organize for Greenpeace, targeting Kleenex. The tissue company’s been promoting its products with a campaign in which random people “pour their hearts out” to a stranger on a couch, and the Greenpeace folks decided that they had a couple of thing to get off THEIR chests: namely, that Kleenex tissues are made from 100% virgin fibers, largely from the fragile boreal forests of Canada. Hilarity, and excellent theater, ensued. Note the careful positioning of cameras to catch all the action, along with the general level of staging involved in the prank. This action was made for video, quite literally.
– cpd