Adobe Success Story

Opening April 3, 2009

Universal Pictures, together with L.A.-based The Visionaire Group, creates a compelling online campaign for new Fast & Furious movie in half the expected development time

Promoting blockbuster movies online is big business. Savvy studios recognize that it takes more than a static website and a movie trailer on YouTube to get fans excited about a new release. For Fast & Furious, the fourth installment in the Fast & Furious movie franchise, Universal Pictures went full throttle.

Universal Pictures hired The Visionaire Group to design and execute a powerful campaign that would give fans an emotional connection to the movie. To ensure speedy design and development and a superior experience for fans, Universal Pictures wanted a cutting-edge experience that would just work, so The Visionaire Group turned to Adobe Creative Suite 4 software and the Adobe Flash Platform to get there.

“Our goal on Fast & Furious was to develop the most compelling creative content and Adobe Creative Suite 4 delivered way beyond my expectations, while doing it in half the development time,” says JP Richards, Vice President Digital Marketing, Universal Pictures.

Benefits

• Saved 25% of the development time by using the 3D transformation capabilities in Adobe Flash CS4 Professional
• Offered site visitors multiple videos to get them excited for the movie release
• Shaved one day off of the iPhone development time with Adobe Dreamweaver CS4
• Successfully engaged Fast & Furious fans through online, desktop, and mobile experiences

Project Details

Customer engagement
It’s no secret that the number one goal of a movie website is to drive ticket sales. However, Universal Pictures understood that the website was just one piece of the puzzle. To effectively engage its audience, it needed to reach customers through multiple touch points.

With a green light from the studio and years of experience evolving online campaigns for the entertainment industry, The Visionaire Group went to work. “Universal Pictures wanted a truly cutting-edge digital campaign for Fast & Furious and we were up to the challenge,” says Jeff Lin, Founder and President of The Visionaire Group.

The agency created a multi-faceted campaign that capitalized on the return of the star-studded cast from the original film, The Fast and The Furious. The campaign used video, motion graphics, and 3D to deliver an online experience that appealed to hard-core fans, as well as those new to the franchise. To spark the enthusiasm of the early awareness audience of young car enthusiasts, the campaign incorpo¬rated a fun and engaging website, rich-media advertisements, a downloadable desktop widget, a custom iPhone website, and more.

More than a website
The centerpiece of the campaign was a rich-media website featuring fully integrated video, a hard charging online game, links to social networking sites, and multiple downloads. To build the site, the web development group used Adobe Creative Suite 4 Web Premium components, including Adobe Flash CS4 Professional and Adobe Photoshop CS4 Extended.

To create the website’s unique navigation, the agency took advantage of the ability to create 3D motion in Flash CS4 Professional. Developers found that the performance in Flash CS4 Professional was faster than other tools. It was also easier to make changes to the 3D without touching any code.

The 3D transformations in Flash CS4 Professional enabled developers to more easily control 3D objects from within the user interface. Instead of coding, developers used the transform and rotation tools to animate 3D objects on the timeline, which helped speed the understanding of how the navigation was being structured. Instant z-depth and rotation also simplified the positioning of objects.

“The 3D transformation features in Adobe Flash CS4 Professional cut the website development time by 25%, effectively shaving days off our tight development timeline,” says Lin. “Adobe Flash CS4 Professional lets us create an engaging emotional experience for users in a short amount of time.”

Rich-media engagement
The online display advertising team created over 20 rich-media banner ads in multiple sizes, shapes, and configurations to drive traffic to the website. Once they’ve arrived at the site, visitors can play a fun racing game, download wallpapers, read about the story, view the image gallery, learn about the cast and crew, and watch various videos.

The Visionaire Group used Adobe After Effects CS4 to create engaging motion graphics and visual effects for the site and banner ads. To encode video for the website, the team used the Adobe Media Encoder, which automates the process of creating multiple encoded versions of content and offers improved video quality. With videos including trailers, TV spots, featurettes, and transitional video between the various parts of the website, the time savings from using the Adobe Media Encoder was significant.

“Video is a crucial part of the Fast & Furious website and the Adobe Media Encoder in Adobe Flash CS4 Professional saved around five minutes for each video we encoded,” says Lin.

Adobe Flex Builder, an Eclipse based IDE, and Adobe ActionScript also were used to develop the site interface and rich Internet application.

To help ensure the best experience for visitors, the final website was published for Adobe Flash Player 10. The latest Flash Player brings the website’s 3D features to life and delivers its interactive content and high-quality video to users across multiple browsers and all major operating systems.

Reaching mobile audiences
The task of building an iPhone website that mirrored the experience on the main site fell to the emerging media team at The Visionaire Group. Using Photoshop CS4 Extended, designers created the overall site composition. Developers then used Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 to build the site, taking advantage of the iPhone hardware accelerator to create 3D effects on the mobile site.

Time saving features in Dreamweaver CS4 helped the team complete the iPhone website in just two weeks. If an error was made while programming, the Code Navigator in Dreamweaver CS4 automatically directed developers to the corresponding line number, enabling them to quickly correct it. Previously, these errors were not known until the site was uploaded and checked, and then developers had to search through the code to make the fix.

Developers also liked Related Files function that let them open the index.html page and have all of the pages it was linked to, such as the JavaScript files and CSS pages, automatically open. “Developing the iPhone website using Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 saved our developers at least a day of work, which on this project was a huge advantage,” says Lin.

Easy information access
To make it easy for fans to stay up-to-date on the latest movie information, the emerging media team created a downloadable GPS desktop widget powered by Adobe AIR. Designs for the desktop widget were supplied as Photoshop CS4 PSD files. Developers then broke the design apart and took them directly into Flash CS4 Professional. By carefully naming all instances, library items, and exports they were able to separate the visuals from the code as much as possible.

The GPS desktop widget lets fans access all the latest information from their desktop or social network profile. The team integrated Google maps directly into the Adobe AIR map on the desktop so fans can find other Furious cars in their area or showcase their ride to other Fast & Furious fans.

Adobe Creative Suite 4 Web Premium software and the Adobe Flash Platform—including Adobe Flash Player 10 and Adobe AIR—helped The Visionaire Group meet the objectives of Universal Pictures under tight time constraints. While the website for Fast & Furious is designed as a short-term promotional destination, its features and functionality showcase the power and potential of digital campaigns. By offering fans multiple opportunities to connect to the movie and its characters, Universal Pictures can ensure that its entertainment content reaches the broadest audience possible.

“It is important that we reach as many people quickly and effectively through multiple touch points and the Adobe Flash Platform and Adobe Creative Suite 4 ensure that our engagement goals are accomplished, while giving them the best creative,” says Richards.

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