Branding and identity design for the audiovisual team Cacahuetes Inc. developed with aBe. Also screen shots from the film and other promotion pieces.
Spain {2004/05/06}
CASE STUDY
Alex Beltran (aBe) and I were commissioned by Rojo Magazine and La Casa Encendida - along with the sponsorship of Levy's - to create an audiovisual performance.
This fake documentary was performed live (or screened) at La Casa Encendida (Madrid, 2004), Festival Sonar (Bcn, 2005), Design Made (Seul, 2006), Netmage (Italia, 2006), File Fest (Brasil, 2007), Vidfest (Canada, 2006), SYR festival (NY 2007), Baumann (españa, 2006), Art Domus (Salamanca,2005).
It was a very open brief; we could do whatever we wanted as long as we were able to actually perform it live, so in terms of performance I was in charge of the live music and aBe was in charge of live visuals, mainly consisting of parts of our film. The budget available for the project was very tight however, so we decided to use free footage from the Prelinger Archives, coupled with the scenes shot ourselves with the help of an actress who represents our protagonist.
We came up with the script: "The Synchronised Dance of the Magnetic Peanuts", a disturbing documentary and in-depth investigation disclosing important testimonies, including that of Adam West. Revealing experiments place Claude's theory in doubt and even question whether Man did in fact reach the Moon.
Visually we went into a classic television documentary style - retro and sometimes cheap too, but always funny! So this mood board represents a few of the influences we both had in mind at the time.
So we called ourselves Cacahuetes (that means "Peanuts") and added different mottos for each use of the logo. We used "CO" meaning Cinematographic Operations, "INC" meaning Incredible Nuts Cinema, "LTD" meaning Love The Documentary and "SA" meaning (this is absurd!) Suddenly Audiovisuals.
We wanted the logo to be very, very corporate, as if it was a real food company from the 1960s. So, the font (Cooper Black) allowed us to reach this goal and the retro colour palette works too. Here is the logo with the Peanut drawing over it.
Some stationary and DVD cases were made to for the press kit. This was sent to media outlets and festivals.
Here are some banner ads for the Cacahuetes web site with the different mottos.
Lots of graphics were made for the film, here are some still images.
Within the space of around one month we had the film ready to be performed live at La Casa Encendida at Madrid. Soon after this we performed at the Sonar Festival with big success, bigger than we had anticipated. The film even travelled to South Korea where it was enthusiastically received.
Here are some photos of the performance at Sonar
Here are some of the press photos of ourselves.
And now, may I invite you to watch the film.
