Technology market leader HP partnered with Intel and creative freelance network Movidiam for a unique project, highlighting the power and performance of the new HP ZBook Create.
The campaign video was filmed 15 October last year, at Nolithic Fort Cissbury Ring, where animator Laurie Rowan was challenged to create his signature creatures to the landscape as possible using just the HP ZBook Create.
Laurie is an animator, illustrator and director and has worked with clients such as the BBC, Channel 4, Disney and Google and has won numerous accolades including a Children’s Bafta win and Lovie Award. Movidiam, Intel and HP felt his appealing art style, ability to speak to the camera and his charisma made him an excellent candidate for the campaign challenge.
The campaign challenged entrants to work out how many characters Laurie was able to create on the landscape featured in the video. Those that guessed the correct number were then entered into a prize draw for a chance to win the HP ZBook Create G7 with Intel CoreTM i7 processor and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070.
George Olver, co-founder of Movidiam, said: “ZBook Create is an extremely powerful high end machine that is very compatible with the network of users that we have on Movidiam, so it was a natural marketing collaboration. We looked at this concept and said: ‘A lot of these bits of content, infomercials and brands films are related to the specification and the tech, such as the power and battery life.’ Those elements are great and all very important, but there’s an element increasingly around the lifestyle of the creator.”
The team decided to film on a remote location to showcase the freedom and flexibility creative professionals might be yearning for while confined at home. In addition to its 14-hour battery life, while onsite, Laurie raved about the ease of use while creating designs.
George added: “I think Laurie was quite surprised by the product. Those were complex computations to get to animations like that integrated into those live-action scenes that we shot on the day. It was particularly cold that day and sometimes batteries struggle in the cold, but it worked really well, and it lasted well beyond the length.”
The project saw a significant return of investment, gaining millions of impressions and 100% positive sentiments. In total, 36% of entrants correctly identified the number of creatures in the landscape and were entered into the prize draw. The winner was Matt Meech, offline film editor, who has worked for the BBC on Blue Planet and for Netflix, and has been previously nominated for British Academy Television Craft Award for Editing.
Matt commented: “The laptop looks amazing. So chuffed to have won! It’s very slick looking and blazingly quick. The internal speakers are stunning too. Using Adobe Premiere on the ZBook Create has been exceptionally stable so far. Rendering and exporting was the fastest I’ve experienced on a laptop. Looking forward to trying Avid on it for my next project.”