NBC Green Week video blog

This week the goodfocus team was tapped by our friends at The Soap Group to produce a series of seven short films highlighting "things" one can do to be more "green." And while the task seems straight forward, it has been anything but.

Originally, NBC (the media conglomerate - is it possible for a "conglomerate" to be truly green?), asked The Soap Group to provide seven blog entries - yes, just plain text blog entries - suggesting how one might go about greening such things as their office, home, food, etc. The question was quickly raised - if blogs are good, aren't vlog's better?

And thus goodfocus was brought in to provide the "v" aspect of these vlogs.

With Soap's help - and much must be attributed to John Rooks' Gilliam-esque humor and writing style (he's the head of The Soap Group) - goodfocus set about the task of turning seven "green" tips into a series of video shorts to premier on NBC's greenweek website in November.

But how to make them sticky? That's marketing speak for how to make such inane, and perhaps overly-preached "tips" as - "eat more veggies", "buy local", "use non-toxic cleaners", "don't be an early adopter of techno-gadgets", etc.

Needless to say, we chose a surprisingly irreverent perspective (watch the finished products to see what that means, exactly). But irreverence and sarcasm are close neighbors. In this age of cynicism and sarcasm, it's difficult to make a genuine statement on something as commercial as "greening oneself" without sounding naive, hostile or both. Irreverence is perhaps the handmaiden of ubiquity. Or, less obliquely, a modicum of sarcasm and overt humor goes a long way to take the bite out of what might otherwise sound preachy or disingenuous.

And now that all seven segments have been shot, we've dug into the trenches of editing to bring these pieces to life. I'll have to update you all as to our success or failure at bringing them to life in the non-linear world. For now, I'm glad we chose this route, irreverent or not, it's better than reading yet another treatise on how one should swap incandescent bulbs for CFLs or how to use rechargeable batteries instead of... well, you get the picture.