• by Karl Greenberg , April 3, 2015

It might seem a bit redundant to have a film festival in Los Angeles. But the Newport Beach Film Festival is likely the only movie event in the greater Los Angeles area that isn't about stars, directors, producers, budgets and blockbusters.

And the Newport Beach Film Festival famously does not shy away from using outré art, disturbing graphics or dark humor to get peoples' attention away from whatever comic-strip movie is now showing. Last year's promo video had a guy telling his daughter a bedtime story that turns out to be a mashup of every famous horror/sci-fi/suspense scene from the past 16 years, which is about how long the festival has been extant. At the close, we realize that he's the projectionist for the festival. The promo the year before involved a visit to a dentist. We’ll leave it at that.

This year's high-art concept campaign, via Santa Monica-based RPA, the festival's agency for the past six years, uses the tag "Know New Art," and features a promo film by Biscuit Filmworks’ Freise Brothers. The film takes us from a black-and-white to chromatic world in an unusual way: via skeet shooting. 

There are also in-theater elements, TV, print, out-of-home and festival programs. The work is meant to illustrate the "distinctive personality of the festival and the creativity it inspires by screening more than 350 films to an audience of 60,000 that highlight the best in contemporary and independent film," according to RPA.

For the festival, running April 23 through the 30th, the creative focus is on upcoming filmmakers and how the festival provides them a screen. Said festival director Todd Quartararo, in a statement. “The festival serves as a place of cultivating profound awareness and exposure both for the artist and the audience.”

The promo film opens on a Joan Jett-type rocker toting a double-barrel shotgun walking through a field of weeds with her butler staggering along after her. They stop, she loads, and he releases homemade color bombs. She fires and the world becomes chromatic. Print, digital and out-of-home art features portraits of people with exaggerated facial expressions.  

“The great thing about creating for the Newport Beach Film Festival is that the brand is smart, eccentric and artful and allows RPA to do work in another realm," says Scott McDonald, VP, creative director at RPA. "Everyone who joins the team, from colorist and photographer to editor and director, creates a collective voice which takes the work to an unexpected place that helps the festival stand apart from the pack.”