Treat, the commercial production arm of Dogmatic, Inc., has created a thirteen Webisodes series for Pepsi, spoofing the cola company's successful Britney Spears commercial campaign. The 60 to 90-second long Webisodes, directed by the comedy directing team of Larry Shanet and David Rosenthal, combine Flash animation with live-action. The first eight installments follow an inept camera crew - ordered by Mr. Butch R. Carne, the cigar-chomping, thick-knuckled owner of the fictitious Meat Fizz Beverage Company - as they sneak on the Britney Spears Pepsi commercial shoot, bootleg footage, steal memorabilia, and use it to promote his noxious meat-flavored beverage, Pork Fizz. The final five Webisodes follow the camera crew as they hit the road to stage a nationwide Pork Fizz Challenge. "This is an ideal project with which to launch our commercial division Treat," said Laurel Harris, co-founder and creative director of Dogmatic. "We're a young, ambitious, energetic company, and the Pepsi Webisodes reflect that sensibility. Just as Dogmatic is a cross between a creative shop and a production company, the Pepsi Webisodes are a cross between commercial advertising and original online content." Shanet said, "Flash animation is a hot form that's really exploding on the Web right now and it's given us the flexibility to do things in animation that we couldn't accomplish in live-action. Flash animation enables us to push some of the more outlandish, cartoonish qualities of some of the characters such as Mr. Carne, the grotesque big boss-man of Pork Fizz."
Rick DeMott
Animation World Network
Creator of Rick's Flicks Picks
