Intel & Toshiba’s Inner Beauty

Always seen yourself as bit of a Ben Affleck? Like the thought of your heels gracing the red carpet? Maybe you’ve spent a lot of time behind the scenes on set and are just curious to know what it’d be like to finally get your chance in front of the lens. Whatever the reason, West Coast agency Pereira & O’Dell is giving viewers the chance to star in a new social film production as part of its latest project with Intel and Toshiba.

Having created a previous campaign last year, The Inside Experience, in collaboration with the two brands, the agency launched the follow up this week expanding on the concept of its previous film. This time round, instead of a thriller, The Beauty Inside plays out as a drama, and chief creative officer PJ Pereira at Pereira & O’Dell explains that it wasn’t necessarily to target a different audience, but to involve people in new ways.

“Since the very beginning, we wanted to tease the world into thinking about this new way of ‘telling’ a story that we called social film. The first incarnation of that idea was a thriller because it naturally added a layer of game playing into the whole event,” says the CCO.

“But the moment it was over, we started to think about the next one and we knew it had to go to another genre so we could inspire people to think of even more ways to include the audience into films. We didn't want people to think of social films as thrillers that allow you to participate. They are more than that. Exploring a romantic story this time allowed us to create enough contrast to make that clear and avoid the sense that this might be a just a sequel.”

Starring Topher Grace and Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and helmed by Sundance award-winning director Drake Doremus, the film brings together top talent in entertainment, technology and social media. Then there’s you, who could end up playing the role of main character Alex, whose backstory the creative teams spent 18 months developing to conjure up a unique condition that sees him wake up in a different body as a different person every day.

“The moment we first talked about Alex's story, we fell in love with it,” adds Pereira. “The condition itself was the starting point - we developed the entire character out of that. How would he get dressed in the morning? He would need a large closet with multiple items for both his male and female bodies. How would he work? It couldn't be something [a job where] he had personal interaction with other people. How would he fall in love? That was the process. Once we got to the love part, we kind of had the entire story drafted in our heads. We just needed to find a director that would fall in love with Alex the same way we did.”

And that man would be Doremus, a director who clearly felt passion for the main character and developed the agency’s understanding of their creation with passion and zest.

“Drake is a gifted director and it would’ve been an honour to work with him just because of that. But we were looking for more than ‘just’ talent. We wanted someone that loved Alex as much as we did. This isn't a trivial story, you know? You need to really get into his head to be able to bring everything to life in a genuine way; you gotta imagine how awesome and awful it would be to have a different body every day. We found that in Drake,” explains Pereira.

He continues: “Since our very first conversation he always talked about how he wanted to make an extremely original, genuine and romantic story out of it. The way he described Alex to us, the way Alex dressed, the questions he would have, even how he could have fun with it was so vivid, so intense that he made us see the character in a way that even after months talking about him we hadn't seen yet. At that point, we had no other option - Drake knew Alex as much as we did, and maybe even more.”

Pereira tells us that Alex will be on Facebook to interact and respond to the audience. However, unlike the first Inside project, the conversations won't be in real time. The character will be telling a story that happened to him, answering questions and sharing how it felt to go through it all.

He explains: “and because the ‘condition’ allows everyone to play different days in his life, we may ask people to collaborate with us on parts that may not make it into the main episodes, but can still be incorporated into the story – stay tuned.”

Everyone has the chance to audition for the role and hopefuls can find out more about getting involved in the global film, which debuts on Thursday 16 August, on Facebook now.