Amsterdam based agency Natwerk was asked to come up with a cool concept for a new VPRO (Dutch TV Station) brand activation campaign. They envisioned some kind of chewing gum bubble blowing contest through which people could win cool prizes. We were asked to build a custom high-speed video recording setup, so super slow motion footage of people blowing chewing gum bubbles could be played back on a couple of 55 inch LED TV’s. The judges could measure the size of the bubble on the big TV screen, to see if the contender had won a prize.
We came up with a custom hardware and software solution which involved hacking a brand new high speed video camera. We hooked it up to custom electronics and a couple of arcade buttons, so it could be easily controlled by the promotion crew. After recording had been stopped the file would be automatically transferred to a computer, which encoded the video in real-time, so it could be played back on the big TV screens. The crew could easily pause playback by pressing a button, so they could measure the size of the bubble. If no recordings were played back, a commercial would be automatically shown on the TV’s.