Behind The Dreams: The Circling

At goodr, we shoot all of our photo and video content in-house. Our mini-internal content production company is called The Department of Dreams, because, obviously, the label “Content Team” is wayyyyy too basic for us.

We wanted to offer you a glimpse behind the scenes dreams of the Department of Dreams for our most recent video release, The Circling.

The idea was born on September 20, 2019, on a train ride from Oceanside, CA, where the Dream Team had just shot Carl’s Anti-Resolutions. Barret Bowman, Dreamboat Captain (Content Director), and myself, Keri Blunt, Chief Dreams Orchestrator (Chief Content Officer), were brainstorming ideas for the anthem piece for the new Circle G model. We knew the content for the new circular model should be hipster focused, but that was it.

A typical starting point for goodr videos is finding a video to spoof and going to town making fun of it. After some discussion, Cap’n Bowman shared M. Night Shyamalan’s thriller trailer for The Happening.

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Hilarious, right???

From there, it was easy. Together, we envisioned a world in which our two non-hipster heroes were way too scared while absolutely nothing was happening. In fact, the hipsters would all be downright friendly. We jotted down a list of absurd hipster things to incorporate in the spot (in addition to the Circle Gs, of course). Avocado toast, scarves, hula hoops, axe throwing, cats on leashes, iced coffee in mason jars with metal straws, free poems written on typewriters...you get it.

It would be a hipsterdemic!

RECORD SCREECH.

Clearly, we had no idea there would soon be a real-life pandemic making our parody movie trailer eerily of-the-moment upon its March 27, 2020, release. Once Coronavirus was a serious threat, we questioned whether people would find this funny in light of the current events, but, we decided to move forward with posting, and just added a disclaimer in the post copy...

IMPORTANT FACT: Coronovirus is really serious (stay safe). Hipsters are not. We made this commercial 4 months ago about a hipsterdemic. (YIKES.) The time is now to either embrace your avocado-loving overlords or prepare for everything you own to be pickled.

We didn’t have any negative response to the ad - phew!

Now, where were we - oh right, behind the scenes!

I won’t bore you with the details, but from the train birth, we developed the script and got moving on pre-production with the rest of The Department of Dreams pre-production team, Brittany Meyerhardt (The Lucid Dream, aka Producer), and Rhea Bothe (Sew Dreamy, aka Props and Wardrobe).

The shoot went down on November 25 and 26th, 2019, with locations in Burbank and Downtown LA.

movie sticks for good sunglasses
(This device is used to make a sound that is visually shown on film and audibly heard on sound so that the editor can sync sound and visual. Oh - you knew that. Well, f you then.)

This was the most complicated goodr production to-date, with 3 locations, 16 talent, 15 crew, 11 extras (mostly goodr employees) and 2 cats...mind you, we are still a very low budget production company, so the Department of Dreams doubled as extras and crew, because - cheaper - and one of our locations was a friends’ house, because - dirt cheap.

hipsters in round running sunglasses
hipster round sunglasses on man and woman
The best part? For Day 2, shot at Vista Hermosa Park in downtown Los Angeles, we had our own rented fancy outhouse. #madeit (actually, just a requirement to secure the permit, but it made us feel legit…)

goodr CEO carl the flamingo in round sunglasses
(goodr CEO Carl the Flamingo sits on his privileged ass while everyone else works.)

Some highlights from the shoot include:

goodr Bike Brand Manager, Doug Orey, went from hipster to postman for the opening shot of The Circling. This bold move required him to shave his glorious beard. He had not been completely clean shaven since roughly 2005. How do you like that unintentional pun?

hipster black sunglasses
freshly shaved postman
(Loyalty to one’s job at goodr runs DEEP.)

Chief Blunt and Dream Tinker (Post-production Specialist) Duncan Coe, both played “Jump Lunge Cat Walker.” The cats were on leashes and were both doing great in holding, but once they were brought to set and the pressure was on, both cats folded under pressure. Hence they are being held as opposed to walked on leashes (which would’ve been more hipster, right?) in the final spot.

the filming of a movie with round hipster sunglasses
(Director of Photography Megan Stacey and Assistant Camera Travis Shannon are two people with four first names.)

Cap’n Bowman was featured in the last split second of a tease for The Circling released February 28th.

movie director goodr sunglasses
After playing a hipster extra in some scenes shot in downtown Los Angeles, Chief Publishing Pelican of goodr, Shelby Farrell, headed back to the parking lot a few blocks away. She later said, “All I could think of on my walk back to the car was a fun new reality show: ‘Drop a hipster off in the middle of a big city with nothing but a broken flip phone and tell them to find their car. Good luck!’”

round sunglasses hipster attack
(Actors Bill Posley and Katie O’Brien looked to Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel in the trailer for character development and inspiration. Just kidding. Oh, and BTW that is Shelby there on the right, wearing a green jumpsuit from my personal closet. #goodrfam)

And now...the riveting sixty-second spot. Resistance is futile.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Keri Blunt, co-founder, oversees the Department of Dreams at goodr and is the curator of the goodr brand voice, because... that’s pretty much just her voice. You wouldn’t know she’s such an asshole when meeting her, but her true essence shines through when writing goodr copy. As is evident in this article, she is better at writing short form than blog posts.