Oh good god. These people act like they've never seen the One Bank video. I'm not exactly sure what it is about the fusion internal corporate communications and rock, but I find it to be the most beguilingly depressing genre of all human expression. It just says to me, "People, we gave this society thing a shot, and we failed."
But I digress... I haven't participated in the production of a corporate video for 4 or 5 years now (mercifully), but I'd have to say that there's no way this was as cheap as it looks to the average joe viewer. Cost-driving factors include:
1) The composition and recording an original 3:00 song. The song may suck, but it's capably played, and recorded and mixed well enough to hear everything through crappy computer speakers.
2) Actors. There must have been at least 20 of them. While most were probably employees or associates or Microsoft or the production team, I would not be surprised if they actually hired a casting agent to find the guy who played Bruce. Or if in fact several of the cast were paid actors.
3) There are at least five sets -- the rock club, office #1, the stairway, the hallway, and office #2. With the exception of the stairway, they're probably all professionally lit. The camera guy may have lit the office stuff alone, but I doubt he did the club. Which probably had to be rented. The office spaces were probably free, but every time you have to light some place it's going to add time, which adds cost.
4) Speaking of rentals, those crappy costumes (the criminal, the security system guy) probably set them back more than you would expect. They also had to get a telecaster, a drum set, a sax, and whatever other shitty instruments. And a fog machine.
5) Food. They had to feed all to sad souls who were cruelly assigned by fate to participate in this.
6) Corporate bureaucracy. If this was distributed widely within the company, each decision probably had to be approved by 3-5 different people, which... actually that doesn't usually drive up costs. That just fucks the producers who were told the job would last one week, but then it lasts 6 weeks, and their flat rate stays the same, but their profits fly swiftly into the shitpile.
Point being, knowing that a one-camera, no-lights, no-editing 2 hour shoot of speakers at a conference can cost $1000, the I'll guess that this pile of crap cost $25,000. Although knowing that it was some effort by Microsoft to get its employees really jazzed about how much their products "rock" I honestly would not be surprised to find out it cost $50,000.
But man, now I really want to know. Surely the internodes can offer up someone who knows more about this than me. Maybe we should ask metafilter.
Yeah, it's totally fake, which is worse because it wasn't a company's money, it was a few people's time. LOTS of their time.
What makes you say it's fake? I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that the guy playing the CEO is some known senior Microsoft guy.
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