MURDER AT THE MANOR – The Diemersfontein Wines Web series

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In a interesting and exciting first for the South African wine industry, Diemersfontien Wines teamed up with filmmakers Richard Lackey and Leon Laubscher to create a dramatic narrative viral web series called "Murder at the Manor" as a fun and entertaining way to engage fans and promote the Diemersfontein brand on social networks.

"Branded Entertainment" is a catch phrase in social media globally with brands such as Intel spearheading some very innovative video and interactive web based content in their recent "Visual Life" campaign. The series showcased top bloggers discussing how they use technology and how it has transformed their work.

The first Film of Intel's Visual Life series documented the work of fashion blogger and photographer Scott Schumann, The Sartorialist. The Film generated around a quarter of a million views in its first two weeks and has been viewed more than 850,000 times on YouTube and the Intel website, helping increase Intel’s YouTube channel views 200%.

Hollywood and various corporate giants including Intel are taking "branded entertainment" a few steps further with recent news that John Fogelman and J.J. Abrams are launching Factory made Ventures with four global clients: Telefonica, Hasbro, RTL Group, and Intel.

For Diemersfontein Wines, and for "Murder at the Manor" producer Richard Lackey, this was a great opportunity to collaborate on such a project, gather real metrics and data on the performance of a "branded entertainment" campaign that specifically relates to the South African online landscape and paves the way for similar future productions in the Wine industry and others. His company Conitech is specializing in branded entertainment and viral content for social media marketing within the South African landscape.

For four days in August this year the clock was turned back to 1936 at the Manor House and surrounding grounds of Diemersfontein Wine & Country Estate and the location became a live movie set. Rene May, PR and online manager of Diemersfontein says "Social media has become an extremely powerful tool in brand marketing and online PR interaction, so with this first ever brand-movie in the South African wine industry (or globally infact) we feel really proud of this production, and certainly look forward to seeing the reaction of our fans."

The nine characters were based on the characteristics of nine of Diemersfontein's wines. These included the two Pinotage sisters, Diemersfontein (Diemie) and Carpe Diem Pinotage (Ceedee), Viognier and his wife Shiraz, the Lord and Lady of the Manor with their daughter Summer (Summer's Lease), her love interest Cabbie (Carpe Diem Cabernet Sauvignon), Chenin, Malbec the detective, and of course the deceased Heaven's Eye....

"Once the characters were defined and developed, we put them in a situation and the story almost wrote itself" says director and co-writer Leon Laubscher. Far from being dark or macabre, it's rather light-hearted, with a healthy twist of "tongue in cheek"."

With the assistance (and co-production) of Muddville Dubai, the production was shot digitally with the state of the art Red EPIC-M camera, shooting at well over four times HD resolution. Murder at the Manor was one of the first productions of any kind to shoot with this specific camera in South Africa, probably on the continent. Post production was done by Richard in-house with the final grade and finish being completed on the state of the art Quantel Pablo at full "5K" (5120 x 2160 pixels) at Condor Cape Town.

Richard goes on to say "It really was a collaborative effort, my heartfelt thanks goes out to Jacques Mulder and his wife Leigh of Muddville, Dubai for the opportunity to shoot with the best digital cinema camera on the planet, also to Media Film Service for the Arri Ultra Prime lenses, accessories, grips and lighting, to MXFX for the smoke machine, and to Afraid of Mice for the genuine vintage ladies wardrobe. Also to everyone at Diemersfontein Wines for taking a leap of faith with us!"

The men were outfitted by Tuxedo Junction, Stellenbosch and a vintage Mercedes was brought in so that no detail was left out. Make up was done to perfection by Nadia Greeff.

The scenery and images speak for themselves, and the first "webisode" (there are 5 in total, each of them 5-7min long) went live on 22 October at the Diemersfontein Pinotage on Tap festival in Cape Town. You can view the episodes (which will be made available over a series of weeks) as they are released either on Diemersfontein's website, Youtube or Diemersfontein on Facebook.

Murder at the Manor has also been cut into a standalone short film and will shortly be submitted to various international film festivals, including Sundance.

Watch Murder at the Manor