Aussie owned ad agency Mistress, Los Angeles gives a Red Bull comedy TV series wings

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Screen shot 2010-10-03 at 9.47.37 PM.pngMistress, Los Angeles, started earlier this year by Aussie expat creative directors Damien Eley and Scott Harris (ex-Mother London and BMF Sydney), has completed On The Wings Of Glory, a five-part comedy TV series about Red Bull’s ‘Flugtag’ – an event where teams attempt to fly homemade human-powered flying machines off a 30-foot pier into the water. The show’s finale airs on Fox Sports in the US tonight.

The series, that follows six teams through the process of constructingtheir craft, is centered around a host that becomes so inspired by thefootage he’s reporting on that he creates his own craft that doubles asa fully-functioning TV studio set. While presenting live at thePhiladelphia Flugtag, the set ‘unfolds’ to become a flying craft and helaunches the whole thing, cameras, lights and all, mid-sentence, offthe 30-foot drop into the water in front of 100,000 people.

“It’s the first show in the history of television to be constructed and destroyed before your eyes” says Eley.

Screen shot 2010-10-03 at 9.47.53 PM.pngTheseries, which has proved a top-rating show on Fox Sports Network, isthe first time Red Bull has embarked on a comedy series.  Mistresswrote and co-produced the show while the team footage was shot andedited by 5th House Productions who spent months following the teamsand developing storylines.  Mistress also created the eight-spot TVtune-in campaign (filmed live in the Fox Sports studios) along withexperiential stunts, and an extensive interactive digital campaignin which consumers can digitally construct their own Flugtag craft andsend the show’s host, Bert Kreischer, to ‘crash’ other websites.

As Harris explains,”it’s a collision of culture, entertainment and marketing”.

TheAussie expats say that Mistress is also working on long-formentertainment projects for ESPN and Mattel. Eley said of the newagency’s approach: “We’re finding that being able to not only solvemarketing problems with content, but to be able to surround thatcontent with advertising that is entertainment in itself, is a big partof the Mistress offering. And there’s no better place than LA to mixall those things together”.