Don't look now, but the ad men in "Mad Men" have some talented competition right here in the Battlefords.
The talent belongs to Sujith Kumar Vilasini, known professionally as Sujith Vigneshwar, an employee of Battlefords Publishing.
The recent immigrant is the 2013 winner of the "My SGI Video Contest" for directing a video ad for Saskatchewan Government Insurance.
The theme of the video was to show audiences how easy it was to use SGI's online services to register a car, renew your plates, or to do any of the other services they offer.
"That was my concept of the video," said Vilasini - to "make your life easy."
Vilasini put together the video with the help of some other Battlefords Publishing employees he recruited to be actors in the video.
Appearing in the video are Gary and Joyce Wappel s well as a few other acquaintances from work.
"My actors are all from here," he said.
The result was a video running just over three minutes long promoting SGI's online services.
Vilasini applied experience from his native India to the production.
"Back home I was into video production and television for eight years," said Vilisini.
His credits include work with TV channels in Kerala, India as well as with JaiHind TV as a senior program producer. He also has experience producing and directing TV commercials, having spent a couple of years doing directing and acting work in India. He says you can find many of his videos on YouTube.
Sujith had no trouble shooting the My SGI video submission using a small video camera. He edited the finished piece on a computer for final submission.
Helping as well was his knowledge of video production such as proper lighting techniques, which added to the quality of the final submission.
Sujith even added some stock footage at the end from a video he had shot the previous summer of a car driving down a country road on a summer day.
For his efforts Vilasini wins a grand prize of $1,000 from SGI. He said he was very happy to win the contest and says it encourages him to keep pursuing his video efforts. He's also grateful for the co-operation he received from the others who participated.
The finished ad can be viewed online at YouTube under MY-SGI AD, under the name Sujith Vigneshwar.
