The story behind that gigantic ad over the 101

Good morning. It’s Friday, March 27. Expect a depraved marriage of hot and cloudy for the entire day, pretty much everywhere.

In today’s edition, we dig into the details behind the very large sign that’s been up over the Cahuenga Pass all week and present some optional activities for your weekend.

Billy Boman had never been to L.A. before this week, when he was flown out to see his name in 30-foot high letters on a hill overlooking the 101.

A video director from Stockholm who works exclusively with AI rendering technology, Boman was chosen to be the face of a promotional campaign by the online freelance service marketplace Fiverr for their new AI Video Hub. The Hub is a clearinghouse for AI directors like Boman, “giving brands a direct path to commission cinema-quality commercials, social content, and brand films,” according to the company’s press release.

To promote it, the company erected a giant structure in the style of the Hollywood sign over the Cahuenga Pass last weekend, putting Billy Boman’s Fiverr handle on display above one of the busiest highways in the country.

To get permission to build the sign, Fiverr sought permits from FilmLA — a nonprofit contracted by L.A. City and County to streamline local productions, mainly by helping filmmakers connect with different government departments.

FilmLA is charged with supporting on-location filmmaking, not negotiating advertising deals. But in their application form for the approvals they needed, the Fiverr team told FilmLA the sign was just a set for a five-day “shoot.” Fiverr would use the sign, the form said, as a “scenic backdrop” for a “narrative based digital content concept.”

But the sign is very obviously not just a “scenic backdrop” for an ad. It is an ad.

And the team that put up the sign seem to agree that it’s an ad. Nir Refuah, Head of Creative at Fiverr, told us in an email that the sign was an “installation… part of Fiverr’s creative way of announcing the launch of its AI Video Hub in Los Angeles.”

Billy Boman himself, over a Zoom from his hotel Thursday morning, called it “the guerilla campaign of the century.”

Boman has worked in AI for about three years, after previous stints in fashion design and tech. While he has eschewed traditional film production, he told us he has great respect for the medium. “I’m a die hard movie nerd,” he said, showing off the Fight Club T-shirt he was wearing. He went to Mel’s Diner for his first dinner in town.

To Boman, his name serving as the campaign symbolizes the humanity behind the fully artificial production process.

“People can go in [to the AI Video Hub] and look that these are people using the tools to essentially create new work… and make video for brands that never would have the budget,” he said.

Why did Fiverr and Boman promote their AI production services by constructing a huge wooden sign that could easily have been rendered with AI?

“That is, of course, because of the location,” said Boman. “We're literally underneath the Hollywood Hills. And to me, what that symbolizes is that we're adding something. We're not taking the Hollywood sign away.”

Refuah also told us that putting up the sign in L.A. was meant to send a message.

“For years, producing high-quality brand video meant navigating the same model Hollywood popularized: large production crews, agency oversight, lengthy timelines, and budgets that locked out most businesses,” he said. “A new class of AI directors are dismantling that model, delivering work that rivals traditional studio and big-agency output.”

The dismantling of the traditional Hollywood model would, of course, also dismantle FilmLA, the nonprofit that oversaw the permitting — along with much of the local economy.

We reached out to FilmLA to ask what Fiverr and its production team paid for five days of hillside ad space over a freeway.

The total? $1526.

That’s a FilmLA permit application fee of $931.00, an LAFD fee of $285.00, and two smaller FilmLA fees.

According to Alluvit Media, an outdoor advertising company, a billboard on Sunset Boulevard that earns about 375,000 weekly “impressions” costs about $5,500 per week. The stretch of the 101 under the Fiverr sign, by comparison, has about a quarter million vehicles drive past it every day. And the sign is roughly ten times bigger than a traditional billboard.

“The advertising value of the set piece is not a consideration in the vetting process,” a FilmLA spokesperson said.

GETTING BETTER: Patt Morrison, celebrated journalist, host, and documenter of California history, has a four-part series at the L.A. Times chronicling our decades-long, surprisingly successful battle against smog — including the story of how a Dutch scientist and racehorse urine tester figured out what it was made of.

NOWHERE MAN: Few voters have heard of Dave Regan, but the health care union chief wields an enormous amount of power in California politics. In a new profile, Politico goes deep on how the SEIU-UHW boss has leveraged California’s ballot initiative system to shape policy fights, including the current conflict over the “billionaire tax.”

NOT A SECOND TIME: In a cabinet meeting Thursday, President Donald Trump idly speculated about sending federal troops back to Los Angeles. The president called on mayors of several Democratic cities to welcome troops in to “stop the crime”: “We could do that for L.A. and we could do that for, frankly, San Francisco.”

YOU NEVER GIVE ME YOUR MONEY: The L.A. County District Attorney’s Office announced charges today against a former LAUSD IT staffer who helped send $22 million in school district contracts to a company that gave her $3 million in kickbacks. The administrator allegedly sent a text that included the phrase “I broke all law for you already lol.”

BABY, YOU’RE A RICH MAN: Paul McCartney is in town this weekend, performing a pair of unusually intimate shows at the 1,200-person Fonda Theatre on Friday and Saturday night. A handful of tickets have been popping up on resale sites for roughly the price of a used car.

WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM MY FRIENDS: To commemorate Transgender Day of Visibility, this Sunday night the LGBT Center in Hollywood is hosting a performance by Mariachi Arcoiris de Los Angeles, the self-proclaimed “first and only LGBTQ+ Mariachi in the world,” along with two other queer ensembles.

PAPERBACK WRITER: The Octavia E. Butler Magnet, a dual-language STEAM middle school in Pasadena, is hosting its annual Science Fiction Festival honoring its namesake novelist from 3PM to 6PM today. A few miles away at the Huntington Gardens, you can catch their wisteria canopies before their two-week bloom ends Wednesday.

RUBBER SOUL: Fans of Howie Mandel, slip-in footwear and hologram technology are guaranteed the best night of their lives tonight, when Mandel appears at the Skechers store in Manhattan Beach alongside an “AI hologram” version of himself.

For today’s peek inside our subscriber-only Discord server, L.A. Material contributor @Alex Zaragoza discovers a celebrity impersonator dog in #plants-and-animals.

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