"First Kiss," a beautiful short film featuring 20 strangers kissing for the first time, went viral this week and racked up more than 25 million views.
While some critics say the film is basically ad featuring lots of professional entertainers, but the creator behind it insists it's 100 percent real.
Fashion designer Melissa Coker says that despite its production quality and dazzling cast, everything that happens in the ad is real and wonderful.
"Everyone was a volunteer," Coker said, adding that the 20 people in it were friends of either herself, director Tatia PIlieva or her clothing brand, Wren.
"It's kind of funny," she adds, that "the dialogue that sort of developed online and everything where people are like, 'This isn't real, there's actors in it!'
"Well, there's some people whose profession is actor, but it's L.A. after all, I can't help but have actor friends. But everything that you see is 100% authentic."
"It's real and exactly as how the video explains it."
In the video, a series of couples, attired in Wren's Fall 2014 line, tentatively approach each other after being asked to kiss for the first time ever.
The pairs of good-looking people circle each other awkwardly, then, for the most part, end up locking lips passionately ... and then some in certain cases.
The cast includes Damian Kulash of OK GO, Z Berg of The Like and JJAMZ, models Natalia Bonifacci and Ingrid Schram, and actors Karim Saleh, Matthew Carey and Jill Larson.
According to Coker, the shoot was thrown together rather quickly at the end of February, and the people involved were told very little before arriving.
Only Coker herself and the director knew which pairs would end up together in "First Kiss" and no one knew each other before being asked to embrace.
"'Action' was never called. 'Cut' was never called," she said.
"People didn't necessarily know when they were being filmed or not. I think that kind of adds to the really authentic, sweet, awkward moments that you see."
In other words, although some of the people involved are actors by trade, there was no acting in the video at all; all the bumbles and nuzzles are legit.
Coker said that her company tries to work in surprising ways.
"That I want to watch. That I want to work on. That would live beyond the seasonality of a clothing cycle. I don't want this to feel like a commercial.
"I want make something that's interesting," she said. "The worst thing that I could imagine is watching something and there's a closeup of, like, a shirt."
Mission accomplished ... and then there's this twist:
Her "First Kiss" viral video/Wren campaign sparked a real love connection between at least one pair: the two women, one of which, Soko, scored the video.
"I know [they] left the shoot together and went and spent the day in the park," Coker said, also revealing that the two later hung out at an event.
Hard to get much more authentic than that.
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