Most videos created to "go viral" fail to achieve that goal for any number of reasons, but "Guy Walks Across America" is a classic viral video success story. Created for Levi's by Peter Cote and Blake Heal, 2008 graduates of Azusa Pacific University's film program and owners of Conscious Minds Productions, the 2,770-frame stop-motion short follows model Michael Johnson as he walks across America. Shot on a Canon EOS 5D Mk II as a series of consecutive still images, the video has a raw, handmade feel that helps convey the ambition of the endeavor.

"Guy Walks Across America"
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How did you get this assignment?
Peter Cote: We did a spec Levi's spot that worked with their "Go Forth" campaign. We hadn't really intended to send it to Levi's. We did it to show other companies that we can produce high-quality content. But then we decided to send it Levi's after all, and a few weeks later they gave us a call and asked us to pitch another idea for a project.

Was the spec also stop motion?
Cote: No. It was all motion. We shot it on the Canon 7D with four lenses, a tripod and a Glidecam for moving shots. We funded it ourselves, and we were very resourceful. We had a crew of four and five actors and shot it in one day around L.A.

So you pitched the idea of "Guy Walks Across America" and they said, "Go for it?"
Blake Heal: They gave us the green light and a very modest budget the first week of June and asked if we could have it all finished by July 4th. We thought that was crazy, but we did it.

What was your crew like for this one?
Cote: Sam Griffith was the director, and Blake and I produced it. I shot it and I had a camera assistant. We had an almost full-time driver and the model, Michael.

How much did you prepare? Or did you just wing it?
Heal: We prepared very carefully. Peter took video of the model walking in place before we started the real shoot. Everything he does—hitchhiking, putting on sunglasses, taking a drink of water—was planned out ahead of time. We exported that footage from [Adobe] After Effects to an [Apple] iPad so we could see the actions and frame numbers while we were doing the real shoot.

Describe how you set up the 5D when you were shooting the stills that are used in the video.
Cote: We used a [Manfrotto] tripod to make sure we always had matching height and angle, and we shot with the 24-70mm f/2.8L lens all the way wide. I shot everything at an f/6.3, and we had the ISO at around 200—except when he's in Las Vegas at night, when we went up to 1250. Outside of that, about all we had was a tape measure and a protractor we made in Photoshop and printed out.

You got hits in the millions. Any thoughts on what makes some videos go viral?
Cote: Some videos that get a lot of attention are completely crazy and outlandish or extremely sexy. Some, like ours, involve a project that clearly took so much time and effort to do. It isn't some kind of effect. It's completely real. I think people appreciate that.