Meribel 2007

Created in 2001 and now in its seventh year, Cannes somewhat cooler boutique-style cousin - the Meribel Ad festival has managed to attract over 1000 of the industries finest and most fearless to chuck themselves down the slopes, conduct some business in the snow and then gather to honour Europe’s best work in the Cristal Awards.

The Festival unites all corners of the ad world: Principal agencies, producers, directors, media buyers, survey companies and TV producers and since 2004 has opened up to the whole of Europe.


This year was the largest Meribel ad festival yet - and we at the Reel were there to check it out.

After a fairly shonky British Airways flight (they managed to completely break quite a lot of the stuff we took with us – nice one BA) and a lengthy journey from the airport we began to climb into the beauty of the Meribel mountain range, and it quickly became apparent why the festival has such a great reputation, and has gained in popularity year on year with industry top brass.

With the clouds beneath us and everyone sporting ski’s and rather big coats, Meribel is a chilly but effective place of business. This year the festival was boasting a few big named speakers such as JC Decaux, and also held several workshops and forums (one from our sister publication Contagious).

So, Beautiful setting, 1000 industry players, what was the bloody work like we hear you cry!??

The award winners this year were well deserved, with the overall winner going to a rather famous drumming simian, that has not only conquered the UK, but now appears to have bashed his way to the top spot in Europe also. Fallon’s ‘Gorilla’ for Cadbury’s won the grand Film Cristal.

The rest of the award winners were as follows – and can all be found on The Reel site.

Grand Crystal: ‘Gorilla’ Cadburys
Food / Beverage: ‘Cake’ Skoda
Insurance / Banking: ‘Never trust a man’ Mercator Insurance
Services (other than financial) ‘Belonging’ Orange
Public Awareness Messages ‘Ocean Initiatives’ Surfrider Foundation
Tourism / Sport ‘Hotel’ PS3
Retail: ‘Backstage’ Harvey Nichols
Media: ‘Gali the Alligator’ 13EmeRue
Beauty: ‘Sea of Skin’ Vaseline
Fashion: ‘Dangerous Liaison’ Levis
Charities: ‘Scary Tale’ Dr Dee Dawson for PAED


A warm mug of cocoa, and few dinners later (coupled with a bunch of of black runs under our belts) The Reel will most certainly be back in the cold climes of Meribel next year to see what’s what and who is tumbling down the slopes at high speed…

NewsReel12/12/07

Advent-urous!

As a pleasing follow-up to last week’s Green feature, a number of companies have gone for the Green option of sending e-Christmas cards this year. The more studious have rather cleverly even included an advent calendar, and one of the best is from DLKW. It includes a daily treat of ideas, lists, and tips to help the beneficiary enjoy Christmas to the fullest, and they’re giving the money saved from postage and packaging to Marie Curie Cancer Care and The Stroke Association. Everyone's a winner. Click here to see what's behind today's window.


Young Guns announced

52 countries. 60 finalists. 71 bullets. No, the result was not some kind of mass killing spree, but some happy creatives from around the globe being awarded for their good work at this year's Young Guns Award.

Below are the recipients of the two key awards (it would seem the future is bright for advertising across the Atlantic):

Jeff Anderson and Isaac Silvergate from TBWACHIATDAY New York are the 2007 Young Guns of the Year. The best young creative talent globally in 2007 as recognised by the YGAward jury.
Their Mars 'Combos - what your mom would feed you if your mom was a man' campaign won 2 Gold and 4 Silver Bullets in TV and Radio.

As the Young Guns of the Year they also win US$20,000 and a place on the 2008 YGAward jury.

Nate Virnig, Jesse Synder and Rene Delgado from Miami Ad School Minneapolis are the 2007 Student Young Guns of the Year for their ‘Red Bull Campaign’ idea.
They also win a three-month paid placement at a Leo Burnett Worldwide office of their choice and US$5,000 to help them get there.

To download the full list of the winners and finalists this year click here.

Aussie Awards

There was a big night for the Australian film industry last week, with the 49th Australian Film Institute Awards. Among the winners were Sydney’s Fuel VFX, who picked up award in a number of categories including a Gold for their excellent work on Sony’s ‘Kiss’. Never ones to miss the opportunity to let you view the best work (and show off the size of our archive!) you can view the ad below.



You can also take a look at the full list of winners at Thursday’s Loreal Paris AFI Awards 2007 here.

It's Sonny for Jeff

Those talented folks at Sonny, London, have been joined by Jeff Thomas. The director, whose recent work includes spots for Prudential and Vauxhall, will be represented worldwide by Sonny (excluding US). Also, as it’s that special time of year, it would be rude not to mention that he co-directed the video for ‘Christmas Is All Around’, and here it is (if you’re feeling particularly sado-masochistic, why not even turn up the volume?!)

Meribel has begun

Meribel is off and running. Look out for our special report from the French resort next week and, if you’re going out there, please be nice to the representatives from The Reel.

Weekly short film festival

Short and Sweet, the only weekly short film festival in London, has been going from strength to strength since its launch a year and a half ago. In July it expanded into the West End and now runs on Mondays on Brick Lane and Tuesdays at AKA WC1. Founder Julia Stephenson and her small team work tirelessly to deliver the best in short films, music videos and animation from around the globe, with the intention to inspire, unearth some of the best new talent around and provide a great and FREE place to network.

Once again, as the newsletter is going out on a Wednesday, we’ve missed the opportunity to tell you who’s there, but the Short & Sweet end of year party is still on Tuesday 18th December at the AKA Bar in Soho.

For more info contact:
ben@shortandsweet.tv
julia@shortandsweet.tv

NewsReel 27/11/07

The NewsReel is the new way for you to tell us your news and for us to tell everyone. Please send any adland news you may have at your disposal to Sam@thereel.net and we'll do our best to make sure it appears here.

Jung von Matt
The German publication ‘Manager Magazin’, a magazine for German managers, has once again compiled its annual index of the most creative advertisers in Germany, and Jung von Matt, the home of October’s country feature guest editors Bernhard Lukas and Arnault Lindemann, have clinched the top spot as the best ATL advertising agency and best internet advertiser.

The agency, with offices in Hamburg and Berlin, also topped five out of six categories in ‘Agentur Images ‘07’, a poll of 300 German marketing decision makers, conducted by the ‘Handelsblatt’ newspaper and the trade publication ‘Absatzwirtschaft’.

The awards are particularly noteworthy due to the impressive state of German advertising as a whole, if last month’s country feature is anything to go by, and we’re happy because it vindicates our decision to let them take the reins of our much-loved country feature last month - if you didn’t get to see it, below is an example of the kind of thing you missed out on. Ooh, we do spoil you…

Title: Symphony in Red

Client: Konzerthaus Dortmund

Agency: Jung von Matt, Hamburg



Jake Wynne-s at Prime Focus
















Prime Focus London (the commercials and broadcast post-production company born of the merger between Clear, VTR and The Hive) have brought in ex-HSI director/editor Jake Wynne as a visual effects director and editor. Jake started his career as an editor and won the BTAA Best Commercial Editing Award for Lucozade’s ‘Mods’ spot in 1999 - click here to view – and as one half of directing duo Jake & Jim (the other half being Jim Canty) he has directed several high profile promos for artists such as Geri Halliwell, Stereophonics and Paul Weller, as well as commercials for Nescafe, Sony PS2 and The Observer.

Simon Huhtala, MD at PFL explains his reasons for bringing Jake on board, ‘I’ve been working with Jake for almost 10 years, he loves the craft of film-making and truly understands the role post-production has to play in it. As a long term client of ours I know he has as keen an eye and attention to detail as our artists here at PFL. I’m keen to offer Jake’s skills to our film clients as well as our advertising clients, especially where the visual effects are particularly heavy or the director can’t always be available to supervise.’

Jake reciprocated the glowing praise by saying, ‘It’s an exciting opportunity to spread my creative wings within a structure that is developing in a very forward thinking way.’

It looks like a match made in heaven and we at The Reel are looking forward to featuring some of the work that results.

Meri-bells ring out before Christmas









Entries for the competitions at this year’s Meribel ad festival have long been closed and the representatives from The Reel have been honing their snowball throwing skills (but of course they’d never aim for you) and the beautiful French resort is gearing up for the grand opening on the 11th December. Watch out for our Meribel feature in this month's Reel.

Weekly short film festival








Due to the unavoidably late distribution of the newsletter we were unable to inform you of the great offerings at Short and Sweet this week. However, in retrospect, the following directors were featured and a good time was had by all (we can assure you we’ll be back on time next week to let you know what’s going on in advance):

Damien Bapst and Dan Creteur, Ken Wardrop, Chris Nolan, George Wu, Martin De Thurah, Florian Grolig, Jamie Rafn, and a special performance from Tim Key.

EVERY MONDAY:
Venue: Cafe 1001, 91 Brick Lane
Time: Films START at 19h30

EVERY TUESDAY:
Venue: AKA Bar, 18 west central street
Time: Films START at 19h00

For more info contact:
ben@shortandsweet.tv
julia@shortandsweet.tv

NewsReel 19.11.07

The NewsReel is the new way for you to tell us your news and for us to tell everyone. Please send any adland news you may have at your disposal to sam@thereel.net and we'll do our best to make sure it appears here.

2AM in Harmony with Korine




















The Apollo Cinema on Regent Street was the venue for an exclusive screening of director Harmony Korine’s first film in 8 years, last week. The former wunderkind writer of Larry Clark’s ‘Kids’ and director of ‘Gummo’ and ‘Julien Donkey-Boy’ introduced the film to the specially invited audience including some hand-picked figures from the advertising industry and a couple of representatives from The Reel, on Wednesday. The event was hosted by 2AM Films, who are representing Harmony in his bid to establish himself as an ad and promo director. Featuring some great performances, particularly from Diego Luna in the lead role, the film focuses on the lives of a group of celebrity impersonators, including the aforementioned Luna as Michael Jackson and Samantha Morton as Marilyn Monroe, living in an idyllic hideaway in the Scottish highlands. Werner Herzog features in occasional interludes as a Reverend leading a group of South American nuns.

Website Wonder











Digital production company B-Reel and Fallon have come together to create a particularly unique ‘infinite’ website. The site has been built to promote the Sci Fi Channel’s re-imagining of 'The Wizard of Oz', entitled ‘The Tin Man'. It utilises ‘Zoomquilt’ technology, looping stunning flash scenes together, to create a continuous zoom that feels like it’s pulling you deeper into what looks to be an amazingly realised world. If you don’t get too mesmerised by the technology and pretty pictures you can stop and learn more about the mini-series featuring Alan Cumming and Richard Dreyfuss that premieres in the US on 2nd December and will surely be crossing the Atlantic soon after.

To view another remarkable 'Zoomquilt' animation click here

Cristal on ice









This year’s 7th Meribel Ad Festival, which will take place from December 11th to the 16th, will feature a new ranking for the most awarded advertising agencies, networks and producers, called the « Cristal Ranking ».

Following Donald Gunn, who has previously awarded the best in the European rankings of the Gunn Report at Meribel over the past four years, Patrick Collister will present the 2007 Won Report exclusively for the Festival, which will also include cross-media work.

The Won Report is an annual analysis of the world’s best direct marketing and digital advertising as measured by the quantity and quality of the awards won. It is compiled by Patrick Collister and has been published since 2003.


Weekly short film festival








Short and Sweet, the only weekly short film festival in London, has been going from strength to strength since its launch nearly a year and a half ago. In July it expanded into the West End and now runs on Mondays on Brick Lane and Tuesdays at AKA WC1. Founder Julia Stephenson and her small team work tirelessly to deliver the best in short films, music videos and animation from around the globe, with the intention to inspire, unearth some of the best new talent around and provide a great and FREE place to network.
Channel 4 will once again be present this week so an extra special programme has been planned, featuring work from: Laurie Hill, Emily & Matthew, Jeroen Offerman, Ed Roe & Dougal Wilson,
DA Pennebaker, Martin De Thurah, Marc Reisbig and Keith Bearden.

EVERY MONDAY:
Venue: Cafe 1001, 91 Brick Lane
Time: Films START at 19h30

EVERY TUESDAY:
Venue: AKA Bar, 18 west central street
Time: Films START at 19h00

For more info contact:
ben@shortandsweet.tv
julia@shortandsweet.tv

NewsReel 12.11.07

Donkey Kong scaffolding

In honour of the trailer for ‘The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters’ appearing in this month’s Reel as part of our Moxie Pictures feature, the Computerspiele Museum in Berlin erected a scaffolding and, with a few strategically placed printed canvas covers, turned it into a level screen of the uber video game, Donkey Kong. Alternatively, it could be that the building is undergoing a much-needed facelift and it’s an exceedingly clever way of promoting the soon to be re-opening gaming Mecca whilst utilising the essential but ugly scaffolding. You decide…

LINKS:
www.billyvssteve.com/

www.computerspielemuseum.de/english.html

Jonas&François win at MTV Europe Music Awards

We must be expressing our narcissistic tendencies this week because ‘Star Video’ winners at the MTV Europe Music Awards in Munich on 1^st November, Jonas&Francois, were featured in September’s Reel for their Kanye West ‘Good life’ video. The directing duo from Elnino @ 75 won the award for their clip for ‘D.A.N.C.E’ by the French group Justice. As with West’s video, they collaborated with art designers SoMe and the jaw-dropping result can be viewed below.

LINKS:

www.elnino.tv

www.75.tv

www.irene.fr

http://ema.mtv.co.uk/

Weekly short film festival

Short and Sweet, the only weekly short film festival in London, has been going from strength to strength since its launch nearly a year and a half ago. In July it expanded into the West End and now runs on Mondays on Brick Lane and Tuesdays at AKA WC1. Founder Julia Stephenson and her small team work tirelessly to deliver the best in short films, music videos and animation from around the globe, with the intention to inspire, unearth some of the best new talent around and provide a great and FREE place to network.

This week it features films from:

Tim Hamilton, Sil Van Der Woerd, Romain Segaud, Dave Waters, Keidrych Wasley (cinematographer) and Gergely Cziràki

EVERY MONDAY:

Venue: Cafe 1001, 91 Brick Lane

Time: Films START at 19h30

EVERY TUESDAY:

Venue: AKA Bar, 18 west central street

Time: Films START at 19h00

LINKS:
www.shortandsweet.tv

For more info contact:

ben@shortandsweet.tv

julia@shortandsweet.tv

Meribel entries closed

Entries for the competitions at this year’s Meribel ad festival have now closed. It’ll be the 11^th December and you’ll be drinking cocktails and chucking snowballs at each other in no time…just remember what your mothers told you and watch out for the yellow snow.

LINKS:
http://www.meribel-adfestival.com/

NewsReel 5/11/07

The NewsReel is the new way for you to tell us your news and for us to tell everyone. Please send any adland news you may have at your disposal to Sam@thereel.net and we'll do our best to make sure it appears here.

Green wing
The digital arm (or should that be wing?!) of Amarillo Films, Amarillo Wing, which launched earlier this year, was among the winners at the second annual Green Awards hosted at the Guildhall last Friday. The three films for ECOutlet ‘If’, ‘Fart’ and ‘Ships in Bottles’ were victorious in the Best New Media category and lived up to their green credentials as the animation for ‘Fart’ was drawn on recycled paper scavenged from a recycling bin.

The virals, created by Marco Puig, have been downloaded over 30,000 times and can be viewed at:
http://www.amarillowing.com/source/project/2007-07_ecout/ecoutlet.htm

If you’re interested in seeing the full list of winners go to: http://www.greenawards.co.uk/winners/winners_2007

LINKS:
www.AmarilloWing.com
www.AmarilloFilms.com

Golden Square dancing at the 'Disqo'
3D animators Matthew Stevens and Michael Little, and designer Daniel Lundh have joined Golden Square and will help fill the space created from their expansion into all 4 floors at number 4 Golden Square. The appointments and move into the fourth floor are part of the expansion of their digital design division, Disqo, and their 3D animation department.

Little, a regular 3D Animation freelancer at Golden Square, is a graduate of 3D Computer Animation at Swansea Institute of Higher Education. Since graduating in 2004, Michael has worked at Escape Studios where he completed a VFX Production Grade course. Michael established and continues to run the Swansea Institute School of Digital Media Forum.

Matthew Stevens joins Golden Square direct from University where he completed a BA in 3D Animation and Visualisation at the National Centre for Computer Animation, Bournemouth University. He recently worked on a Motorola advert for the Red charity campaign directed by Jonathan Glazer.

Daniel Lundh is a 24 year old Swedish motion graphics artist who will relocate from Stockholm where he currently freelances doing motion graphics for the web/video and broadcast television. Ewan Macleod, executive producer at Golden Square, explains why they’ve gone down the staff path, ‘By having designers in house we are able to design the characters from the Agency brief, build and then animate in 3D, offering the whole process to our clients, which is proving invaluable.’ Good news all round then.

LINKS:
http://www.goldensq.com

Watch out for the blank screen at the cinema
If the screen goes blank in the middle of the ads next time you’re at the cinema, don’t be concerned; the projectionist (probably) hasn’t fallen asleep, but your ears are about to be treated to the first ever radio spot aired in a cinema. Wave, RKCR/Y&R and Paul Burke Productions have created the spot for The Times BFI London Film Festival which is designed to work on both radio and in the cinema. Wave’s Aaron Reynolds commented, ‘…the overall effect had to be strong enough to standalone in a cinema without the aid of pictures. I deliberately made the effects big and confident, so that they’d sound totally epic when played out in cinema’s Dolby surround sound.’ Paul Burke of Paul Burke Productions obviously approved and described Aaron’s sound design as ‘quite magnificent.’ He added, ‘Strategically, it seemed the obvious place to run it and there's no law that says a cinema commercial has to have pictures.’ Quite right too, but don’t worry folks, you won’t be finding radio ads on The Reel anytime soon; something tells us it won’t quite work.

If you can't wait - and don't mind listening in slightly less than Dolby 5.0! - click play below.



LINKS:
www.wavestudios.co.uk
http://www.bfi.org.uk/whatson/lff/

Mel - On!
Pepper Melon, a motion-graphics company based in Buenos Aires, Argentina, has just launched. Between them they have a number of years’ experience and have previously worked on pieces for Nike, MTV Latin America, VH1 and Nickelodeon. Directors Tomás García and Fernando Sarmiento have achieved international recognition, including a win at Shift Japan 2007 and being part of the Pictoplasma screening selection 2006 (Berlin), among others.

For more info contact: Fernando.sarmiento@peppermelon.tv

LINKS:
http://www.peppermelon.tv

Two more kids in a Sweet Shop
Two directors from the Southern Hemisphere, Taika Waititi and Sam Holst, have been signed to The Sweet Shop’s roster for worldwide representation. New Zealand based Waititi made the official selection at Sundance for ‘Eagle Vs Shark.’ He’s also directed and written episodes of smash-hit comedy series ‘Flight of the Conchords’ and been Oscar-nominated for ‘Two Cars, One Night.’ Whilst Aussie Holst’s short film ‘Swing’ won the Make a Film. Make a Difference competition hosted by the Transport Accident Commission in Australia and went on to pick up a Silver Clio among other awards and nominations worldwide. He’s spent the past year learning his trade as in-house director’s assistant to Steve Ayson at The Sweet Shop.

Weekly short film festival








Short and Sweet, the only weekly short film festival in London, has been going from strength to strength since its launch nearly a year and a half ago. In July it expanded into the West End and now runs on Mondays on Brick Lane and Tuesdays at AKA WC1. Founder Julia Stephenson and her small team work tirelessly to deliver the best in short films, music videos and animation from around the globe, with the intention to inspire, unearth some of the best new talent around and provide a great and FREE place to network.

EVERY MONDAY: Venue: Cafe 1001, 91 Brick Lane Time: Films START at 19h00

EVERY TUESDAY: Venue: AKA Bar, 18 west central street Time: Films START at 19h00

This week featuring films from: Andrew Kotatko Imery Watson Vincent Baertsoen Colin O’Toole Sil Van Der Woerd Tom & Charles Guard.

For more info contact:
ben@shortandsweet.tv
julia@shortandsweet.tv

LINKS:
www.shortandsweet.tv

Meribel entries closing









The clocks have not long gone back and the nights are closing in; Christmas and the end to another bumper year of creativity are fast approaching. But first, over 900 delegates are set to dust down their ski jackets and descend on the French resort of Meribel for another round of awards and back-slapping. The submissions deadline has been extended to Friday 9th November so visit http://www.meribel-adfestival.com/EN/competitions.html to get them in. See you on the slopes!