NewsReel 07/02/08

Be Kind Rewind

Last night The Curzon Mayfair played host to an advance screening of Michel Gondry’s new film ‘Be Kind Rewind’ hosted by the lovely people at Partizan. As is sometimes the case (it could always be more. Wink-wink-nudge-nudge), a small delegation from The Reel was invited along to see what delights have spilled from the furtive imagination of one of our all-time favourite directors. The film itself is a great improvement on the rather confused last offering from Gondry that was ‘The Science of Sleep’ and features flawless performances from Jack Black and Mos Def. The feel-good factor is sky-high without being patronising and, as you would expect from Gondry, the film re-makes – or ‘swedes’ - contain moments of absolute genius. There’s also a great website that features trailers for the ‘sweded’ films.

Nick's Gorgeous
Arch baiter of public and authoritarian figures Nick Broomfield recently moved away from his idiosyncratic documentary style into drama with his Channel 4 film ‘Ghosts’ and, more recently, Iraq War dramatisation ‘Bridge for Haditha’. He is now turning his hand to commercials for the first time since a brief foray for VW and DDB in 1999 (Kyoto, Dead Sea, and Plastic) and will be represented by Gorgeous.

All aboard for Station Films
LA, New York and London have themselves a new production company with Hungry Man co-founder Stephen Orent launching Station Film. Directors Owen Harris, Harold Einstein, Vance Malone, David Gray and Brendan Gibbons are already on the roster with more promised. Watch this space for the first work to come out of this new collection of talented people.


Short and Sweet
This week Short and Sweet showcased some great shorts from directors including Dale Heslip, Justin Stokes, Simon Taylor, E-Flat, Mitch Stratten, Darren Young, Luce & Lex
Cathal O’Brien & Rumia Bloch. Next week, as always, London’s only weekly short film festival will be at the following place at the following time:

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

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

Balls to adverts

Around this time every year the US is brought to a standstill as Super Bowl Sunday comes around. However, just as important as the plays, the sacks, the wide receivers and the quarter backs are the ads that are sandwiched in between the gridiron action. 30-second spots can go up to a staggering $3 million, but brands arguably get value for money, with last year's ads from Coca-Cola, Doritos and Budweiser et al being viewed by a national audience of around 93 million people. As the sporting and ad bonanza is due to take place this weekend, we decided to take a look at what the brands rich enough to present their wares to a captive audience of millions of football fans offered up last year...and then compare it to our very own FA Cup Final, because we're creative like that.

Let’s ignore the fact that we just can’t compete with the kind of figures I’ve already mentioned above - around 12 million people watched the FA Cup Final in homes last year and over 75% of those watched it on the ad-free BBC – we’re only interested in the ads themselves. The comparison makes much more sense that way.

Last year’s Super Bowl featured a victory for the Indianapolis Colts against the Chicago Bears and, considering American television’s penchant for ad breaks, probably around 100 ads, including Coca-Cola ‘Happiness Factory’, Budweiser ‘Mind of Mencia’ and Chevrolet ‘Car Wash’. Sky Sports 1’s coverage of an exceedingly lacklustre FA Cup Final victory for Chelsea against Man Utd treated us to ads including WKD ‘Robot’, Bulmer’s ‘Born for Ice’ and Honda’s ‘Hondamentalism’. Although we intend to leave the examples at three on each side, a special mention also has to go to the odd/bold (delete as applicable) screening of Flomax ‘Biking’ stateside.

‘Happiness Factory’ pretty much sums up the Super Bowl: much-hyped, big, expensive and spectacular. For our sporting showcase event there was nothing to touch it in terms of scale, but Bulmer’s ‘Born for Ice' is similar in the way CGI is used to create a pleasing ad that is designed to get the predominantly male audiences supping from a bottle (or can).

WKD and Bud Light have three things in common – which we know about, anyway: they’re alcoholic drinks; they’re alcoholic drinks that have a less than masculine reputation; they’re alcoholic drinks with a less than masculine reputation that aired humourous ads in the ad breaks of major sporting events last year. We're not sure about the Bud spot - Carlos Mencia is a stranger around these parts - but The Reel editorial team can attest to the fact that ‘Robot’ was a great creative success, with many friends and family getting out their drills, none of them have drunk a WKD in our presence though. C'est la vie.

Honda’s ‘Hondamentalism’ was another addition to what has been a consistently great series of ads from the creative minds at Wieden + Kennedy, London. Ever since the seminal ‘Cog’ broke in 2003 they’ve been churning out top-notch creative that has put the Honda brand in the hearts and minds of many. Chevrolet, on the other hand, challenged College kids throughout America to come up with an ad to feature in their Super Bowl spot. The winner was University of Wisconsin student Katelyn Crabb; her victorious idea is not particularly subtle, unlike the Honda spot, but then again, that’s not what the Super Bowl is about.

Well, there you go: an intuitive and enlightening case study on the differences and similarities between us and our cousins over the Atlantic, concisely delivered under the pretence of looking at ads. Don’t fret, though, we’ll get back to doing what we do best next week: watching pretty pictures…whilst downing WKDs.

NewsReel 31/01/08

Remember to keep sending in all your adland news - even if it is just shameless self promotion - and we'll do our best to feature it here. Please send all press releases or anything that could fall under the banner of news to sam@thereel.net.

Silence is golden

You may be forgiven for thinking that The Reel have gone Super Bowl crazy, what with our excellent irreverent look at The Super Bowl ads Vs FA Cup Final ads as this week’s feature, and next month’s forthcoming Super Bowl special. However, it’s worth mentioning that Pepsi intend to use their millions of dollars wisely by hitting Super Bowl viewers with a wall of silence this weekend. The ad is believed to be the most prominent ad featuring American sign language and will surely grab the viewers attention when their ears fail to pick up any sound from the ad. We’ll have it for you in our Super Bowl special next month but if you can’t wait that long contact our parent company Xtreme for a special Super Bowl deal:

http://www.xtremeinformation.com/resources/superbowl/superbowl08_info.pdf


Hoxton Sqaure receives (K)KO blow

KKOutlet, set up by the Amsterdam based communications agency KesselsKramer, is now up and running at 42 Hoxton Square.

The multifunctional office combines communications agency with a shop selling products & books and a gallery showcasing artists, designers & photographers.

As the name suggests, it is an outlet for all the different aspects of the agency's work from advertising to product development and design to publishing.

To accommodate the hybrid office, the interior has been designed by architectural firm FAT, who also recreated the KesselsKramer office – a church in Amsterdam. The Hoxton Square space has been sliced diagonally in two to create an unusual division between the different working environments.

KKOutlet is already gaining a strong local team. Yen Yen Ho, the managing director, is in place at KKOutlet with backing from Erik Kessels and Engin Celikbas (respectively Creative Director and managing director of KesselsKramer).
Richard Walker – who worked with KesselsKramer previous to becoming CD at Wieden + Kennedy in Amsterdam – will join as Creative Director in March.


New director pitches his tent at Camp David

Johan Skog has joined Camp David from MFL Film. The Finnish helmer had ‘Fountain of Youth’
for Nokian Reinkaat featured in The Reel way back in 2004.

Felt makes us feel all fuzzy inside

There was a time not too long ago when computer generated animation reigned supreme in adland, but in recent months a nostalgia bug has swept through the industry and beloved materials and techniques have been dusted off, spruced up and unleashed onto a gleeful public. In the past year and a half we’ve seen the return of dioramas, pop-up books, stop-motion plastic figurines, and, ultimately, the arts and craft phenomenon that was little bits of material that just about managed to hang on to each other – providing you were very careful. Yes. Fuzzy felt is back, which means this traditional animation revival business is serious, and we want to talk about it.

Microsoft may have hit us with a big budget integrated campaign, spearheaded by a fantastic diorama based spot from McCann San Francisco and MJZ, for Halo 3, but Cravendale garner the plastic figurine spoils in this feature. Their mad-cap trio of stop-motion spots featuring the odd couple of a pirate and a cyclist won the hearts of the nation and showed just how much people love their old-school toys and the fun ways in which they can be used to advertise all manner of products.

We don’t remember ever really being into pop-up books, they’re just not as fun as action figures and army men, but we’re sure that our parents and grandparents were riveted by the simple pleasures of a book with moving parts, before the goggle box made its way into the corner of every living room. Lexus got there first, but their effort was a bit too big and clever for the purposes of this feature, so if you’re looking for a good old fashioned bit of pop-up nostalgia you need to go to the single-static-shot-with-chirpy-voiceover mastery of Persil’s ‘Pop-up Book’.

The latest – and most inspired – nostalgic animated turn has just hit our screens. Surely inspired by the Fuzzy Felt greetings cards available in shops, CHI & Partners with Tandem Films have bought the glorious stuff back and it’s as fun as ever. Who would have thought that a little ol’ fuzzy felt stop-motioner would be able to cut it in the CGI dominated world of 2008? It does, however, and the spots look great – beautifully complimenting the free-range ethos of the brand.

We’re off to make Fuzzy Felt Valentine’s cards, just remember, if you’re the lucky beneficiary of one, be gentle and maybe just keep it lying face up.

NewsReel 23/01/08

Remember to keep sending in all your adland news - even if it is just shameless self promotion - and we'll do our best to feature it here. Please send all press releases or anything that could fall under the banner of news to sam@thereel.net.


VES-tival

The Visual Effects Society have announced the nominations for the 6th annual VES Awards to be held in the austere surroundings of the Kodak Grand Ballroom in Hollywood on Sunday February 10th – thankfully a Hollywood awards ceremony that shouldn’t be effected by the writer’s strike that’s crippling the town.

Australian-based visual effects company FUEL VFX have been nominated for the VES Award for 'Outstanding Visual Effects in a Commercial' for BMW 'Hydrogen'. FUEL are finalists alongside some of the world's best known VFX houses: Digital Domain, MPC, Method Studios and Framestore.

VFX Supervisor Simon Maddison comments that ‘although the work is technically challenging we believed the final result should belie this and appear simple and elegant. The director wanted a stylised treatment to the CG water - the concept was not so much about the physics of liquids but about using the beauty of liquid motion to describe the BMW technology in a creative and artistic way.’

The 25-seconds of CG animation, at HD resolution, was completed at Fuel in just 3 weeks. The result illustrates the breakthrough technology of the BMW 'Hydrogen 7' - it's a car that produces water emissions instead of CO2.

The full list of nominees in the category are:

BACARDI - Bacardi Sun
Vittorio Giannini, Franck Lambertz, Robin Carlisle, Nico Cotta

ZUNE - The Ballad of Tina Pink
Luisa Murray, Laurent Ledru, Katrina Salicrup, Miles Essmiller

BMW - Hydrogen
Simon Maddison, Dave Kelly, Mike Bain, Sam Cole

BMW - Road
Chris Fieldhouse, Jay Barton, Ron Herbst, Dave Stern

SMIRNOFF - Sea
William Bartlett, Scott Griffin, Dan Seddon, David Mellor

Check out the excellent ‘Hydrogen’ spot below.

Stranger than Passion

Passion Pictures has launched a new company called Strange Beast which will represent an international roster of emerging new talent including Encyclopedia Pictura, Amautalab, Lorenzo Fonda, The Blackheart Gang, Takeo, and James Price. The company is committed to developing creative opportunities for these artists across all media platforms including commercials, web based media, music videos, short films and art exhibitions.

For more information about Strange Beast and the directors visit the website www.strangebeast.tv

Short & Sweet

This week Short & Sweet teamed up with Straight 8 to screen two different straight 8 selections on Monday and Tuesday evening, along with the usual great work from established and new directorial talent. Entry is, as always, free.

Next week's Short & Sweet will be at the usual time and place:

Monday: Cafe 1001, 91 Brick Lane. Films start at 7pm.

Tuesday: AKA Bar, 18 west central street. Films start at 7pm.


Rushes Soho Shorts Festival

Rushes Soho Shorts Festival has renamed its ‘Title Sequence & Idents’ category as ‘Broadcast Design’, opening up the category to work including brand-related short films.
The 10th festival will start in the far away and heady days of Summer, on July 23rd, and will run for ten days. Festival organisers will be accepting entries up until Friday April 25th. Check the newsreel closer to the time for more information on one of the best industry events of the Summer.

Schhhh.... There's a new bunch of films to watch...

We heralded the return of TV and moving image in 07 – and 2008 appears to be no different with some new super strong film creative emerging already.

The Sweet Shop and Publicis Mojo are leading the charge with their new mega-project for Schweppes. The Schhh film festival will be showcasing 5 short films aimed squarely at an adult audience, exploring adult themes and the nastier elements of human nature.

The brief for the project was to reposition Schweppes as a soft drink for adults. The creative team behind the project (Nick Worthington, Karl Fleet and Tony Bradbourne) explored the uncomfortable truth that if you wanted to make ads that truly spoke to adult viewers ‘you wouldn’t be able to play them on TV’. As a result a clutch of sophisticated, creative and interesting short films were born, rather than a constrictive set of watered down TV ads.

Integrated further into the brief was the concept of the ‘schhhh moment’: a motif in the short where a character holds their fingers to their lips miming ‘schhh’ (or shhh) - this cleverly created a backbone of suspense where a TVC could be directly lifted from each short and shown on the box if needs be.

Interestingly this ‘schhhh moment’ was the only prerequisite that the series of films had to encompass. Complete creative control was handed over to the pool of talented directors and cinematographers hand picked by Sweet Shop – we think that you will agree that this mixture of client trust and freedom to create seems to have reaped brilliant results and is something that we at The Reel are celebrating with fierce gusto We can only hope that this production model will be repeated by more forward thinking and clued up brands in the near future – as confidence in your brand and creative team seems to produce innovative and spectacular results.

The 4 finished films ‘Consequence’ by Noah Marshall, ‘Finders Keepers’ by Melanie Bridge, ‘Jet Black’ by Kezia Barnett and ‘Magnifique’ by James Pilkington are all featured in the forthcoming issue of The Reel - which will be winging its way to subscribers in the next week. But never fear - if you cant wait that long for the taste of a Schhh moment - here is the snazzy trailer to whet your appetite!

NewsReel 17/01/08

Some people adhere to the old adage that 'no news is good news' but we don't agree with that, so we're back and better than ever. Remember to keep sending in all your adland news - even if it is just shameless self promotion - and we'll do our best to feature it here. Please send all press releases or anything that could fall under the banner of news to sam@thereel.net. Happy new year to you all!

Would you Adam & Eve it?!

Naked's Jon Forsyth has joined James Murphy, David Golding and Ben Priest as the fourth partner of the brand-spanking new agency due to go live on 21st January. The name has come from their belief in utilising a talent pool, bringing people together for 'amazing things to happen', rather than simply announcing their intent to start making babies - hopefully. We look forward to featuring the first Adam & Eve creative that makes it onto The Reel.

Star-dust's spangled banner

The sustained media campaign for Microsoft’s Zune player has given us some creative gems, like the inimitable ‘Masks’, but US bi-coastal production company Stardust have created something slightly different. They were charged with the task of making a 15-second video piece for the famous 20-foot ‘Geoffreytron’ LED billboard that sits above Toys ‘R’ Us in New York’s Times Square. Newly formed San Francisco agency T.A.G commissioned the artwork that challengingly required music and sound to be represented visually and has also been used in print and online banner ads.

More Troublemakers

Paris and London-based production company Troublemakers.tv launched last year with an impressive roster of directorial talent working in innovative ways with a combination of live-action, 2D and 3D animation and 2008 sees two new exciting directors added to their stable.

Filmmaker, motion designer and ‘spatial reconstructionist’ Scott Pagano has worked with a range of notable musicians, including American trance legend BT and guitar strummer Christopher Willits, applying his dynamic mix of cinematographic and synthetic imagery. His work has already been screened at international film festivals and on MTV.

Jerusalem born Jonathan Vardi has not long graduated from Tel Aviv University. He produced and directed his first video independently for the Canadian indie band Stars, gaining recognition by sending them a copy and it becoming an official video for the band. He has since directed videos for some of Israel’s top artists and is being represented by Troublemakers in Europe. However, the highlight of his career so far will surely come when he is featured as a ‘Ones to Watch’ in January’s Reel.

HANraHAN and their Sundance Kids

HANraHAN directors Peque and Zaramella have had short films selected for this month’s Sundance film festival.

They are among just 16 animations included in the 83 shorts selected from a record 5,107 submissions to the festival. Peque's ‘1977’ is the touching story of a small town, a growing knot, and a girl searching for her identity, whilst Zaramella's ‘Lapsus’ is the playful tale of a curious nun venturing into the dark side.

All the short films featured at the festival will be available to download via the itunes movie store and, for the first time, Xbox Live and subscribers only site Netflix. Click here for a full list of the films that will screened at Robert Redford’s annual film-fest and available to you for $1.99.

A feast for the eyes and ears


Anglo-French collaborators Cinefeel have been commissioned by multimedia venue Le Cube in Issy, in Paris, to curate the exhibition OPTRONICA - HYBRIDATIONS SONORES ET VISUELLES, which starts on January 31st 2008 and runs for six months until July 2008.

The exhibition will explore the synergy between music and visuals and feature some amazing multimedia work from artists such as the UK’s Addictive TV and EZ3kiel. Admission is free so if you’re around Issy-les-Moulineaux (it’s not a million miles from Paris) we suggest you take a look between January 31st and July 26th on Tuesday - Saturday. For more information click here.

Adolescent flies the nest

And finally...just a note to say that New York based design studio adolescent have moved to: adolescent, Inc 29 W 17th Street, 7th Floor NY, NY 10011, USA See you next week...hopefully a bit earlier than Friday!