NewsReel 06/03/08

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.

Johnny gets Jerwood
Former RCA student, and currently on Nexus’ roster, Johnny Kelly was one of three winners announced at the recent inaugural Jerwood Moving Image Awards. The director won for his ‘Procrastination’ short, which was featured in last October’s Reel. The Jerwood Charitable Foundation set up the awards to offer a platform to debate the present state and future prospects of the ‘digital moving image’ artform. What’s he going to do with the £10,000 prize money? ‘…invested straight into my next film. And also a pair of badly needed glasses.’ Aaawww. To view all the winners click here.

Wave
Regularly featured in the Reel, Wave Recording Studios have opened their 6th and 7th studios, to house more long-term and experimental work, captained by an award-winning team of sound designers: Joe Mount and Ashley Smith. Wave’s co-owner and creative director, Warren Hamilton, said: ‘With the continuing arrival of new digital formats and new technologies, we are working in interesting times. We wanted to make the most of these opportunities by opening two new studios dedicated to creating more diverse and flexible work. The result is that studios 6 & 7 offer an alternative way to design and mix sound without compromising audio quality, creativity or Wave’s exceptionally high standards of service.’

Poynton points to the exit
Malcolm Poynton, executive creative director of Ogilvy London since 2003, is expected to leave the agency shortly. Poynton is rumoured to have disagreed with CEO Gary Leih and Managing Director Guy Lambert following their re-structuring to a creative partner system of dedicated client service teams.

Kit wins Gold at Creative Circle Awards
Kit Lynch-Robinson has won Gold for Best Microsite at the Creative Circle Awards last night. The site featuring the 14 hours and 40 minute exploits of Fernando talking non-stop for Emirates has been submitted to the Guinness Book of Records for the accolade as ‘longest commercial in history’ and the highlights were featured in November’s Reel.

Short and Sweet
Next week sees the second installment in Short & Sweet’s BAFTA nominations night. Directors and producers will once again be present. Last week saw the screening of the following films:

'Dog Altogether' - Paddy Considine
The Crumblegiant - John McCloskey
'Head over Heels' - Osbert Parker
'The one and only Herb McGwyer plays Wallis Island' - James Griffiths

Short and Sweet continues to be at t he usual times and the usual places:

MONDAY: Cafe 1001, 91 Brick Lane

TUESDAY: AKA Bar, 18 west central street

TIME: 19h00 both nights

Colette Crespin goes to The Guild
One of our favourite director's reps, Colette Crespin, is now Down Under and has landed firmly on her feet as the new Director's Rep / PR / New Business Manager at Guild Films in Melbourne. Check out what they’re doing on the other side of the world here.

Should Kanye have used this one?

This little piece of marker-on-hands and editing magic had our faces lit up with glee this morning.

Ad peeps and Promo Directors take out your note pads and start writing ‘ideas and treatments’ immediately…




Oh... and here is a little history lesson…

Long live the spoof

As you are probably aware, the TV ad game is a pretty sophisticated beast these days. Viewers are expected to interact, follow intricate treasure hunts, recognise ongoing themes and narrative structures, press the red button and then at least go to the website. The days of viewers being expected to swallow piece-to-camera testimonials and comparison tests are long dead and buried, however there is one TV ad trend that has stood the test of time and still strides on healthily even now - the good old fashioned spoof.

From narratives, to generic conventions, famous movie scenes to other TVC’s – the spoof ad has targeted everything and conquered them all with a big fat tongue lodged in its cheek.

Even the mighty Superbowl wasn’t safe this year...

In fact, it’s become apparent in the ad world that you haven’t really made a spectacular execution until it has been spoofed by someone else.

But it appears that it’s not just the big-player major league ads that are targeted by sarcastic creatives out there… In an act that echoes the big school bully having a pop at the quiet geek - the little league infomercial minnows are subjected to bigger brands having a pop at their hopelessness.

But lucky for you guys, we have been spending a lot of time with part-time comedian Jimmy Carr, and a bunch of channel 4 Z-list celebs (take a bow Alex Zane) recounting our favorite ad-spoofs. This inspired us to put together our top ten spoof-classics from the Reel Vaults – click here to enjoy.
(And what’s even better, the list is without any of the pointless celebrity “insight” and them talking about why it made them laugh. Or not.)

NewsReel 28/02/08

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.

Ahoy! It’s Coy!
Mark Denton achieved a lot through Therapy – shooting a multitude of commercials, publishing a magazine, and a book, founding an award-winning design company and masterminding the re-launch of the Creative Circle – but the time has come for him to be discharged and go all Coy!, so he has founded Coy! Communications along with long-term producer Sara Cummins, after an amicable split with Therapy Films other partners Malcolm Venville and Guy Manwaring.

Ex-Therapy directors Simon Levene and Michael Baldwin kick-off the directorial roster of the new company and Kelly Cook joins as Head of Sales & Marketing.

Focus on VW’s new website

Prime Focus have proudly announced the completion of nearly a year’s work on the new Volkswagen UK website. The London post-production house has finally delivered the astonishing 16,000 individual CGI assets which have been used by Tribal DDB to build the new site. The end result of this highly complicated and too-lengthy-to-fully-discuss-here process is an attractive, cutting-edge and actually quite fun website that allows customers to select and view 17 different Volkswagen models, and then to specify each model with all of its available variations, bringing web design and moving-image post-production yet another step closer together.

A Mars a day...
We at The Reel, like a lot of you guys, get nostalgic about old ads, strap lines and jingles, so we thought it was worth a mention that Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO is bringing back the old ‘A Mars a day helps you work, rest and play' strap line which was pulled in 1995. It has, however, been given a noughties twist; now a new generation will simply be saying ‘work, rest, play’ as they tuck into the first bite of the chocolate, nougat and caramel goodness. The new spot, featuring monks dancing to House of Pain’s ‘Jump Around’ will air on 2nd March, so look out for it on The Reel soon. For fellow fans of the old campaign, see below:



Mad Cow
Terence Stevens-Prior has joined Mad Cow’s roster for worldwide representation. Stevens-Prior has been a director since 1996, when he moved over from his previous incarnate as an agency creative. The New Zealand-born helmer left Mustard for Mad Cow, and has previously shot ads for clients such as Pepsi, Carlsberg and Toyota.

Lion's New Den
Only recently established, London-based production company Red Lion have made the bold move of opening up their very own art department. The new division called Agitate will pave the way for filmmaking artists to move into the big bad world of commercials production. The opening line-up consists of Jordan Baseman, who has exhibited his work at the Serpentine Gallery, Austrian Goldsmiths, RCA and Vienna Academy of Fine Art graduate Ursula Meyer, Emily Richardson, who has created a series of 'time lapse portraits' that question our relationship to the landscape; CG specialist Claude Chabot, and toy-filmer Stuart Croft.

Bits n' Pieces

For those of us who don’t know our spark plugs from our elbows, a rather handy trend has emerged in recent vehicle advertising. Whereas once it was all about the flashy motor screaming through the burning fields, now manufacturers seem hell bent on showing us just what goes into our petrol guzzlers. With the speedy arrival of Publicis and Partizan’s rip-roaring ‘Race’ for Renault, we at The Reel thought it time to investigate the growing trend of car component commercials.

Remember Cog? The Honda ad that had everyone screaming ‘Genius!’ from the rooftops? Course you do, because it won loads and everyone’s been banging on about it since its auspicious debut in 2003. Featuring a series of contraptions carrying momentum from push-me to pull-you, W+K's ad earned a certain notoriety alongside the plaudits due to claims that it half-inched the idea from 1987 film Der Lauf Der Dinge -http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfEkPgfA7wo. Whilst the two films are remarkably similar in their conceit, the fact that Cog consists entirely of the Accord's inner workings marks it out as an inspired piece of design boasting – look how smoothly the pieces of our car work together even outside of the sleek chassis.

Fast forward to 2008 and we have an entire orchestra made of bumpers and windscreen wipers playing us an Ode To Ford. Surfing on a wave of ‘big’ musical commercials that have entered the fray of late (Sony Walkman’s ‘Music Pieces’ and, yep, Honda’s ‘Choir’ take your bows), the piece contains all of the string, reed and brass instruments you can throw a baton at. Whilst certainly being an eye(and ear)catching spot for the brand, we can’t help but feel that Ogilvy’s ad lacks the oomph to mark it out above the rest, and perhaps sounds a little too good (not doubting its authenticity, honest!).

Finally we have the brand-spanking new part-wars spot for Renault. Again choosing to take the bits and bobs out of the shiny casing and into the viewer’s gaze, the ad pits shock-absorbers against fuel-injector in a battle to the garage. Dynamic and instantly engaging, the spot has a likeable concept – the car’s so awesome its pieces race to be in it – and features smart visual effects that leave us waiting for a big screen 3D version. Whilst lacking the innovative twist of Honda’s masterpiece, the spot proves that as far as TV advertising goes, us punters love seeing what’s in our chariots.

NewsReel 21/02/08

On the Radar
Music video champions Radar recently ran a competition for filmmakers to submit music videos for various well known bands and artists. One of the bands was The Maps, and winner Joe Brener made a promo for their track ‘To The Sky’. Joe’s prize was £1,000 cold hard cash, mentoring from Draw Pictures, a space on the YouTube global front page, and...he’s just got married. You can’t win them all!




The winners from the Radar and Coke Music competition have also been making waves.
Radar collaborated with Coke Music to create videos for their four top rated bands, inviting film-makers to pitch for the honour of having their creative associated with one of the foursome from the fizzy drink’s new music site. The winning videos can be viewed here.


Short and Sweet
As ever, Short and Sweet was east and west this week, with work from Vanessa Caswill, Steve May, Daniel Mulloy, Robert Chiu, Dom Bridges, Eric Toubel, Thomas Castellani, Yves D’incau and Clement Renaudin, and Philip Van. There was also a special performance from poet and comic Richard Tyrone Jones.

MONDAY: Cafe 1001, 91 Brick Lane

TUESDAY: AKA Bar, 18 west central street

Films START: 7pm both nights!

Additional dates for the diary are 3,4 and 10,11 March for special Short and Sweet nights featuring the nominations from this year's Short Film and Short Animation BAFTA categories.

The Whitehouse moves
No, George W Bush hasn’t decided to re-locate the US Presidential home; the London branch of premier editing house with the same name has upped sticks to 21-23 Meard Street, London, UK W1F 0EY – so update those Christmas card lists!

AICP Show second entry deadline
Over the Atlantic, the second entry deadline for the 2008 AICP Show, The Art & Technique of the American Commercial is February 29th, 2008, for work airing February 4, 2008 – February 24, 2008. This is the first time since the Show's inception in 1992 that there has been a second eligibility period.

The structure was introduced this year to allow work created for, and airing, during the Oscars telecast to be considered for the 2008 Show. Work can be entered at www.aicp.com.

The Association of Independent Commercial Producers Show is on June 3rd at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City. Robert Fernandez, CEO/Partner at Moxie Pictures, is the Show Chairman. Honoured work becomes a part of the permanent archive of the Department of Film at MoMA, which is good but not as good as being featured on The Reel, folks!

Nifty website
If you hate boring retail websites and crave something a little different, take a look at this. We like so we share.

http://producten.hema.nl/

CORRECTION

In the NewsReel post entitled 'Don’t be coy, be Coy!' we wrongly reported that Therapy Films were defunct. We can only apologise for this error on our part and are pleased to confirm that they are still very much alive and well and we look forward to featuring some great new work from them soon. In the meantime, for more information on what's going on at Therapy, please visit www.therapyfilms.com