Lager Than Life

We like beer at The Reel. Frankly, give any of us a fermented alco-drink and we’re happy as Larry. However, beer ads often don’t live up to the lovely stuff they’re promoting. Sure, Carling produced some tasty spots recently for matey pub-goers, and Guinness can always be called on for eye-popper of an ad, but when it comes to a joyful celebration of a brew there’s one country that towers above all others – Australia. With the recent launch of Carlton Draught’s new execution ‘Skytroop’, we thought it was time to take a look at some of the beauts the brand has dished out in the past.

In August 2005 Carlton Draft took larging it to the next level with its ‘Big Ad’. Visually reminiscent of the enormous battle scenes seen in movies such as Lord Of The Rings and Troy, the spot subverted its appearance by drawing attention to the scale of itself. Therefore, instead of troops’ rallying battle cries we instead hear lyrics alluding to the fact that the ad is ‘freaking HUGE’. Seeded virally beforehand and hosted on its own website two weeks before its on-air launch, the ad captured imaginations and awards (including a Gold Lion) in its wake. We’ve found a cool little Making Of here if you want to know more.

Following on from the majesty of the ‘Big Ad’, the folks at George Patterson Y&R decided to scale down the cast and scale up the dance. The result is ‘Flashbeer’, a sublime Flashdance spoof in which portly brewer applicant Kevin Kavendish chooses to wow the interview panel with his moves rather than experience. Despite the movie being consistently subject to a number of homages (both ad and promo alike – watch at your own risk!), Flashbeer - continuing the brand’s brilliantly nonsensical ‘Made from Beer’ campaign - joyously won hearts and yet more awards with its charming execution and wonderfully 80’s coda.

So on to ‘Skytroop’, the latest execution in the campaign. Continuing the tradition of not taking itself too seriously, the spot focuses on the impressive display of an oversized skydiving troop. However, a slight lack of forsight leaves the heavy beer-can container to blaze its own trail through a suburban setting. Again formulated by creative team Ant Keoth and Grant Rutherford and directed by Plaza Films’ Paul Middleditch, the spot retains the feel of its predecessors (not least the scale of the ‘Big Ad’) and may well be one to look out for come awards season.

For Reel subscribers wanting to get all the credit info on the ads mentioned here, or just interested in Carlton’s TV history, click on this link.

NewsReel 10/04/08

Tributes to Paul Arden

Adland lost one of its legendary faces last week with the death of Paul Arden. The former ECD of Saatchi & Saatchi passed away last week of a heart attack. Rather than list the man's numerous achievement and character traits, we'll simply link to a site where those that new him best can do just that - www.paularden.com

Moves Airside
Airside - our uber cool design/animation/graphics/agency pals have moved!

The new Airside studios are located at 339 Upper Street.

For more info, check www.airside.co.uk

Santo Blighty Bound
Santo, one of Argentina’s top creative agencies, is to open in London. The agency is set to launch in May of this year with creative director Pablo Minces and consultant Martin Cole relocating to the capital. Santo’s spot for Lux titled ‘Neon Girl’ featured on The April 07 cover of The Reel and went on to be nominated at Cannes. What can we say but welcome to the smoke. www.santobuenosaires.com

OK DONT!

Witness the majesty of OK GO!'s Video for 'Here It Goes Again'



And now look at this Berocca ad below...

Normally we let it slide when we see ads being influenced by other forms of art or creativity… I mean you have to have inspiration right!?

However – we felt the need to point the finger on this one…

Berocca… Hang your heads in shame…

onedotzero / MTV: Bloom

Uber-cool visual pioneers onedotzero recently invited us to the launch of their fantastic co-lab project with broadcasting giant MTV International: Bloom.

Bloom was a worldwide competition that searched for the very best up-and coming creative talent. New filmmakers, animators and other creatives were invited to send a treatment for a one minute film that explored the identity and community of their hometown in a fresh way.

The competition received over 200 entries from over 30 countries around the globe as far as Australia, South America and Asia.

After much deliberation the judging panel finally selected 10 winning entries from Auckland, Beijing, Rome, New York, London, Bergen, Warsaw, Los Angeles, Paris and Sheffield with runners up hailing from Tokyo, London, Bucharest and the Netherlands.

The entries were judged on innovation, style, technical skill and creative interpretation of the bloom brief. The winning treatments were commissioned in 2007, and the artists given budgets to create and develop their one minute films for January 2008.

As each film was a one minute treatment we armed ourselves with our Dictaphone, donned our coats (and silly hat) and marched to the snazzy east london venue to get a one minute interview with each of the international talent that was at the launch.

The quality of the work on show was astounding – and the talent ranged from professionals to undergraduate students.

Here is the list of winners (in no particular order)

Quayola : Rome
Lulu Li : Beijing Dance
Ayala Sharot : Foreigners
Matt Bullock & Rebekah Cooper : Cityfix
Igor Knezevic : Proxies
The Holograms : Morfism
Katarzyna Kjek and Prezemyslaw Adamski : Untitled
Ryan Louie : Untitled
Marieke Verbiesen : Nordic Folk Legends
Niel Grundy & Alyssa Kath : Lone Kauri Road

But wait! It gets better! We were lucky enough to chat to some of the winning artists!!

One particular entrant was Ryan Louis, a recent graduate from New York University Film School, who filled us in on what inspired his urban focused piece.

“My piece basically is on New York, I wanted to tell a story in colours, lights and moods. It was really just about the idea of living in the city the anxiety and the excitement… Mostly the anxiety.

There is a lot of energy there – tense energy. And I can work from that

It was a hard project and a hard process – as it was my first time doing animation. But I had a good sense of the moods and emotions that I wanted to convey.

My main goal is to become a director – so this was huge opportunity for me. MTV and onedotzero are prestigious huge companies and this is a… the one big chance for me. The feedback and attention that I have had from this is great. Its definitely great to be here.
Its really different also - I feel that as a student filmmaker often you get tread on and treated like shit – so this is a very, very huge deal for me to have people wanting to listen and hear what I have to say.”

The UK was represented brilliantly by some more undergraduate magic makers Matt Bullock & Rebekah Cooper. Matt and Rebekah who still completing their degree in Sheffield. They had this to say to us:

“Our piece is about celebrating industrial architecture in a post industrial age and finding the beauty in it.

In Sheffield, we realised that there is loads of really amazing industrial architecture and industrial heriatage of the steel industry. There is an amazing huge complex called Parkhill flats which is the biggest of its kind in Europe.

It’s a social housing estate and until you see it you don’t realise how magnificent it is. It’s just the hugest housing structure that you have ever seen.

It has got run down and there are loads of crappy flats popping up around the city - so the point of our video is to look at the old architecture (like the cooling towers which are going to be getting knocked down) and try and put a case across that we should be building and developing around the architecture rather than knocking it down and starting again.

This one is the first video we have ever made –and were only halfway through our graphic design course so doing a video piece was new, but in the end we have got more out of this that we ever thought we could. And I think that we’ve really fallen in love with the idea of communicating a language through motion. So compared to when we started now we have got more out of it than we ever intended to.”

Director Ayla Sharot explored her feelings and experiences when she moved to London in her piece “Foreigners”

“I like the element of surprise – it’s not just my ideas. People say things that surprise me and you can react to that and it makes the whole thing a bit more attractive. So its nice to be able to develop things with that sort of input.

The Film Foreigners came from moving to London. I came to London three and half years ago and its sort of a documentation of my experience. When you come here as a foreigner it’s so different, you know, there are many cultural differences. You go to the pub, and you don’t hear what people say and you don’t get jokes as fast, you know stuff like that. I now freelance in Soho after completing my masters at St Martins. I now work all over. I really want to start to direct myself and I really hope this will help and be a platform for to launch myself into it. I mean I can always get work animating someone else’s visuals or ideas but like any other animator I would like to do my own stuff.”.


The Polish winners Katarzyna Kjek and Prezemyslaw Adamski explained their Bloom experience to us.

“We found it strange that we were waiting so long… all the scripts were completed during summer time and we found it very, very difficult to release it during winter time as all the places outside were very cloudy, so we had to use an awful lot of post production that we didn’t intend to use in the beginning!

The film is about immigration. We were, or became, one of those people coming to London to find work by working on this film and being involved in the project.”

We were lucky enough to chat to a Reel office favorite – the mighty Quayola (featured in last months issue) about his piece “Rome” and how the concept, visuals and feel came together in his work :

“In a way the fact that I’m Italian and that I’m from Rome its quite obvious the relationship between me and the sort of iconic piece of art and architecture (in the film). Its contextualizing those icons that makes the piece…. It’s a sort of deconstruction of those icons to the point that they become something else. In a way it makes you see those icons at a different angle, in a hyper real way.

This is a project that I’ve been bringing forward for a while and if you go to my site and see my work you can see that. There are a few projects that I have been working on for quite a long time and this submission, this opportunity, me was a chance to bring forward my own research and this exploration of these icons. The theme is quite obvious but its more my work that fits in the theme rather than the other way around.

I’m definitely happy about this – it took quite a while to get these projects together and in the meanwhile I have been doing other projects for Onedotzero and stuff and projects of my own. I had some exposure at MTV in Italy but obviously to have such big exposure on MTV internationally… that is something I’m looking forward to! I don’t know!”

The Bloom Project work is being broadcast worldwide on the MTV network and are available to view online at http://www.mtvonedotzero.com/. We are also featuring the spots in the upcoming issue of The Reel.

Thanks to Shane and Donna for inviting us to a brilliant event and letting us chat to the artists involved.

NewsReel 03/04/08

A Bunch Of Fools
As it was the favourite day for fools like us on Tuesday we thought it best to list some of the top japes that emerged. Leader of the pack was this fantastic spoof iPlayer spot from the BBC that unearthed one of the most incredible secrets of the natural world.

Directed by Gorgeous' Vince Squibb with top notch animation by Darren Walsh at Passion Pictures, this is one viral that undoubtedly had more forwards than the Rugby World Cup.

Other foolish triumphs include Google and Virgin's alleged team up - Virgle - and YouTube's masterful RickRolling of its own page by linking all 'Featured' pieces on their homepage to this little ditty (check out the number of views!).

SYDNEY FILM COMPANY CLOSES

As if Neighbours moving to Channel 5 wasnt bad enough... The prestigious Sydney Film Company has closed its doors for the final time this month. The Award winning production house (otherwise known as The Auckland Film company) has been in the buisness for over 20 years. Owners Maggie Lewis and Peter Cudlipp have called it a day, citing personal reasons (rather than financial) for the closing of the company.

As always, any news or moves you want us to holler about, send them over to sam@thereel.net and we'll do our best to feature them.

A new dawn for Therapy Films

Much like Mark Twain, Therapy Films would like to clarify that reports of their demise have been grossly exaggerated…partly by us, for which we are very sorry.

In fact, they are very much alive and kicking, with a Creative Circle Gold and a BTAA win for the Malcolm Venville and Sean de Sparengo directed Reel favourite ‘Kill the Gun’ recently in the bag.

The confusion arose from re-structuring that occurred during the renewal of a 10-year lease on their premises in Market Street – they’ve moved up in the world and are now on the 3rd floor - that saw the departure of partners Guy Manwaring and Mark Denton to pursue their own projects.

The new streamlined Therapy, with founder Malcolm Venville solely at the helm, has retained some unique and award-winning talents in its roster, including Colin Gregg, Christian Bevilacqua, Mick Rudman, The Shammasian Brothers and Sean de Sparengo.

Venville said of the recent re-structuring, ‘[it] has given us an opportunity to prune our director roster and return to the good old days when we were a straight-forward, no-nonsense production company known for creating striking commercials.’

Indeed, the former Reel Ones to Watch and extremely talented Bevilacqua has recently achieved recognition for his Mastercard spot and Venville himself has made waves with his hard hitting Reel Hotspot for BBC 2’s ‘White Season’.

NewsReel 19/03/08

Revolver re-load with Bruce Hunt
Multi award-winning director Bruce Hunt has joined Revolver for Australian and Asian representation. Named Australian director of the year four times for his commercials work, Bruce has also directed the 2nd unit on one of the best films of all time ‘The Matrix’. Bruce is really excited to be joining the existing talent at Revolver, saying ‘The intimate scale of Revolver really appealed to me…our values and the sense of enjoyment of filmmaking are really similar.’

Bruce’s work has included the excellent recent Toyota 'Ice Sculptures'. He is represented by Believe in the US and Home Corp here in London.

WAX on
Newcomers WAX Media were established in late 2007 and have already produced campaigns for major brands such as Mars, Universal and Harpers Bazarr, and they were behind the recent Alesha Dixon ad/music video from Ford. Their fresh, innovative and all-encompassing approach to digital advertising, integrated creative and strategic services comes from an eclectic and talented board of directors: Bob Brimson – Consultant Director of Creative Services @ Universal Music; Mike O’Keefe – Head of Content @ Sony BMG; Asa Bailey – digital agency consultant @ Saatchi NY and Grey Worldwide; Phil Tidy and Patrick Holtkamp – joint owners of commercials and music video production company Draw Pictures; and Andy Bell – Head of Production @ Draw. Their remit includes acting as agency, production, distribution and management, and they look all set to provide a serious challenge to the traditional order of things.

Allen Coulter pulls into the Station
He’s directed episodes of ‘The Sopranos’ and ‘Rome’ and recently wrapped the pilot for ‘Sons of Anarchy’ for FX; now director Allen Coulter is ready to direct some commercials through Station Film, where he has made the move from Hungry Man.

And finally…
The most famous and enduring Sea Captain of all time (well, off the telly anyway), John Hewer aka Captain Birds Eye for an astounding 31 years, has sadly passed away, aged 86. He was replaced in 1998 with a handsome, leaner Captain, but the young pretender struggled to live up to the legend and is currently on shore leave whilst Suggs does the business with his make-believe family. For the fish finger chomping (Reel subscribing) kid in all of us, here’s a trip down memory lane