There's no place like foam

Yes, it's here, the next big Sony ad from Fallon has arrived. Causing a sense of anticipation not seen in adland since Anthony Head and Sharon Maughan gulped down the dregs from their last Nescafe together, Fallon have moved on from Bravia and turned their hand to Sony's digital imaging range. The result, 'Foam City', is an epic spot with a rare combination of originality, scope and fun. Directed by Simon Ratigan, the spot features 200 genuine Miami residents, who were invited to the foam-filled downtown area of Miami. If the chance to play in 460-million litres of foam pumped from the especially built world's largest foam machine wasn't enough, the Miami-ites were given Sony's range of Cyber-shot digital cameras, Handycams and DSLR cameras to record every minute and capture every foam-filled crevice (of the Miami streets that is).


The impressively moustachioed Ratigan, who's previous work includes Vodafone 'Raining Time', and 'Inflatable Animals' for Orange - a spot that must have gone a long way in bagging him this one - said, 'A lot of my work to date has focused on people’s honest experiences and emotions. Having the citizens of Miami involved, with their free spirited nature and willingness to interact with this new and exciting environment, without any guidance other than to go and explore, has been a wonderful experience. The final ad will show natural, real life emotions and reactions to a city full of foam.'

Mikah Martin-Cruz, General Manager, Marketing Communications, Sony Uk, said of the ad, 'We wanted this to be a magical event where people would be able to have a truly unique photographic experience, where they could actually take images like no other.'

From the images on the website it looks like their aim was achieved and a great time was had by all; the end result isn't too shoddy either!

NewsReel 17/04/08

Nava joins Therapy
Jake Nava is to be represented in the UK by Therapy Films. The honey magnet director, who has had the pleasure of working with the likes of Kylie, Beyonce, Britney, Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell, Jessica Alba and Halle Berry, is excited to be joining Therapy as they start in a new direction after recent re-structuring. He said, 'It seems like a perfect time to join. I'm absolutely committed to the UK market and looking forward to getting my teeth into strong creative boards.' Although based in London Nava is also represented by Annoymous Content in Los Angeles and UTA and Brillstein Entertainment Partners for features.

All Films complete double signing
Masters of the movie trailer remix, Addictive TV, have been signed to All Films who hope to apply their talents to commercials. All Films' Managing Director Ron Redel said, 'We are delighted to be working with Addictive TV, I'm always on the lookout for different ways to approach commercials, we are thrilled to have discovered their exceptional and original work.' He continued, 'They've developed a unique and highly finessed style of audio/video mixing and remixing which could be applied to a whole new wave of commercial projects.' Addictive have recently completed a Paramount commissioned dance remix viral for 'Iron Man' but they first came to our attention with their bullet ridden remix for 'Shoot 'Em Up'.



All have also re-signed Brian Baderman after a two-year split. The maverick director of the darkly comic Phones4U ads achieved great success in that series with his brave casting of members of the public in key roles, and MD Ron Redel is glad to have him back, 'We got over the split - when you work together for ten years it's like a marriage. There wasn't any bad feeling but it was a big change. I like doing the sort of work he does...I've always argued it's not mad, it's not crazy, it's such cleverly put together stuff that it's just funny. Underneath it all there's something human, there's charm.' Reel subscribers can click here to view the excellent Baderman directed Phones 4 U ads.

Absolutely fabulous motion graphics
After seven years at MPC, Ric Comline has joined Absolute to head up their new dedicated motion graphics department. Having worked on Ridley Scott's 'Kingdom of Heaven' and Tim Burton's 'Corpse Bride' Comline has certainly got the pedigree, and Absolute's MD David Smith thinks they've got the right man,'We’re growing so much that it made sense to start a dedicated motion graphics department. We’ve just been waiting to find someone with the right skills and personality. Ric is extremely talented so we feel very lucky that he’s joining the team.' His first major project is to design the motion graphics for George Michael's forthcoming tour.

The Guild of Commercial Filmmakers
The Melbourne based production company have signed Derek Richards to their burgeoning roster and one of their young directors, Matt Kamen, received a bronze award for Best New Director at Adfest in Thailand.


As always, send any news and press releases to sam@thereel.net.

Vegemount

We know nothing about where this little clip has come from, but the owners of Vegemite need to get this artist on their payroll.



Mmmmm, toasty.

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.