Vincent Morriset, director of the Arcade Fire interactive video, just wowed the audience here at Click NY with his beautiful work
Morisset, who is based in Montreal, won worldwide acclaim for his Neon Bible interactive video for Arcade Fire
His experiements in interactive film began before that however. At Click NY the audience were all give little envelopes containing on red square of plastic and one blue one.
Morisset then played us Colorblind Clyde (below), a film (watch it here) that he shot some years ago for a festival in Montreal in 48 hours. It uses red and blue imagery superimposed on the screen – look through the red square and you see one set of images, the blue and you see another.
Morisset calls the technique Bicolorama
Morisset then alsow showed a wonderful new project from French singer Emilie Simon – a series of interactive vignettes which can be viewed here
For the song Rocket to the Moon, viewers can rewind the track by clicking on the spinning disc
While a click on the same disc during Chinatown releases puffs of beautiful colour. Magical.
Morisset is currently working on a 70-minute film for Sigur Ros and a new interactive project for Arcade Fire will follow in the spring
Back in March we announced the shortlist for our competition to create films on health issues for the NHS. Each of the shortlisted entrants has now made their test film…
NHS Choices and CR gave readers the chance to develop a new animated character/s to communicate vital public health messages. The chosen entrant will be given a six month contract to develop his or her concept and put it into action.
We initially asked for storyboards and character sketches from which a shortlist of five was chosen in March. Those five were then each given £3000 to make a test film. And here they are:
From these, a final winner will be chosen who will be awarded a six-month contract by NHS Choices to develop their concept and put it into action. More background info here
On October 11 last year, Shynola director Gideon Baws died tragically in LA. Former friends and colleagues are to raise money to boost awareness of the condition that led to his untimely death
A Gideon Baws Memorial Fund has been established at CRY (Cardiac Risk in the Young) which works to raise awareness of Sudden Death Syndrome (SDS) and campaigns for proactive screening of young people. It also offers help and support to those who have suffered a loss.
On October 11 2009 “Team GB”, which consists of Nick Goldsmith (Hammer & Tongs), Richard Kenworthy (Shynola) and Barney Newman (Pixipixel), will run The Royal Parks Half Marathon in Hyde Park, London to raise money for the Memorial Fund.
“Gid’s sudden death was due to a form of Cardiomyopathy, triggered by a viral infection,” they say. “Chances are you’ve never heard of it. However in the UK alone it is estimated that 12 ‘apparently fit and healthy’ young people under 35 die from undiagnosed heart problems every week. This needn’t be so.”
Onedotzero arrives at the BFI Southbank for its annual stint of screenings and talks on Wednesday. Now in its 13th year, the festival is renowned for its championing of new talent in short films and promos, and this year’s highlights also include a retrospective of French directors/designers H5, alongside exclusive previews of the new Disney/Pixar feature film Up, and the break-dancing documentary Turn It Loose, directed by Partizan’s Alastair Siddon.
Onedotzero is free to enter, which creative director Shane Walter believes has helped it remain somewhat recession-proof. “We had a shorter submissions window this year but still got a healthy number of admissions, there was no downturn in that respect,” he says. “It helps that it’s completely open and free to submit work – that’s still important to us.” In terms of trends that can be spotted within this year’s entries, he comments: “Last year we saw a hand-drawn aesthetic in moving image, which has continued to progress this year. We’ve seen a lot of people using digital tools to create things that look handmade. Digital has become more everyday and people are looking for other ways to express themselves. Plus it might be cheaper to make in the recession – or it seems that way….”
Trailer for Turn It Loose by Alistair Siddons, showing as part of the festival
Among the numerous programmes taking place over the four-day festival (for full details see onedotzero.com), will be the culmination of the Cascade education project. One of three strands in the festival sponsored by glue London (as part of the agency’s 10th birthday celebrations), Cascade sees a number of graduates from all over the UK, from various creative disciplines, collaborate on briefs set by glue during a series of workshops. The concepts created by the teams will be presented as part of onedotzero on September 10.
Onedotzero has commissioned Wieden + Kennedy London to design its identity this year (trailer shown top), and the agency has worked with Karsten Schmidt to create a logo that draws on the festival’s theme of ‘convergence and collaboration’. “This year we wanted to have a pure digital look to our identity but harness our community and also the idea that the festival is very open to ideas,” says Walter. “The identity will draw all the chatter around the social networks when people mention onedotzero, and that gets fed into the visual identity.” A live interactive version of the logo, which visitors can engage with via SMS and email, will be projected at the BFI during the festival. A making-of film of the identity can be viewed online here.
Video for The Child by Alex Gopher, directed by H5, who will be showing a retrospective of their work at onedotzero
Onedotzero is on from September 9-13. For full listings of what’s on during the festival, visit onedotzero.com.
Specsavers ad; creatives: Simon Bougourd, Neil Brush; production company: Passion Pictures; director: Darren Walsh
Here’s a selection of the great ads, music video and films that have passed through CR Towers lately. First up, Postman Pat stars in the latest Specsavers ad. The ad follows the familiar ‘should’ve gone to Specsavers’ storyline, but the attention to detail here can’t fail to charm…
Next up is a new short from director Chris Cairns. The film, titled Neurosonics Audiomedical Labs Inc, sees scratching taken to a whole new level.
Johnny Walker ad; agency: BBH London; creative: Justin Moore; production company: HLA; director: Jamie Rafn
Director Jamie Rafn has created this impressive one-take film featuring Robert Carlyle for Johnnie Walker.
Next up is a beautiful music video for Ljósið by Ólafur Arnalds, directed by Estaban Diåcono.
Director Jon Watts has shot this dream-like video for Folded Light track Train Tracks At Dawn. Don’t try this one at home, folks…
Old Spice ad; agency: Wieden + Kennedy; creatives: Craig Allen, Eric Kallman; production company: MJZ; director: Tom Kuntz
Finally, we end with a witty spot from Wieden + Kennedy for Old Spice, which sees the brand trying to shift its naff image into something cooler through the medium of comedy….
In September, we looked at The New Ugly in editorial design as well as profiling Janet Froelich of the NY Times magazine (whose work is certainly not ugly) and looked at the new face of advertising
Joel Trussell combines giant balloon heads and roller disco to brilliant effect in his new promo for Love Long Distance by The Gossip.
According to Promo News, Trussell was brought into the project by legendary producer Rick Rubin, who produced The Gossip’s latest album and has been a fan of the director since seeing his video for Jakob Dylan’s Evil Is Alive And Well.
Calvin Harris performs his latest single, Ready For The Weekend, on a giant human synthesizer made of, er, pretty ladies…
Take 15 bikini-clad lovelies, paint them in special ink and put them in a dance studio with special conductive pads on the floor and, hey presto, you have the Humanthesizer.
To promote Calvin Harris‘s new single, Sony Music creatives Phil Clandillon and Steve Milbourne (who you may remember were responsible for the AC/DC ASCII Excel video last year) decided to use Bare Conductive, a technology developed by RCA Industrial Design and Engineering masters students Bibi Nelson, Becky Pilditch, Isabel Lizardi and Matt Johnson. Bare Conductive is “skin-safe, conductive ink”. When painted on the skin, it allows a current to be passed through the body without causing an electric shock.
“We saw the technology on a blog initially, and then invited the RCA guys in to demo it to us,” says Clandillon. “We asked if they would be up for doing a project together, and then it was a matter of waiting for the right artist / idea to come along.”
The Humanthesizer consists of 34 pads on the floor which have been painted with the conductive ink and connected to a computer via some custom electronics created by the RCA’s Matt Johnson. The performers stand on the pads, and touch each other on the hands or body to complete a circuit and trigger a sound.
Harris, his hands painted with the ink, played the main keyboard line and effects by interacting with a row of eight girls. The rhythmic portions of the track were played by seven dancers performing a carefully choreographed routine.
Clandillon explains how it all works in this video
Michigan-based filmmaker Charlie McCarthy shot 156 photographs of insects flying around a street light, each at a four second exposure. He then put them together at 12 frames per second to make this delightful little film…
Aren’t the corkscrew spirals great? Via Andrew Sullivan’s blog.
Charlie’s main Vimeo page is here and the Flight Patterns film, here.
As a kind of behind-the-scenes-trailer for the forthcoming Where The Wild Things Are film, illustrator Maurice Sendak talks about how his 1963 book has been brought to the big screen by Spike Jonze (who is, Sendak mentions, “roughly the age I was when I did the book”)…
UPDATE: You can watch the film, here, on the Apple site (it keeps being removed from YouTube). Click on “exclusive featurette”.
Sendak reveals that when the book originally came out in the early 60s, it was seen as a big commercial risk, was banned, and suffered “terrible reviews”. It apparently took years before librarians were able to see the value children placed in it.
Hence a film version has taken nearly 18 years to realise. The results, as both Sendak and Jonze stress in this short film, is a collaboration from two artists who hope to enhance and enrich the book.
Interestingly, Sendak hints that “there will be controversy about this” – perhaps a reflection of how Jonze has stuck to some of the more frightening aspects of Sendak’s original. Either way, we’re looking forward finally seeing it when it comes out at the end of the year.
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