If you are offended by the use of bad language and the sight of near naked bottoms being shaken for all they are worth, then don’t read any further: the video for track Do It Again by Galactic featuring Cheeky Blakk, directed by Joey Garfileld of Ghost Robot in New York happens to feature both of the above…
However, that’s not to say it’s not good – and funny to boot(y). The basic premise is that various butts (belonging to both men and women who know how to shake what their mamas gave them) are costumed up to look like faces – complete with sunglasses, bandanas, sideburns, fringes and moustaches… The butt-faces appear to sing along to the track. What’s not to love?
Apparently, this record is a Sissy Rap record – Sissy Rap being a fad, originating in New Orleans, for cross-dressing male rappers with female rap personas… Butt shaking is encouraged by Sissy Rappers. So we’re reliably informed…
If you’d like to know more about the filming of this music video – here’s a link to the making of: blip.tv/file/3232222
Last year we reported on MTV International’s rebrand. Now each of the six MTV sister channels here in the UK has a new set of idents created specially for it by one of five different design studios…
Right, before we actually show you some of this bumper pack of new MTV idents, let’s straighten out a few things… MTV International (ie MTV in every country bar the US) rolled out a new identity and idents created by MTV’s world design studio in Milan in collaboration with Universal Everything last year (as we reported back in July, here).
More recently (and potentially confusingly) we reported (here) that MTV (in the US) has tweaked the logo in a separate (and for now localised) rebrand – although that logo tweak WILL impact in MTV International (non US) territories by the end of next year. Now MTV International has added to last year’s rebranding exercise by rolling out brand new idents designed specifically for its separate, genre-based channels: MTV Dance, MTV Hits, MTV Rocks, MTV Shows, MTV Base, and MTV Classics. In order to imbue each channel’s idents with a suitably er, identifiable style, each channel was assigned its own ident-designing studio.
“The idea is to promote healthy collaboration between the world’s best motion design talent, whether they are established or straight out of school and wet behind the ears,” explains Roberto Bagatti, creative director of MTV’s world design studio. “Over time this will allow MTV International to grow and evolve our idents into what could be the best body of international motion design work associated with one brand”.
Here is a selection of idents (which will run here in the UK with an international roll-out to follow) for each of the channels:
MTV Dance idents, created by Paris-based studio View:
It’s Friday afternoon, so it must be time for another round up of the nice work we’ve spotted lately at CR Towers. First up is a charming video for Darwin Deez track Radar Detector, from director Ace Norton…
James Frost has shot this video for new OK Go track This Too Shall Pass, which has been storming through the internet so you’ve likely seen it already. Despite its brilliant effects, we have slightly mixed feelings about it at CR, due to the obvious parallels between it in Fischli & Weiss film The Way Things Go. When Honda used a similar technique in its Cog ad, a storm of controversy ensued, but Frost’s video has only drawn admiration, that we’ve seen. Perhaps the rules regarding ‘homages’ are different for music videos compared to ads?
This Is Real Art has made a series of charming informational films on the way that satellites work
The films were made for Astra, the European satellite manufacturer not the reasonably priced car, and will be used both internally and to educate potential clients about what the company does.
There are seven films in total, covering everything (and indeed slightly more than) you might want to know about the operation of a satellite. Including sections on history, physics, control, launch, why we need satellites, business and the future.
We have two, including Why Do We Need Satellites?
And Physics
And, yes, that is Johnny Ball doing the voiceover.
One of the challenges faced regularly by designers and ad people is explaining to people just what it is they do. In an excellent panel at Design Indaba, three filmmakers discussed the films they’ve made that are helping to illuminate the hidden worlds of advertising and design…
Opening the discussion was Eames Demetrios, grandson of Charles & Ray Eames, who talked about the film that he made of the Eames studio (which they worked in from 1943 to 1988) after Ray died in 1988.
“I’m a firm believer that design is the ability to surrender to the journey,” he said. “When Ray died we found out we only had six months to empty the office in Venice, California, as it was condemned as an earthquake risk. We asked for two years, but the guys said, ‘are you kidding me? That old lady’s been sweet-talking us for years to keep it, you’ve got six months.’ In some ways it was a mercy as we really had to deal with it – but I immediately had to start filming it, to capture it, as it was a really magical world.”
The resulting film, titled 901, reveals this magic, as well as the personal relationship that Eames Demetrios obviously has with its subject, which gives the film an unusually intimate feel (I’m afraid I can’t find it on YouTube or Vimeo anywhere, if anyone has a link to it, please post below). He described how part of the magic of the studio came from the fact it was always changing. “For Charles & Ray it was about flexibility, as even the walls were just clamped in so some days we’d go down there and it would look completely different,” he said. He also discussed the Eames’ love of film and documenting their work, particularly mentioning Powers of Ten, shown top, which they made entirely themselves. “With the Powers of Ten, they anticipated a lot of the desktop publishing world,” he said. “It’s the vision that matters, you can find the toolkit that goes with it.”
Art & Copy trailer
Also speaking was Doug Pray, who created the film Art & Copy, which takes viewers inside the much-maligned world of advertising. It features US ad industry legends including Dan Wieden and Lee Clow talking about some of their most famous campaigns, and how they were made. A trailer for the film is shown above.
Pray stressed that despite the bad reputation advertising holds, his film had to be made without judgement. “I’ve done a lot of documentaries about artists and mavericks and I tried to approach this in the same way,” he said. “Advertising is hard to do films about, as it’s so hated. So I tried to approach it in a non-judgmental way.”
He clearly came away with a huge respect for the ad creatives he interviewed. “I think if you want to fight advertising you have to get to know the human beings, the geniuses, that are constructing it, and then fight it, if you want to,” he said. “They are the greatest communicators there are…. It’s not easy to do, and they are really good at it.”
Helvetica trailer
Finally Gary Hustwit, the documentary maker behind the hugely successful Helvetica film, and its follow-up Objectified, spoke about his work. Michael Bierut, who was chairing the panel and also featured in Helvetica, acknowledged that being in it was “to this day, my greatest claim to fame”.
Hustwit admitted that he’d initially made the film because it was “a movie I wanted to watch – as a fan of graphic design”. “I could believe there wasn’t already a film about graphic design or typography,” he said. “It was a little side project, it was a personal film for me to watch – I didn’t really expect to have everyone receive it so warmly.” Hustwit is currently working on his third film in his design film trilogy, although won’t at this stage be drawn on its subject matter…
All of these films, despite their varying styles, demonstrate how opening up the worlds of design and advertising to the public can hugely aid in explaining the complexities of what designers and advertisers do to a wider audience, and their success clearly shows a thirst for such stories to be told.
Andy Bruntel of The Directors Bureau has directed a new music video for Liars track, Scissors, which tells a macabre tale of a man lost at sea who’s plagued by the horrifying and inexplicable appearance of rocks in his life raft…
Credits:
Director: Andy Bruntel Production company: The Directors Bureau Executive producer: Lana Kim Producer: Jett Steiger Director of Photography: Eli Born Production design: Megan Fenton Make-up: Martha Dame Cary Wardrobe: Jennifer Johnson & Martha Dame Cary Editor: Ed Yonaitis Camera crew: Kevin Phillips & Matt Harfield Sound design: Mads Heldtberg
Director Chris Cairns has teamed up with Beardyman and holographic projection experts Musion to create a live performance based on his Neurosonics Audiomedical Labs film, which features a number of disembodied rapping heads…
The film above shows live footage from an initial test performance of the holographic heads, with no post-production added.
Lay There and Hate Me by Ben Harper and Relentless 7; director: James Frost; prod co: Zoo Films, LA; visual effects: The Mill, LA
James Frost has created this James Bond-esque video for new track Lay There and Hate Me by Ben Harper and Relentless 7…
“I’d been looking at a lot of Robert Brownjohn‘s work around the time I wrote the treatment, the song evoked the strong saturated colours and projection techniques of the late 60s early 70s,” says Frost.
“The song had this great groove, so I thought it was a perfect excuse to sit in a cold studio on a rainy day in December with a naked girl, camera and projector. The performance part was shot using two cameras, one which fed directly into our actual camera so it was a pure duplication of itself which was back projected behind the band. It’s certainly a tried and tested technique, but still it’s quite trippy at points, particularly if you were standing behind it. My greatest challenge was getting the band to stop looking at themselves on the screen behind so they could make strange video feedback patterns of themselves.”
James Frost also appears in our current issue of CR, which celebrates the mag’s 30th birthday – Frost expresses his delight about the imminent rebirth of Polaroid film in our 30/30 feature, more info here.
London-based singer-songwriter and solo performer Mayor McCa has just launched a charmingly lo-fi video for his catchy new track, Drinkalottawater – directed by photographer Dean Chalkley and Yemisi Brookes…
Mayor McCa launched his new hand-made, lo-fi video at an event in London’s Notting Hill Arts Club on Monday night that saw the hairy-faced singer exhibit dozens of flyers, posters and comics which he’s created, singlehandedly over the last 12 or so years to help promote his gigs…
The singer also hand drew some Hooray for Beer posters to place by the bar and displayed some of the cardboard props used in the making of the video…
Not only does he do all the illustration (and, he admits, a lot of photocopying) himself, Mayor McCa plays all the instruments in his band. He is, in fact, a one-man-band. More info on the singer can be found at myspace.com/mayormcca
Drinkalottawater credits:
Directors: Dean Chalkley and Yemisi Brookes Editing: Jennie Wright and Adian Leva Animation assistants: Tom Kingsley and Carrie Loiuse
Approaching Ulan-Ude to the sound of rumbling wheels, 5571km from Moscow
Google Maps and the Russian Railways’ virtual version of the Trans-Siberian Railway offers the chance to experience the 150 hour, 9,000km journey from Moscow to Vladivostok. As tourism campaigns go, it works brilliantly…
The famous Moscow to Vladivostok route tracks past the Volga, Irtysh and Ob rivers, the Baikal lake, the Barguzin mountains, not to mention a host of Russian villages, towns and cities that sit across seven different time zones.
The new portal from Google Russia enables visitors to gaze uninterrupted through a window on the mammoth journey from Moscow to Vladivostok in real time. It’s the result of some 30 hours of filming by two crews that travelled the length of the line (filming only in daylight).
The film is geo-tagged, so the exact route is plotted alongside the YouTube footage in Google Maps. Alternatively, you can move the train’s position along the route yourself – if wide the expanse of the steppe gets too much – or simply click on a ‘starred’ location in the Travel Route to see some of the most “picturesque” moments from the journey.
It’s a route that is already well served by tourism, with foreign travellers making up an estimated 90% of passengers, but one of the great things about the virtual version is that users can dip in and out of the journey and get sense of some of the views on offer. You can even select an accompanying soundtrack: from the “rumble of wheels” to some balalaika, to an audio book of Tolstoy’s War and Peace (delivered in Russian).
Of course, armchair tourism is all very well, but what ‘s so satisfying about this virtual project is the sense of realism imbued: a simple combination of a running camera and a map. There are no tourist slogans, no highlights packages – it’s just the monotony and beauty of a very long, very famous train journey.
Non-stop one way tickets on the real train are around £145. The virtual version is here.
The train arrives in Perm, 1370km from Moscow
Petrovsky plant, near Petrovsky-Zabaikalsky city, 5714km from Moscow
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