SHORT CUTS
Freestyle Collective, New York, completed design and animation on a package of promos for the new season of Comedy Central’s Chappelle’s Show. For the eight spots, Freestyle Collective was asked by Comedy Central creative director/VP on-air design Kendrick Reid to develop the visuals for a campaign that would show off the urban and fun sensibility of the show while reflecting the network’s refreshed design. The completed project combines bold design and live action that highlights the sharp humor of the series. In the comedy-driven promos, Chappelle cracks jokes about his return to the airwaves in an animated graffiti environment. Graphic clouds and bold, stylized arrows, which drip like wet paint, are matched with gritty textures to give the promos their energy. Freestyle’s creative director Victor Newman directed the live action shoot with Chappelle, along with the network’s on-air writer/producer team of Dexter Morris and Jeff Blackman. Additional Freestyle credits go to executive producer Suzanne Potashnick, assistant producer Rick Silvestrini, and designer/animator Gerald Soto, who also edited the promos with Newman. Freestyle’s toolbox on the project included Adobe After Effects, Illustrator and Photoshop, as well as Maya and Apple’s Final Cut Pro.
New York-based Spontaneous produced and designed a :60 for Spiegel via New York agency Badger Kry & Partners. "Pull Back" features Brazilian supermodel Daniela in a variety of scenes, shot by Spontaneous’ Juan Delcan, and integrated by the Spontaneous design/effects team. David Elkin, director of visual effects at Spontaneous, worked closely with Delcan to pull the spot together. For Spontaneous, Maribeth Phillips was executive producer, Tim Ives was DP, David Marks was the line producer, Zu Al-Kadiri and Nina Goldberg were project producers, Cara Buckley was assistant producer, and Jory Hull was design director. The ad was cut by Karama Horne of sister shop The Blue Rock Editing Company, with Ethel Rubinstein executive producing.
Click 3X, New York, designed and produced a new end-tag for Jeep, in which the automaker’s moniker appears to be carved from towering columns of rock. The :05 computer-animated tag was created for BBDO Detroit, Troy, Mich. The tag opens with the camera focused on the base of a huge mesa in a sprawling rugged landscape. Traveling swiftly up the side of the rock, the camera pulls into an aspect parallel to and high above the ground to reveal that the rock formation is one of a group of mesas spelling out the Jeep logo. Below them, smaller groupings of rock form the shape of a Jeep grill. Animators created the mesas by applying textures drawn from still photographs of the Grand Canyon to computer-generated geometric forms. The CG topography, which was executed as a single piece, was complex. The hero mesa, which turns out to be the left side of the letter "e," needed to be rendered in especially fine detail so that it looked real when viewed in close up during the tag’s opening frame. The cloud-strewn sky glimpsed in the background of the piece was drawn from time-lapse footage. The sequence was designed by Click 3X creative director Iain Greenway.
MUSIC NOTES
Big Foote Music, New York, composed tracks for three :30s for Cleveland agency The Communications Factory and its client, Fresh Lightbulbs. "Mildred," "Janie" and "Duke" feature mini-vignettes that tell the story of a highly individualized character (slightly sinister Aunt Mildred, precocious young girl Janie, and a happy-go-lucky dog). The spots were directed by Cole & Roy of bicoastal RAW/Progressive Films. Big Foote’s Darren Solomon composed "Duke," while Chris Jordao and Kari Steinert wrote "Janie" and "Mildred," respectively. Ray Foote was the executive producer.
The Rhythm Café, Chicago, completed original music for McDonald’s "Academy," out of Burrell Communications, Chicago. The :30 features tennis superstars Venus and Serena Williams and is part of McDonald’s "365Black" campaign, which promotes a year-round celebration of African-American heritage. The commercial’s message is conveyed through various images of young children in academic settings, superimposed with captions such as "I am history in the making." The Williams sisters appear as guests in a classroom and a source of inspiration. Ralph Beerhorst was composer/arranger for The Rhythm Café, with Brando Triantafillou as composer/engineer.
IN GEAR
Paul Bronkar of Company 3, Santa Monica, utilized Quantel‘s iQ in conjunction with the da Vinci 2K, to color correct the feature Torque, directed by Joseph Kahn. (Kahn directs commercials via bicoastal HSI Productions.) Bronkar also used the system’s Resolution Co-existence technology that works with multiple formats within the same project. Bronkar was able to blow up and reposition shots, go out to any format such as film, PAL, NTSC and pan-and-scan, and not have to re-color the film. Quantel is based in New Canaan, Conn.
New York-based postproduction facility Frame:Runner has taken the leap into high-definition television with the acquisition of the Avid Nitris and Sony Xpri non-linear HD editing systems. The 21-year-old company has specialized in color correction and finishing for longform documentary and series postproduction, in addition to shortform promos for the past seven years. Frame:Runner’s systems also incorporate the new Sony HDCAM-SR format for high quality HD recordings in both 1080 and 720, and the Teranex Xantus all-format converter, for up-, down-, and cross-conversions. The facility quickly put its new technology to use in editing the hi-def meditation video, Momentary Meditations. The hour-long video was cut by Don Wyllie on an Avid Symphony, and finished in hi-def on the Avid Nitris HD by Frame:Runner’s longform color correction specialist, Evan Anthony. Frame:Runner houses 11 component digital postproduction suites, including one Avid Nitris HD, a Sony Xpri HD, two linear online, two Avid Symphonys, an Avid 9000XL, one Flame/Smoke, a Smoke, a MacGraphics, and motion control animation stand.
CLIPLAND
Peter Sluszka of Dancing Diablo Studio, Brooklyn, N.Y., helped to create the stop-motion animation for "Walkie Talkie Man," a music video from Auckland, New Zealand rock/hip-hop band Steriogram. The clip, directed by Michel Gondry of bicoastal/international Partizan, features a mix of live action and stop motion. Sluszka worked closely with Gondry and animator/DP Adrian Scartascini to capture the action, which takes place in a yarn universe. In the video, Los Angeles is depicted as a woolly landscape, and everything is made of yarn, including a studio with guitar and amps. While Steriogram is recording, the Walkie Talkie Man—a raging, knit giant intent on finding the group—is busting out of the concert hall. The ill-tempered dude lumbers down the street, smashing a wool car in the process, scales the Columbia Records building, and punches through the window to get to the band members and engineers (portrayed by Gondry’s son and a friend) who fight off his giant puppeteered hand. Grabbing a loose thread on the finger of the wooly mammoth, they wind it onto the reel-to-reel machine, causing their nemesis to deconstruct. In the last frames, he has fallen off the building. As he runs away, all that is left of the Walkie Talkie Man are his knit feet. The animation was created by Sluszka, Dancing Diablo’s creative partner/director of animation, along with Gondry and Scartascini, who shot the animation on 16mm film with a Bolex camera.
