New York Editorial Shop Makes Commercial Inroads In Living Room Setting.
By SUSAN LIN
In introducing arc•light editorial, New York, Jason Mayo, executive producer at the facility, discussed the comfy couches in the lounge and regular yoga classes which clients are invited to attend. "We’re really about that family-oriented experience," Mayo said. "We want to make you feel like you’re sitting in your living room."
Just this month, arc•light moved from a midtown work area to a downtown loft with oversized windows, wooden floors, plush sofas, DVD player with titles to view—and two Avid rooms. To find the new space, arc•light’s founder/senior editor Dana Müller Bol had spent almost two months scouting commercial property. She wanted the location to be "as close to a home as possible," said Mayo.
When not entertaining, Müller Bol does editing and composite work. Her most recent spots were "David Robinson" and "Where You Need To Be" for the U.S. Navy via Rapp Collins Worldwide, New York; and "Sporting Goods Store" for Toyota via Saatchi & Saatchi, New York.
Effects-driven spots are where Müller Bol’s skills are most fully utilized. She prefers projects that demand dense compositing, heavy editing or complicated title design. "It’s where I think I’m the strongest," she said.
Müller Bol composited six layers of footage for some of the frames in the U.S. Navy spots. In "Where You Need To Be," for example, military planes fly or ships coast in the background as officers talk candidly about their Navy experiences.
For "Sporting Goods Store," Müller Bol paced her cutting to accentuate the spot’s action and premise. The commercial begins with a man who is checking out the wares in a sporting goods shop. The shopper is then surprised by a salesperson, who converses with him out of a television screen and attempts to sell him a Toyota—i.e., the wild, adventurous purchase he really wants to make.
Müller Bol heightened the commercial’s humor in quick, playful cuts that flip back and forth between the shopper and salesperson. As they talk, the spot cuts to the other person right when either stops saying something, giving focus to the dialogue.
Whether she is working on a comedy spot or that of a different genre, Müller Bol said that editing is all about rhythm and breaks in rhythm. In "Sporting Good Store," for example, she added a moment’s lapse after the shopper talks and before the screen shifts to the salesperson, who cries like a wolf. "Sometimes a pause can be really funny. That beat [of silence] makes it funnier when the guy howls," she said.
Although arc•light does only offline editing in-house, Mayo said that Müller Bol usually follows through on spots as the tape goes through color correction, online editing or graphics, all the way to the finished product. "We make sure everything is exactly the way [the client] wanted it to be and the way we visualized it in the offline process," Mayo said.
Sometimes arc•light is brought into the process as early as the conceptual stage, particularly if the spot will involve complex editorial effects. Mayo said that Müller Bol, at times, "supervises a shoot … and looks out for stuff that makes it easier down the road as far as compositing goes."
Arc•light’s ability to closely tailor spots to client needs was what Mayo attributed to "being small," as opposed to being a larger full-service post house bogged down with "preconceived notions" and "things that are more difficult to change."
Müller Bol shares space with associate editor Cass O’Meara at arc•light. Originally joining the company as Müller Bol’s assistant, O’Meara recently began to cut her own spots. She has since completed work for Electrasol, Ink for Life and Lime-A-Way. Also on the editorial roster is assistant/vaulter Lucas Roth.
Tim Burton Discusses His Dread Of AI As An Exhibition of His Work Opens In London
The imagination of Tim Burton has produced ghosts and ghouls, Martians, monsters and misfits — all on display at an exhibition that is opening in London just in time for Halloween.
But you know what really scares him? Artificial intelligence.
Burton said Wednesday that seeing a website that had used AI to blend his drawings with Disney characters "really disturbed me."
"It wasn't an intellectual thought — it was just an internal, visceral feeling," Burton told reporters during a preview of "The World of Tim Burton" exhibition at London's Design Museum. "I looked at those things and I thought, 'Some of these are pretty good.' … (But) it gave me a weird sort of scary feeling inside."
Burton said he thinks AI is unstoppable, because "once you can do it, people will do it." But he scoffed when asked if he'd use the technology in this work.
"To take over the world?" he laughed.
The exhibition reveals Burton to be an analogue artist, who started off as a child in the 1960s experimenting with paints and colored pencils in his suburban Californian home.
"I wasn't, early on, a very verbal person," Burton said. "Drawing was a way of expressing myself."
Decades later, after films including "Edward Scissorhands," "Batman," "The Nightmare Before Christmas" and "Beetlejuice," his ideas still begin with drawing. The exhibition includes 600 items from movie studio collections and Burton's personal archive, and traces those ideas as they advance from sketches through collaboration with set, production and costume designers on the way to the big screen.
London is the exhibition's final stop on a decade-long tour of 14 cities in 11 countries. It has been reconfigured and expanded with 90 new objects for its run in... Read More