The Detroit chapter of the Association of Independent Creative Editors (AICE) recently named Erich Wiemer of START Editorial the winner of its fifth annual Filmspotting competition. Filmspotting was modeled after the national AICE Trailer Park competition. Since its inception, there have been various forms of the competition throughout all of the local chapters of AICE. This year, assistant editors from the Detroit AICE member companies were challenged to conceive, design and execute a :30 or :60 political advertisement using any existing source material. Wiemer’s ad “Choices” promoted a proposal that called for fair ballot access for third parties, and pointed out that there more choices than just red or blue. On his concept, Wiemer explained, “Personally, I’m not happy with either candidate on the ballot for this upcoming election, and I wish there was an alternate choice. I was struggling with how to show the idea of ‘choices’ in a non-political manner and I bounced a few ideas off of senior effects artist Jon Jovich. He suggested the visual of someone shopping and began sorting through footage. The idea began to come together.” The spot featured footage from films such as Heaven on Earth, The Man Who Wasn’t There, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and Raising Arizona, as well as Sony Bravia footage. Second place was awarded to Doug Lapp of Mad River Post, who took a cue straight from the local headlines. Lapp’s ad parodied Michigan’s recent film tax incentives by promoting the Michigan ‘Adult’ Film Incentive. “When I learned of the political theme for this year’s competition, I decided I didn’t want my ad to be too serious,” commented Lapp. “I made an offhand joke that Michigan should pass an ‘adult’ film incentive and my ad was born.” His spot, titled “Proposal 2” included footage from the film The Amateurs and elements and graphics from the Internet….Zoic Studios, a Los Angeles-based digital production company active in commercials, episodic TV and features, has signed producer Lisa Pierce, formerly of Stardust, and promoted staffer Steve Meyer from lead compositor to 2D supervisor…..New York-based production, design, effects and post finishing house Guerilla FX (GFX) has signed Vance Miller as character animator/technical director, He comes over to GFX from the graphic design company Eyeball, New York, where, for the last two years, as the company’s technical director, he was the lighting and rendering specialist on most of their 3D projects, supervised and fine tuned their rendering pipeline, and filled roles as both 3D animator and 2D compositor on a variety of projects for such clients as AT&T, Best Buy, Bioshock, Cinemax, Cingular, Country Music Channel, Jeep, McDonald’s, MTV, Mystic Aquarium and VH1…..
Director Cassandra Brooksbank Joins Monument Content For Spots and Branded Content
Monument Content has signed director Cassandra “Cassie” Brooksbank for U.S. representation spanning commercials and branded content. She brings to her directing and storytelling the experience and skills of a writer, conceptual artist, editor and visual effects artist.
Her body of work as a director includes Pepsi’s “Selfie” featuring Lionel Messi amid a flurry of fans, Barclays madcap women’s Soccer League spot where she collaborated closely with the agency to develop the creative, ultimately winning the Grand Jury Prize at the Sports Industry Awards, and a grass-roots campaign for Fellow Coffee. The latter just didn’t brew buzz; it helped raise $1.2 million on Kickstarter.
Prior to joining Monument Content, Brooksbank had been repped in the U.S. for commercials by production house Hey Wonderful.
On the long-form front, she is repped by CAA for film and television. And on the horizon is her debut feature, My Masterpiece, produced by Sylvester Stallone’s Balboa Productions and backed by Amazon.
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