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    2017 Year End Survey – Matt Hunnicutt & Mike Davidson

    By Mike MorgeraUpdated:No Comments991 Views
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    3) We’re incredibly proud of the wide range of work we’ve done this past year. From launching a chicken sandwich into space for KFC all while broadcasting it live, to giving the Internet a robotic Old Spice S.Q.U.I.D. to control via Twitch.tv in the name of helping boys become men, to creating a platform for the world to watch Nike get closer than anyone’s come to breaking the sub two-hour marathon. We also created an interactive music video for our friends Portugal. The Man that was filled with tools to empower social justice, which was named one of the best music videos of the year before the song rose to number one on the charts. It’s been a fun year pushing ourselves to work in new ways, across a variety of platforms and mediums, while protecting our fluid creative process to best serve our clients of all shapes and sizes.

    4) We’ll continue to see more and more agencies and brands embracing opportunities to collaborate with platforms and publishers to reach their audiences on their turf. It’s about building experiences that connect with people in respectful and meaningful ways in spaces where they’re choosing to spend their time—all in the name of finding new ways to get more ideas made.

    5) Simply put, we plan to seize every opportunity we get to create immersive storytelling experiences that generate a genuine emotional response with our audiences and hopefully have some sort of cultural impact. For us, it’s less about medium-specific goals but rather the excitement of the endless possibilities of what we could be making.

    Matt Hunnicutt & Mike Davidson
    Co-heads of production
    Wieden+Kennedy Portland



    Does “Hundreds of Beavers” Reflect A New Path Forward In Cinema?

    Monday, November 25, 2024

    Hard as it may be to believe, changing the future of cinema was not on Mike Cheslik's mind when he was making "Hundreds of Beavers." Cheslik was in the Northwoods of Wisconsin with a crew of four, sometimes six, standing in snow and making his friend, Ryland Tews, fall down funny.

    "When we were shooting, I kept thinking: It would be so stupid if this got mythologized," says Cheslik.

    And yet, "Hundreds of Beavers" has accrued the stuff of, if not quite myth, then certainly lo-fi legend. Cheslik's film, made for just $150,000 and self-distributed in theaters, has managed to gnaw its way into a movie culture largely dominated by big-budget sequels.

    "Hundreds of Beavers" is a wordless black-and-white bonanza of slapstick antics about a stranded 19th century applejack salesman (Tews) at war with a bevy of beavers, all of whom are played by actors in mascot costumes.

    No one would call "Hundreds of Beavers" expensive looking, but it's far more inventive than much of what Hollywood produces. With some 1,500 effects shots Cheslik slaved over on his home computer, he crafted something like the human version of Donald Duck's snowball fight, and a low-budget heir to the waning tradition of Buster Keaton and "Naked Gun."

    At a time when independent filmmaking is more challenged than ever, "Hundreds of Beavers" has, maybe, suggested a new path forward, albeit a particularly beaver-festooned path.

    After no major distributor stepped forward, the filmmakers opted to launch the movie themselves, beginning with carnivalesque roadshow screenings. Since opening in January, "Hundreds of Beavers" has played in at least one theater every week of the year, though never more than 33 at once. (Blockbusters typically play in around 4,000 locations.)... Read More

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