Commercial production company Cap Gun Collective, with shops in Chicago and London, has opened a Los Angeles office with the hiring of executive producer Jason Botkin and an expanded U.S. directorial roster that includes founder Alex Fendrich, Docter Twins, Jeppe Ronde, Jonathan Doe, Michael Sewandono, Spooner Bonde, Tomas Mankovsky, and Tom Haines.
The company has also launched an original content offering, Cap Gun TV (CGTV), a hybrid production studio that develops, produces, and markets original content for broadcast, film, digital and video on demand, incubating micro-content into larger, fully realized properties and finding new ways of funding and distribution within the landscapes of traditional and new media.
Botkin hails from an extensive production background, most recently as EP for commercial production stalwart Furlined. Prior to Furlined, Botkin was the founder and managing director of Streetgang Films, a music video company that helped launch the careers of assorted prominent directors.
Cap Gun Collective was originally founded in Chicago in 2009 by executive producer Matt Abramson, director Fendrich, and producer Kaitlyn Parks. In 2011, the company opened an office in London with exec producer Oliver Allgrove. Cap Gun Collective is part of the grouping of Whitehouse Post “one roof” partner companies that includes Gentleman Scholar and Carbon VFX.
Since its 2009 inception Cap Gun Collective has developed and produced a number of original content properties, including The Venue, which won the Comedy Central Pilot Competition in 2012. Cap Gun also produced the web series Teachers with director Matt Miller and improv comedy troupe The Katydids. The series is showcased on The Onion website and is also being developed into a longer format series.
Cap Gun will continue its successful foray into original content with CGTV.
Cap Gun Collective is represented on the West Coast by Brooke Covington and Rebecca Reber, Jimmy Waldron for the Mid-West and Meredith Bergman for the East Coast.
Google Opens Its Defense In Antitrust Case Alleging Monopoly Over Online Ad Technology
Google opened its defense against allegations that it holds an illegal monopoly on online advertising technology Friday with witness testimony saying the industry is vastly more complex and competitive than portrayed by the federal government.
"The industry has been exceptionally fluid over the last 18 years," said Scott Sheffer, a vice president for global partnerships at Google, the company's first witness at its antitrust trial in federal court in Alexandria.
The Justice Department and a coalition of states contend that Google built and maintained an illegal monopoly over the technology that facilitates the buying and selling of online ads seen by consumers.
Google counters that the government's case improperly focuses on a narrow type of online ads — essentially the rectangular ones that appear on the top and on the right-hand side of a webpage. In its opening statement, Google's lawyers said the Supreme Court has warned judges against taking action when dealing with rapidly emerging technology like what Sheffer described because of the risk of error or unintended consequences.
Google says defining the market so narrowly ignores the competition it faces from social media companies, Amazon, streaming TV providers and others who offer advertisers the means to reach online consumers.
Justice Department lawyers called witnesses to testify for two weeks before resting their case Friday afternoon, detailing the ways that automated ad exchanges conduct auctions in a matter of milliseconds to determine which ads are placed in front of which consumers and how much they cost.
The department contends the auctions are finessed in subtle ways that benefit Google to the exclusion of would-be competitors and in ways that prevent... Read More