Carnival Corporation is set to run its first Super Bowl ad which will ultimately be chosen from four semi-finalists created by BBDO Atlanta and directed by Wally Pfister whose commercial production house affiliation is Reset. The final Super Bowl TV commercial will be sourced from Carnival’s recently launched “World’s Leading Cruise Lines Marketing Challenge” that gives consumers across North America the chance to provide the company with input on its new advertising creative. Hosted by Cedric the Entertainer, this interactive crowdsourcing contest lets consumers “join the company’s marketing team” and vote for their favorite creative concept with a chance to win a grand prize of a yearly cruise for life. Consumers can visit Carnival Corporation’s new campaign hub created by BBDO Atlanta – WorldsLeadingCruiseLines.com – for details on how to vote in the Marketing Challenge. Rough-cut preview videos of the semi-finalist ad concepts are available for review and voting. The final elimination round will help determine which two finalists emerge from the following spots: “Getaway” which shows how cruising gives guests the chance to get away from all the stresses of life; “Cruise Virgin” in which people talk about their first cruise, which they happily remember; “Message in a Bottle” where special cruising moments are in a message in a bottle; and “Mystery Spot,” an idea based on a surprise that will serve as a reminder of how special the sea can be. All four semi-finalist concepts are now in full production via BBDO Atlanta and Pfister who made recently made his feature directorial debut with Transcendence starring Johnny Depp. Pfister earlier served as DP on dozens of films, including Moneyball, The Dark Knight trilogy and Inception, which earned him a Best Cinematography Oscar in 2011….
From Restoring To Hopefully Preserving Multi-Camera Categories At The Emmys
When Gary Baum, ASC won his fourth career Emmy Award earlier this month, it was especially gratifying in that the honor came in a category--Outstanding Cinematography for a Multi-Camera Half-Hour Series--that had been restored thanks in part to a grass-roots initiative among cinematographers to drum up entries. Last year the category fell by the wayside when not enough multi-camera entries materialized.
In his acceptance speech, Baum appealed to the Television Academy to keep multi-camera categories alive. He later noted to SHOOT that editors also got their multi-camera recognition back in the Emmy competition this year. Baum hopes that after resurrecting multi-camera categories in 2024, such recognition will be preserved for 2025 and beyond.
A major factor in the decline of multi-camera submissions in 2023 was the move of certain children’s and family programming from the primetime Emmy competition to the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences’ (NATAS) Emmy ceremony. For DPs this meant that multi-camera programs last year were reduced to vying for just one primetime nomination slot in the more general Outstanding Cinematography for a Series (Half-Hour) category. It turned out that this single slot was filled in ‘23 by a Baum-lensed episode of How I Met Your Father (Hulu).
Fast forward to this year’s competition and Baum won for another installment of How I Met Your Father--”Okay Fine, It’s A Hurricane,” which turned out to be the series finale. Two of Baum’s Emmy wins over the years have been for How I Met Your Father, and there’s a certain symmetry to them. His initial win for How I Met Your Father was for the pilot in 2022. So he won Emmys for the very first and last... Read More