SHORT CUTS
The Finish Line (TFL), Santa Monica, provided graphic design, visual effects and final conform on Sony Vaio’s "Monks," via Young & Rubicam, Irvine, Calif. Directed by Peggy Sirota of bicoastal HSI Productions, the :30 follows a Tibetan monk as he travels a series of mountain trails to deliver a Sony Vaio laptop to a fellow monk. The man inserts a DVD into the Slim Dock attachment and uses the computer to first view religious services, then a Three Stooges show. TFL credits include online editor/lead effects artist Jon Mueller; and visual effects artists Pete Mayor, Paul Song and Marla Carter. Additionally, May Almy and Teri Yarbrow of TFL’s design team, Magika, created the graphics to compliment the video for the computer screen inserts.
New York-based Spontaneous Combustion designed and animated title sequences and completed the online and color correction for a series of promos for Combat Missions, a new reality series from the producer of Survivor, that will make it’s debut on the USA Network in Jan. 2002. The :30, :20, :15 and :10 promos, collectively titled "Omnibus," and the :15 "Lake" and :10 "Chopper" began airing in mid-September. Spontaneous’ Tony Robins was executive creative director; Dana Yee was design director; Haejin Cho, Gary Tam and Scarlett Kim were designers; Roe Bressan was managing director; Simone Pillinger was executive producer/producer; and Valerie J. McAndrews was assistant producer.
Studio V12 has produced a new branding campaign for Gran Via, the Spanish premium movie and sports channgel. Juan Delcan served as creative director for the effort, and also directed the more than 20 spots that make up the package. The campaign also includes a series of short computer-animated promos. Additional V12 credits include assistant director Tomas Obermaier, and designer Louisa Fitch and freelancer Alan Donhauser, who fleshed out the storyboards and designed the graphic elements.
MUSIC NOTES
San Francisco-headquartered earwax productions has been busy composing music and sound design for various projects. Earwax co-founder Barney Jones cut temporary music for the editorial department of Pixar Animation Studios, Richmond, Calif., for use during the production of the feature Monsters Inc. Jones also composed the score to an academic half-hour documentary for Johns-Hopkins University, about the state of computer-assisted surgery. The piece will be used for Hopkins conferences. Earwax also had sound design and production featured in Dierdre Lynch’s Photos To Send, a feature which is being shown at the Cork Film Festival in Ireland.
STOCK EXCHANGE
National Geographic Television (NGT) Film Library has signed an agreement with Munich-based Telcast to distribute the NGT library of stock footage in the German market. The agreement allows Telcast the right to license more than 2,000 hours of NGT’s footage to clients within the German market, and is being utilized to expedite the transition of format and procurement of footage from NGT’s archives.Footage will be marketed for educational and commercial use in news and commercial productions, corporate marketing, broadcast and new media programming, digital presentations and consumer promotions. The Film Library is headquartered in Washington, D.C., with satellite offices in New York and London.
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