Let’s clear one thing up about ACNE–the acronym stands for “Ambition to Create Novel Expressions.”
With that mantra serving as its moniker, the Swedish creative collective was established in 1996 and has lived up to its billing. The initial idea was to act in many arenas, working as consultants as well as launching their own projects and initiatives. Today the collective encompasses film and interactive production, fashion, graphic design, character development and magazines.
Recently there have been several new wrinkles for the Stockholm-based ACNE, perhaps most notably the launch of its own creative production shop stateside. The collective had been handled by the venerable RSA in the U.S. since 2001, enjoying a successful run. However, said Tomas Skoging, one of the four original founding members of the ACNE brand, the time felt right for the collective to branch out on its own in the American market.
Serving as a partial catalyst for this independence was ACNE’s interactive division in Stockholm, which handles all aspects of web production. Skoging noted that stateside clients began asking for that web expertise to be brought to bear in tandem with ACNE’s spot filmmaking prowess. Thus rather than be under the umbrella of another company, ACNE saw the need to have its own U.S. roost spanning film and web content. Shop was set up in Venice, Calif., and former RSA exec producer Fran McGivern was chosen to manage the operation.
The collective has already wrapped the first job under the ACNE US banner, a worldwide campaign for Garmin navigational devices via Tierney Advertising, Minneapolis. This represented repeat business in that ACNE turned out Garmin’s “Moose” back when the account was at Fallon, Minneapolis (with Brian Tierney as group creative director), which earned an AICP Show honor in ’07.
Skoging described the formation of ACNE US as a natural progression given the collective’s growing footprint. In a sense that creative imprint is reflected in its recent EA campaign for Wieden+Kennedy, Amsterdam, the centerpiece of which consisted of a couple four-minute films, each a mini-event akin to live sports coverage of a soccer game–one pitting Real Madrid against Manchester United, the other between Schalke 04 and Lyons FC.
A star player from each team was on hand for the games–which were being played in the context of the EA Sports soccer videogame online in four different nations and showcased on large scoreboard-sized screen projections in cities in each country. Watching the games as if attending an actual game were huge throngs of rabid fans in their home team neighborhood venues.
“Originally we were going to do it all live–it would be shot and shown live,” recalled Skoging who was one of four ACNE directors on the project. “But logistics didn’t make that feasible. Still, we filmed it all as if it were a live sporting event–with five or six cameras at each venue, a technical director switching from one camera to another, and crowds of fans acting like fans. No one was shouting instructions to them. Everything you see represents their true feelings, love, hate, joy and dismay.”
Skoging added that ACNE engaged “a television crew rather than our normal film crew talent in order to convey that real live sports event feeling.”
ACNE shot in the four countries–Spain, the U.K., France and Germany–within 10 days. The four ACNE directors were Johan Dahlqvist and Jacob Marky on Real Madrid vs. Manchester United, and Skoging and Marcus Svanberg on Schalke 04 vs. Lyons FC. However there were many shared contributions with all four directors on location and involved in the films.
“We traveled together on the road–it was like we were a rock band on European tour,” quipped Skoging, “except we weren’t drunk and we acted responsibly. We had to in order to pull off this project.”
The four-minute film featuring the Real Madrid and Manchester game aired on TV in the U.K. during an actual game between Manchester and Chelsea. Both four-minute videogame events otherwise gained their principal exposure on the web.
Additionally ACNE handled the web portion of the EA campaign, which featured hours of content giving viewers the opportunity to not only watch the entire games but also to choose vantage points and camera angles. Visitors were encouraged to share their thoughts, including predictions as to the winning teams and the final game scores. “It was an ambitious production–we used three producers and the agency was very supportive,” said Skoging. “This was quite different from any project we had ever done.”
As for those other projects, ACNE’s spot work over the years includes such brands as Nike, Coca-Cola, Volvo, Burger King, Comcast, Guinness, Tele2, Sprite, Visa and ESPN. And the awards recognition has come from assorted competitions, such as the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival, the AICP Show, the New York Festivals and the Golden Egg, Epica and Eurobest shows.
ACNE’s first major ad splash stateside was ESPN’s “Shelfball” for Wieden+Kennedy, N.Y., which went on to earn a Gold Lion at Cannes in ’03.
Meanwhile ACNE’s stateside presence isn’t confined to its production house in Venice. Earlier this year the creative collective opened its first fashion store in America, situated in Manhattan’s downtown SoHo neighborhood.
“It’s been a big year of openings for us in America,” summed up Skoging.
Review: Writer-Director Mark Anthony Green’s “Opus”
In the new horror movie "Opus," we are introduced to Alfred Moretti, the biggest pop star of the '90s, with 38 No. 1 hits and albums as big as "Thriller," "Hotel California" and "Nebraska." If the name Alfred Moretti sounds more like a personal injury attorney from New Jersey, that's the first sign "Opus" is going to stumble.
John Malkovich leans into his regular off-kilter creepy to play the unlikely pop star at the center of this serious misfire by the A24 studio, a movie that also manages to pull "The Bear" star Ayo Edebiri back to earth. How both could be totally miscast will haunt your dreams.
Writer-director Mark Anthony Green has created a pretty good premise: A massive pop star who went quiet for the better part of three decades reemerges with a new album — his 18th studio LP, called "Caesar's Request" — and invites a select six people to come to his remote Western compound for an album listening weekend. It's like a golden ticket.
Edebiri's Ariel is a one of those invited. She's 27, a writer for a hip music magazine who has been treading water for three years. She's ambitious but has no edge. "Your problem is you're middle," she's told. Unfortunately, her magazine boss is also invited, which means she's just a note-taker. Edebiri's self-conscious, understated humor is wasted here.
It takes Ariel and the rest of the guests — an influencer, a paparazzo, a former journalist-nemesis and a TV personality played by Juliette Lewis, once again cast as the frisky sexpot — way too much time to realize that Moretti has created a cult in the desert. And they're murderous. This is Cameron Crowe's "Almost Famous" crossed with Mark Mylod's "The Menu."
It's always a mistake to get too close a look at the monster in a horror... Read More