A man wakes up in bed to find a soccer ball on his forehead. While that might seem an unusual eye opener for most people, he acts nonchalant about it as he gets out of bed to matter of factly start his day, all the while bouncing the ball on his head.
We follow the bouncing ball through the hallway, in the shower stall, as a reflection in the toaster, as he walks to work, at his office cubicle, in the elevator, in the park for lunch, on a bus back home and then finally on the living room couch in front of his television set that evening. He then flicks on the TV remote to get his daily dose of Fox Soccer Channel.
At that point, a message appears on screen which rhetorically asks, “What’s on your mind?” It’s accompanied by the Fox Soccer Channel logo.
“Bouncing Ball” was directed by Shyam Madiraju of Culver City, Calif.-based V3 (a division of bicoastal Anonymous Content). Santa Monica-based Germ, Madiraju’s content company, served as the agency, with a creative team that included creative director/writer Madiraju, writer/art director Erick Vinluan and writer Jesus Levya.
Sylvia Kahn Versace executive produced for V3, with Scott Purroy serving as producer. Jason Black of Blue Cactus, Los Angeles, provided production services. The DP was Joshua Hess.
Editor was Kim Bica of bicoastal Lost Planet. Colorist was the mono-monikered Crash of Riot, Santa Monica. Audio post mixers were Chris Hildrew and John Bolen of Play, Santa Monica. Music is a song titled “Sway,” which was recomposed by Los Angeles shop Sunset24.
Set designer/art director was David King. Principal actor was Mike Enfield, who plays for Major League Soccer team the Los Angeles Galaxy.
Madiraju was included in this year’s SHOOT New Directors Showcase. He was unable to attend the Showcase event in New York this past May because he had just embarked on this Fox Soccer project.
Supreme Court Seems Likely To Uphold A Law That Could Force TikTok To Shut Down On Jan. 19
The Supreme Court on Friday seemed likely to uphold a law that would ban TikTok in the United States beginning Jan. 19 unless the popular social media program is sold by its China-based parent company.
Hearing arguments in a momentous clash of free speech and national security concerns, the justices seemed persuaded by arguments that the national security threat posed by the company's connections to China override concerns about restricting the speech either of TikTok or its 170 million users in the United States.
Early in arguments that lasted more than two and a half hours, Chief Justice John Roberts identified his main concern: TikTok's ownership by China-based ByteDance and the parent company's requirement to cooperate with the Chinese government's intelligence operations.
If left in place, the law passed by bipartisan majorities in Congress and signed by President Joe Biden in April will require TikTok to "go dark" on Jan. 19, lawyer Noel Francisco told the justices on behalf of TikTok.
At the very least, Francisco urged, the justices should enter a temporary pause that would allow TikTok to keep operating. "We might be in a different world again" after President-elect Donald Trump takes office on Jan. 20. Trump, who has 14.7 million followers on TikTok, also has called for the deadline to be pushed back to give him time to negotiate a "political resolution." Francisco served as Trump's solicitor general in his first presidential term.
But it was not clear whether any justices would choose such a course. And only Justice Neil Gorsuch sounded like he would side with TikTok to find that the ban violates the Constitution.
Gorsuch labeled arguments advanced by the Biden administration' in defense of the law a... Read More