Nine-year-old Heather McNamara speaks directly to the camera in a matter-of-fact manner. “They just said go to Philadelphia,” she related. “Philadelphia didn’t want to touch me.
“They said go to Florida. Florida didn’t want to touch me. And then we went to all these hospitals. They just told us to go to all these places.”
A message appears on screen which informs us that Heather had a baseball-sized cancerous tumor lodged among her vital organs.”
We return to Heather on camera who says that she and her family finally found a place that didn’t send her elsewhere: New York-Presbyterian. Heather stumbles a bit in her pronunciation of “Presbyterian.” She tell us of Dr. Kato who agreed to operate.
A supered message reads, “In a 23-hour surgery, Dr. Tomoaki Kato temporarily removed six major organs in order to remove the tumor.”
The camera comes back to Heather who tells us how happy she is to be better and cancer free.
The spot ends with the New York-Presbyterian campaign mantra, “Amazing Things Are Happening Here.”
The “Amazing Stories” campaign spanning TV and the web was created by New York agency Munn Rabôt. “Heather” and other spots in the black-and-white campaign featuring candid monologues from real patients were directed by agency co-founder/creative director Peter Rabôt and edited by Antoine Mills of wild(child), New York. Production house on the job was Lost Highway Films, N.Y.
“I’ve worked in advertising for the past twenty-five years, but I’ve never been fortunate to do anything like this,” Rabôt said. “I know by the incredible reaction this work is getting that we have something here that goes way above advertising–it’s not easy to break through in this category. Antoine sat through many grueling days with creative director John Stingley and myself and was a great creative support throughout the process. He settled for nothing less than the best and helped take this work, and the category, to a totally new level.”
Netflix Series “The Leopard” Spots Classic Italian Novel, Remakes It As A Sumptuous Period Drama
"The Leopard," a new Netflix series, takes the classic Italian novel by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa and transforms it into a sumptuous period piece showing the struggles of the aristocracy in 19th-century Sicily, during tumultuous social upheavals as their way of life is crumbling around them.
Tom Shankland, who directs four of the eight episodes, had the courage to attempt his own version of what is one of the most popular films in Italian history. The 1963 movie "The Leopard," directed by Luchino Visconti, starring Burt Lancaster, Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale, won the Palme d'Or in Cannes.
One Italian critic said that it would be the equivalent of a director in the United States taking "Gone with the Wind" and turning it into a series, but Shankland wasn't the least bit intimidated.
He said that he didn't think of anything other than his own passion for the project, which grew out of his love of the book. His father was a university professor of Italian literature in England, and as a child, he loved the book and traveling to Sicily with his family.
The book tells the story of Don Fabrizio Corbera, the Prince of Salina, a tall, handsome, wealthy aristocrat who owns palaces and land across Sicily.
His comfortable world is shaken with the invasion of Sicily in 1860 by Giuseppe Garibaldi, who was to overthrow the Bourbon king in Naples and bring about the Unification of Italy.
The prince's family leads an opulent life in their magnificent palaces with servants and peasants kowtowing to their every need. They spend their time at opulent banquets and lavish balls with their fellow aristocrats.
Shankland has made the series into a visual feast with tables heaped with food, elaborate gardens and sensuous costumes.... Read More