This CGI spot from animation studio DUCK in Los Angeles for client Safeway supermarkets and agency DDB Chicago opens on a grocery store checkout line where a female customer places assorted gift cards she has purchased on the cashier conveyer belt.
As each gift card reaches the price scanner, it morphs into different merchandise. For example, a Home Depot gift card transforms into a nifty electric drill. A Toys R Us gift card morphs into a sophisticated toy robot. And an iTunes gift card changes into a hard driving rock band in concert.
Gift bows animate around the products as a voiceover informs us that with more than 250 gift cards to choose from at your Safeway family grocery store (which includes such supermarkets as Vons, Safeway Genuardis, Dominics, TomThumb, Randalls and Carrs), “there’s one place that will help you check off your grocery list and your gift list.”
We then see the woman in the supermarket parking lot, driving off in her compact car, with the rock band in the backseat
The tag in the case of the Vons branded store is simply, “Vons. Ingredients for life.”
Different versions of the spot were produced to reflect the different grocery store chain brands under the Safeway family umbrella.
The CGI spots were directed by Lane Nakamura and Jan Chen (a.k.a. Lane & Jan) of DUCK. Their support team at DUCK included executive producer Mark Medernach, producer Daniel Ridgers and postproduction artisans Melissa Timme and Joe Kim.
The work was modeled and animated using Autodesk Maya. Compositing and post were done in Adobe AfterEffects.
The agency team consisted of creative director/art director Sonja Olson, writer Allen Rubens and producers Bud Johnston and Cary Potterfield.
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