Academy Award-nominated director Darren Aronofsky has partnered with a pair of spot industry veterans, executive producers Ted Robbins and Sandy Haddad, to open commercial production house CHROMISTA. The company has already embarked on projects with Ogilvy and DDB.
Aronofsky earned a Best Director Oscar nomination and was a DGA Award nominee on the strength of Black Swan, for which he won the top directing honor at the Independent Spirit Awards. His other critically acclaimed films include The Wrestler, The Fountain, Requiem For A Dream, and Pi, as well as notable commercials for The Meth Project, Yves St. Laurent and Revlon.
Rounding out the CHROMISTA directorial roster are Kasra Farahani, Daniel Portrait of Kamp Grizzly, Xavier Mairesse (shortlisted for the AICP Show this year), and Walter May. Aronofsky’s longtime features producer Scott Franklin will serve as an executive producer.
The new company’s moniker is inspired by Aronofsky’s love for science, and a play on the name of his feature production company Protozoa. Explained Haddad, “When it came time to name our company, CHROMISTA made sense as it’s in the same supergroup as a Protozoa. So I guess you could call us one big Super Group.”
With offices in Los Angeles and New York, CHROMISTA is also represented by ENID London in the UK and Amsterdam, meaning its directorial talent is globally available for traditional advertising and longer-form projects. Beyond doing high-level advertising, CHROMISTA will serve as a launching pad for up-and-coming directorial talent in the feature world.
EP Robbins’ resume includes line-producing for major industry players. Haddad served as executive producer for production house Wild Plum for five years, working with multiple directors on brands ranging from Ford to Miller Lite to Dial Soap. The two worked closely with Aronofsky on the director’s last two campaigns, solidifying a creative bond that has evolved into CHROMISTA. EP Franklin has worked with Aronofsky since 1998’s Pi, and is currently producing the epic Noah. Franklin’s decade-plus relationship with the director has served the two well, consistently producing well-received films and commercials.
CHROMISTA is represented by Shortlist on the West Coast, Monaghan Talent Rangers in the Midwest, and FM Artists on the East Coast.
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