Corky Quakenbush and Joel Trussell have joined the directorial roster of ka-chew!, the Hollywood-based commercial production company owned by Gabor Csupo and Arlene Klasky, owners of multi-Emmy Award-winning animation studio Klasky Csupo, Inc.
Quakenbush had most recently been repped for spots by Los Angeles multimedia studio DUCK. His signing with ka-chew! marks a return to the company fold. Best known as a stop-motion animation director and for his brand of funny, irreverent work, Quakenbush was earlier repped via what was then known as Class-Key Chew-Po Commercials (now the ka-chew! banner).
He worked on the early seasons of FOX’s Madtv. His television directing, producing and developing credits include shows, pilots and segments on FOX, MTV, NBC, ABC, WB, HBO, VH-1, Disney, Cinemax, Oxygen, TBS, Discovery, and PBS. Quakenbush holds the record for number of films–nine–screened from a single director at the Sundance Film Festival. Numerous festivals have honored Quakenbush, in the form of tributes, retrospectives and awards. HBO’s U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen honored him with a “Best Of” program.
In 2008, Quakenbush returned to MADtv to create more than a dozen new shorts for their 12th season. During ’07-’08, he created and directed 12 comic shorts for Turner’s comedy broadband channel SuperDeluxe.com.
Quakenbush said he was drawn in part to ka-chew! by its executive producer/creative director John Andrews, who is also head of production at Klasky Csupo. “I’ve had a long relationship with John Andrews, starting when he was at MTV in the ’90’s,” recalled Quakenbush. “I’m happy to be ‘coming back’ into the world of commercials with John as my EP. I felt now was a good time to reinvigorate my commercial direction, as most of my work during the past few years has been either service work for television and entertainment websites, short films, or the production of commercial parodies.”
Joel Trussell
Director Trussell, whose reputation is in quirky 2D animated comedy featuring well developed characters, comes to ka-chew! through his association with 6PH (Six Point Harness). A Hollywood independent TV animation studio, 6PH is repped by ka-chew! in the ad space. Currently, Trussell is directing for ka-chew! an online campaign for Nature Made out of Ogilvy & Mather. All animation is being done at 6PH.
Trussell has worked in the animation industry for over a decade. He has directed music videos for many popular artists, such as the Gossip, Jakob Dylan, Morcheeba, and Jason Forrest’s War Photographer, for which he won numerous awards, including the Ottawa International Film Festival’s Best Music Video honor. He has also directed several segments for Nick Jr’s Yo Gabba Gabba, and commercials for clients such as Nicorette and Esurance. He wrapped the Esurance work via animation studio Wild Brain but was not formally represented by that studio.
Both Quakenbush and Trussell had work in last year’s edition of Mike Judge’s The Animation Show. They now become part of a directorial lineup at ka-chew! that includes Paul Cummings, Davy Force, David Russo, Elliot M. Bour, Parallax Studioworks, Liz Blazer, Tom Deslongchamp, Jeff Gill, Paul Westergard, Tom Schroeder, Sean Nadeau, Paul Sloboda, Nadia Roden, Carolle Shelley Abrams and London-based studio TRUNK (with Grigoris Leontiades, Steve Smith, Layla Atkinson, and Siri Melchior, among other helmers).
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