Famous Interactive, a division of Culver City-based The Famous Group, has built Young & Rubicam’s (Y&R) new global website: www.yr.com.
The interactive site features assorted noteworthy elements including an offbeat brand-battling wrestler game, “Contact Y&R” notes sent via the arcane yet at the same time charming means of homing pigeon to their intended recipients, movable refrigerator magnets, direct Flickr feeds allowing each of Y&R’s 186 offices to upload location pictures, and a fluid content playback capability.
The alluded to Flash game pits two Mexican wrestlers against one another, each representing a brand: Brand A and Brand B.
With Y&R creatives, Famous filmed actual Luchador wrestlers on a full-size professional ring built on location in front of Famous’ in-house greenscreen. Shooting with the RED Camera in 4K, director Joel Lava of Famous worked with Y&R creative artisans to choreograph several wrestling moves such as “Romper El Hielo,” “Style Clash” and the always crowd-pleasing “Suplex Sinistra.”
Famous then enhanced the campy, tongue-firmly-in-cheek mat-pounding moves with some well deployed computer-generated imagery.
The end result is a live-action and CG Flash video game intended to engage the user, through humor and entertaiment, in the advertising agency’s patented marketing techniques and approaches.
Famous and Y&R brought an innovative component to the “Contact Y&R” section with a live-action-shot pigeon handler and his professionally trained pigeons.
When the user clicks “Send Message,” composes his or her email and clicks “Send,” the pigeon handler steps out onto a composited urban rooftop and holds up the message, which is now re-printed on his paper.
He then walks over to the coop, pulls a pigeon from the corresponding category and attaches the message.
The pigeon is finally set free, flying in a hurry off screen. Famous shot the handler and pigeons on a green cyc wall with the RED camera at 4K.
Using After Effects and Flash, the site is able to track the message entered by the user so it transcribes exactly onto the handler’s corresponding piece of paper. This fine touch adds an personalized feel to the message relaying process.
Famous developed the website’s introduction using a combination of Flash and Flex on the front-end with a custom back-end content management system developed in ASP.NET and powered by a SQL Server database.
Led by Famous’ Michael Marina, the technical team managed to achieve Y&R’s goal of marrying the two sides of the business–creative and analytical–using a line that the user drags back and forth.
While the analytically inclined left side of the featured brain displays information about the agency and its work in text format, the creative right side encompasses a variety of interactive modules including the Luchador flash game, dynamic data visualizations corresponding to Y&R news articles, a refrigerator with movable magnets, Flickr-powered image galleries, and much more.
“Creating the dynamic data-visualizations for the news section was one of the most difficult components of the site,” said Marina who added that the mathematics “required to dynamically graph the information in such a stylized format was especially tricky.”
Nancy Aviram, who serves as Y&R’s executive director of content production, said that the Famous team had “both the technology and the talent to help us beautifully execute [and do justice to] our idea of left and right brain thinking.”
Aviram was part of an ensemble at Y&R that included such colleagues as creative director/art director Neil Heymann, and creative director/copywriter James Maravetz.
Utah Leaders and Locals Rally To Keep Sundance Film Festival In The State
With the 2025 Sundance Film Festival underway, Utah leaders, locals and longtime attendees are making a final push — one that could include paying millions of dollars — to keep the world-renowned film festival as its directors consider uprooting.
Thousands of festivalgoers affixed bright yellow stickers to their winter coats that read "Keep Sundance in Utah" in a last-ditch effort to convince festival leadership and state officials to keep it in Park City, its home of 41 years.
Gov. Spencer Cox said previously that Utah would not throw as much money at the festival as other states hoping to lure it away. Now his office is urging the Legislature to carve out $3 million for Sundance in the state budget, weeks before the independent film festival is expected to pick a home for the next decade.
It could retain a small presence in picturesque Park City and center itself in nearby Salt Lake City, or move to another finalist — Cincinnati, Ohio, or Boulder, Colorado — beginning in 2027.
"Sundance is Utah, and Utah is Sundance. You can't really separate those two," Cox said. "This is your home, and we desperately hope it will be your home forever."
Last year's festival generated about $132 million for the state of Utah, according to Sundance's 2024 economic impact report.
Festival Director Eugene Hernandez told reporters last week that they had not made a final decision. An announcement is expected this year by early spring.
Colorado is trying to further sweeten its offer. The state is considering legislation giving up to $34 million in tax incentives to film festivals like Sundance through 2036 — on top of the $1.5 million in funds already approved to lure the Utah festival to its neighboring... Read More