By Robert Goldrich
BOSTON --Global Mechanic, a live-action/animation house with shops in Boston and Vancouver, B.C., has added noted animation director Dirk van de Vondel to its roster. He spent the past six years at Sherbet, London.
Among his recent credits at Sherbet were spots for Nokia and Seat Automobiles. (The Nokia worked aired in the U.S.) He has also helmed American assignments for Coca-Cola and Lee Khakis via Tricky Pictures, Chicago. Adding to his international cache are jobs for Siemens via Cine Nic, Barcelona, and a Tate Gallery project via Richard Purdum Productions, London.
At press time, van de Vondel was wrapping a Nokia spot via Global Mechanic. The ad is slated to break worldwide this month.
A filmmaker and painter, van de Vondel bases his work on observational drawing, meshing design, expressive painting and a sense of weight and grace in movement. He is also known for mixing digital and physical production techniques.
Van de Vondel joins a Global Mechanic lineup of directors that includes Bruce Alcock, Dan Sousa, Nathaniel Akin, Rich Ferguson-Hill, Ian Godfrey, Marv Newland and Cliff Saito. Matthew Charde is the company’s executive producer.
Global Mechanic is active in spots (Kellogg’s Anheuser-Busch, Procter & Gamble, Coke, Mattel, Unilever, Hershey, Kraft, Mattle, Target) and longer form fare. Its latest films are Alcock’s At the Quinte Hotel and Sousa’s Fable. Both continue their run on the festival circuit, with exposure at Sundance, the Toronto International Film Fest, the Chicago International Film Fest, the Ottawa International Animation Festival, the San Francisco International Festival and the Annecy Film Festival. Quinte won best Canadian animated short in Ottawa and the Golden Gate Award in San Francisco.
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