Directorial duo Bright Black–composed of Austin Rhodes and Ivan Landau–has joined bicoastal integrated content studio Humble for commercials, branded content and music videos. The move marks Bright Black’s first time being repped by a commercial production company.
Collaborating on directing, cinematography, and post, the duo is behind music videos for artists such as Beats Antique and Sigur Ros, and docu-style branded content and ads for Nike, Wilson, Grey Goose, Beck’s, Beats by Dre, Neff, and others. Along the way Bright Black worked with leading talent and athletes including LeBron James, Nicki Minaj, Gina Rodriguez, Norman Reedus, Kim Jones, Kobe Bryant, Kevin Durant and Travis Scott.
“Austin and Ivan have an innate synergy and it’s incredible to watch them work–between the two of them, they have every aspect of production and post totally covered. Their backgrounds dovetail nicely, and their enthusiasm and tenacity is infectious on set. We’re excited to work with them as they continue to make their mark in the ad world,” commented Shannon Lords, executive producer at Humble.
A skilled photographer who embraces a vérité approach for both still and moving images, Rhodes spent six years earlier in his career embedded in Ciudad Juarez as a DP, capturing documentary footage that was used by Frontline for programming on human trafficking. He also spent several years in New York collaborating with a variety of musicians to create visual projections for their live shows.
Landau earned a degree in film studies at UC Berkeley before landing a job at Francis Ford Coppola’s American Zoetrope, launching his career in editorial and sound on films such as The Virgin Suicides. He later transitioned to VFX, working at The Orphanage on features including Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
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