To promote workplace safety among young workers, the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board of Ontario (WSIB) has created www.prevent-it.ca, a website featuring 11 animated videos that show a young worker, Scott, whose life changes dramatically after he loses his hand on a meat slicer at work and bleeds everywhere, on the face of the girl he dates and into his popcorn at a movie theater.
“They are very strange, uncomfortable visceral images that are all disturbing,” said J.J. Sedelmaier, president and director at J.J. Sedelmaier Productions/White Plains, NY, the animation studio. “They grab you because of that.”
“Scott” shows the main character with a bloody stump, walking down the street to meet his friend, before someone on a bike delivers a fake appendage.
The animations were created in comic-book style, “so that they looked like they were created by human beings, not computers,” Sedelmaier said. “They were drawn on paper, then we scanned them and colored them digitally, and delivered them as sequential TIFF files at 72 dpi.”
The campaign also included print ads, including transit posters, that were done first. “We used the same theme in the videos as we did in print,” he said. “We got to know the drawing style and the characters through the print.”
Joe Piccolo, group creative director at DRAFTFCB/Toronto, said the videos, which launched May 18, will only play at www.prevent-it.ca. He said workplace safety is “a subject kids don’t think about and if they’ve seen an ad, it’s forgotten. But the average time on the site is six minutes, which is a lot of time to spend, so we think it’s working.”
The videos combine with information on the site, such as how to file workplace complaints, that will teach young workers about safety on the job and help the WSIB achieve its goal of preventing accidents and providing assistance to workers who are injured on the job.
Netflix Series “The Leopard” Spots Classic Italian Novel, Remakes It As A Sumptuous Period Drama
"The Leopard," a new Netflix series, takes the classic Italian novel by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa and transforms it into a sumptuous period piece showing the struggles of the aristocracy in 19th-century Sicily, during tumultuous social upheavals as their way of life is crumbling around them.
Tom Shankland, who directs four of the eight episodes, had the courage to attempt his own version of what is one of the most popular films in Italian history. The 1963 movie "The Leopard," directed by Luchino Visconti, starring Burt Lancaster, Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale, won the Palme d'Or in Cannes.
One Italian critic said that it would be the equivalent of a director in the United States taking "Gone with the Wind" and turning it into a series, but Shankland wasn't the least bit intimidated.
He said that he didn't think of anything other than his own passion for the project, which grew out of his love of the book. His father was a university professor of Italian literature in England, and as a child, he loved the book and traveling to Sicily with his family.
The book tells the story of Don Fabrizio Corbera, the Prince of Salina, a tall, handsome, wealthy aristocrat who owns palaces and land across Sicily.
His comfortable world is shaken with the invasion of Sicily in 1860 by Giuseppe Garibaldi, who was to overthrow the Bourbon king in Naples and bring about the Unification of Italy.
The prince's family leads an opulent life in their magnificent palaces with servants and peasants kowtowing to their every need. They spend their time at opulent banquets and lavish balls with their fellow aristocrats.
Shankland has made the series into a visual feast with tables heaped with food, elaborate gardens and sensuous costumes.... Read More