“End-to-End,” a video ad for Foot Locker and Adidas, uses time-lapse photography to speed up the action so the detailed renderings of graffiti artist Rime, which lasted almost two hours in real time, can be shown in a minute.
“It feels like a dance when you watch the scene go,” said Thor Raxlen, director at Guerilla FX/New York, the design, effects and post finishing company that shot the video for AKA Advertising/New York.
The fast paced video shows Rime in action, penning the words “End To End” on a wall in vivid colors, the words surrounded by a bright orange backdrop that is pure graffiti. “As the creative process unfolds, it looks like he’s honing his craft in a short amount of time, like he’s hiding from the police,” Raxlen said. “You gain a lot of respect for the art of graffiti.”
The video was shot at a large space in Brooklyn, where Raxlen’s crew built a 20′ x 30′ blue screen wall that Rime could design. Raxlen used two cameras–a Canon 5D hi resolution digital camera that captured one frame every second and a Panasonic HVX200 digital camera that captured one frame every five seconds. “We got identical images from each camera and when we played it back, we time compressed it to last one minute,” Raxlen said.
The time was compressed in postproduction, where it was “reprocessed at different speeds to make it more interesting,” he said.
The video supports the End-to-End collection of Adidas, seven styles sold exclusively at Foot Locker that were designed by leading graffiti artists. The campaign plays the video at a variety of urban culture and sneaker related sites, including www.vibe.com, www.allhiphop.com, www.spin.com, www.blackplanent.com and www.sneakerplay.com, many of which were roadblocked, with the video wiping out all content on the page, which “ran true to the core of graffiti and street art,” said Jesse Scaturro, associate creative director at AKA.
In addition to running online, the video was also projected from vans onto building facades in New York and Los Angeles as part of the street to your feet campaign.
The graffiti art in the video, “a big End-to-End piece that advertises the whole line,” Scaturro said, gets wiped out near the end of the piece, when Guerilla FX’s art team reprimed the wall. “I take my motions and leave them out on the canvas and then I’m done,” Rime said. Graffiti artists don’t expect their work to endure, but after his first piece was covered, he drew another one that is featured in a second video.
Director Hans Emanuel Joins Caviar For Commercials and Music Videos
Production company Caviar has signed director Hans Emanuel for U.S. commercial and music video representation. The film and advertising director fuses his keen--and Berlinale Film Festival Award-winning--eye for cinematic storytelling with a commercial background across multiple genres including beauty, automotive, dance, and visual effects-heavy projects, to produce creative for clients like Kia, Nivea, Nissan, L’Oreal, BMW and more.
Caviar executive producer Salim El Arja noted, “Hans has a unique ability to blend stunning visuals with heart and humor, rooted in his confidence as a craftsman. This allows him to focus on drawing exceptional performances from actors--including celebrities--and crafting films that are not only visually striking but also deeply engaging and often hilariously comedic. His sensibilities align perfectly with Caviar’s vision, and we’re excited to collaborate with him on work that pushes creative boundaries.”
Emanuel added, “Caviar is a renowned name, certainly since I began my career. They have a solid reputation for quality work, and I’ve always respected them as a company. Life is about where destiny makes you flow with the people you need; thanks to a series of projects, I was introduced to Florence Jacob with Caviar Paris first, and the rest is history. I feel they can support my career growth with their comedic expertise and filmmaking prowess.”
Prior to joining Caviar, Emanuel had been repped by production house Stadium. He was born and raised in Santa Monica, Calif., to a Mexican-German mother, benefiting from a culturally diversified upbringing that carried through his education interests. Knowing he wanted to be a filmmaker from the start, he began his career in the luxury and beauty field,... Read More