Microsoft’s Genuine Fact Files, a worldwide campaign to combat software counterfeiting and increase awareness of software licensing issues, has been bolstered by a series of four-and-a-half-minute animated videos that illuminate the issues in an appealing way.
“Suspicious Cargo,” the seventh video in the series, incorporates Maya, After Effects and Flame to add visual effects to the animation that make it look almost like an in-cinema piece, especially during the first scene when the rippling water establishes the tone. “We wanted to get away from the comic book feel and be a little more movie style,” said Greg Shultz, designer/VFX director at Gasket Studios Limited/Minneapolis. “We used Maya and 3D elements to accentuate the illustrator’s art. Using his look, we projected the style of rippling water and dimensions that brought the ship to life. In Flame, we added lighting treatment, fog and cloud wisps. We wanted to stay in comic style, with a touch of real effects.”
Charlie Griak, who owns a design firm and production company under his name in Minneapolis, was the illustrator and director of the video. “They wanted it to feel like a graphic novel and a black and white comic book,” he said. “A combination of short film style and standard black and white comic book.”
The video does look like a black and white comic book, as the story of how a company deals with pirated software unfolds, with the characters shown in black and white illustrations with their dialogue in traditional cartoon bubbles. But Griak worked with Gasket to take the video beyond the basic comic book. “The illustrations were built in layers and they manipulated the layers individually to give them depth and movement,” Griak said. “They brought in the CGI water with a flat illustration and made it feel dimensional. It was the way to take a still image and make it engaging so you want to watch it.”
Keith Anderson, copywriter at DDB Seattle, said the video is the best in the series because of the Gasket effects and Griak’s direction. “They brought a lot to the table we weren’t expecting, the 3D modeling and lighting and camera techniques.”
The Business Software Alliance has reported that 35 percent of the world’s software is pirated and the Yankee Group noted that 55 percent of organizations report instances of counterfeit or pirated software.
As Microsoft prepared to launch Windows Vista and Office 2007, it launched the Genuine Facts Files campaign that educates businesses and consumers on the risks associated with non-genuine software. “Suspicious Cargo,” the latest Genuine Fact Files video, tells the story of how one business plagued by counterfeit software overcomes the problem with the help of Microsoft software applications.
Raoul Peck Resurrects A Once-Forgotten Anti-Apartheid Photographer In “Ernest Cole: Lost and Found”
When the photographer Ernest Cole died in 1990 at the age of 49 from pancreatic cancer at a Manhattan hospital, his death was little noted.
Cole, one of the most important chroniclers of apartheid-era South Africa, was by then mostly forgotten and penniless. Banned by his native country after the publication of his pioneering photography book "House of Bondage," Cole had emigrated in 1966 to the United States. But his life in exile gradually disintegrated into intermittent homelessness. A six-paragraph obituary in The New York Times ran alongside a list of death notices.
But Cole receives a vibrant and stirring resurrection in Raoul Peck's new film "Ernest Cole: Lost and Found," narrated in Cole's own words and voiced by LaKeith Stanfield. The film, which opens in theaters Friday, is laced throughout with Cole's photographs, many of them not before seen publicly.
As he did in his Oscar-nominated James Baldwin documentary "I Am Not Your Negro," the Haitian-born Peck shares screenwriting credit with his subject. "Ernest Cole: Lost and Found" is drawn from Cole's own writings. In words and images, Peck brings the tragic story of Cole to vivid life, reopening the lens through which Cole so perceptively saw injustice and humanity.
"Film is a political tool for me," Peck said in a recent interview over lunch in Manhattan. "My job is to go to the widest audience possible and try to give them something to help them understand where they are, what they are doing, what role they are playing. It's about my fight today. I don't care about the past."
"Ernest Cole: Lost and Found" is a movie layered with meaning that goes beyond Cole's work. It asks questions not just about the societies Cole documented but of how he was treated as an artist,... Read More