About a year and a half ago, director Klaus Obermeyer of Aero Film, Santa Monica, and underwater DP Pete Zuccarini collaborated on a spot for Oceana, the global public service advocacy organization dedicated to reducing pollution and preventing the collapse of fish populations, marine mammals and other sea life. Titled “Oceana,” the PSA earned inclusion in SHOOT‘s “The Best Work You May Never See” gallery (SHOOTonline 11/14/08). “Oceana” started out as a spec piece with Obermeyer showing the completed spot to the organization, which embraced the work, resulting in it becoming a real world cinema, TV and viral PSA.
Fast forward to today and Obermeyer and Zuccarini’s efforts have yielded another PSA yet this time with some different stripes. For one, this new PSA, named “Fast,” didn’t start out as a spec piece. Instead it evolved into a real-world piece from the outset, with funding from apparel company Nautica and Aero Film, and the involvement of on-camera spokesperson Adrian Grenier, one of the stars from the hit HBO series Entourage. Another key difference this time around is that Obermeyer and Zuccarini served as director and co-director/underwater DP, respectively.
Helping to shape the concept was the in-house creative team from the publication Gentlemen’s Quarterly (GQ), which has taken up the cause and covered it. Decked out in scuba gear, Grenier in the spot relates that bluefin tuna are up to 15 feet long, 2,000 pounds and accelerate faster than a race car. Yet even that isn’t fast enough to escape man’s appetite as we are literally eating bluefins out of existence.
Grenier takes us underwater to see these remarkable creatures. He urges viewers to log onto Oceana’s website to find out what can be done to help preserve and protect bluefin tuna.
Editor was Austin Smithard at Aero Post. Music and sound design for the PSA came from Nylon Studios, Sydney.
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