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.
Martin Scorsese On “The Saints,” Faith In Filmmaking and His Next Movie
When Martin Scorsese was a child growing up in New York's Little Italy, he would gaze up at the figures he saw around St. Patrick's Old Cathedral. "Who are these people? What is a saint?" Scorsese recalls. "The minute I walk out the door of the cathedral and I don't see any saints. I saw people trying to behave well within a world that was very primal and oppressed by organized crime. As a child, you wonder about the saints: Are they human?" For decades, Scorsese has pondered a project dedicated to the saints. Now, he's finally realized it in "Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints," an eight-part docudrama series debuting Sunday on Fox Nation, the streaming service from Fox News Media. The one-hour episodes, written by Kent Jones and directed by Elizabeth Chomko, each chronicle a saint: Joan of Arc, Francis of Assisi, John the Baptist, Thomas Becket, Mary Magdalene, Moses the Black, Sebastian and Maximillian Kolbe. Joan of Arc kicks off the series on Sunday, with three weekly installments to follow; the last four will stream closer to Easter next year. In naturalistic reenactments followed by brief Scorsese-led discussions with experts, "The Saints" emphasizes that, yes, the saints were very human. They were flawed, imperfect people, which, to Scorsese, only heightens their great sacrifices and gestures of compassion. The Polish priest Kolbe, for example, helped spread antisemitism before, during WWII, sheltering Jews and, ultimately, volunteering to die in the place of a man who had been condemned at Auschwitz. Scorsese, who turns 82 on Sunday, recently met for an interview not long after returning from a trip to his grandfather's hometown in Sicily. He was made an honorary citizen and the experience was still lingering in his mind. Remarks have... Read More