On the awards show circuit, Microsoft’s Halo 3 video game appropriately has already scored the proverbial hat trick, garnering best of show honors at The One Show last week for its “Believe” campaign out of McCann Worldgroup and T.A.G. in San Francisco. The other two legs of the hat trick came recently with “Believe” topping the International Andy Awards and the Art Director Club Show.
“Believe” has indeed made believers out of many as the campaign successfully spanned television, interactive TV, web and cinema platforms. It centered on a real world diorama built to commemorate the fictional battle between mankind and its alien enemy and painted a picture of the ultimate Halo 3 hero–Master Chief. Through TV spots of accounts from battle veterans, online interactive flyovers of the entire monument and outdoor ads designed to look like commemorative murals and plaques–the audience started to see Halo 3 as a story with real emotion and Master Chief as a hero who personified courage, duty and sacrifice.
“Freakout” The other big winner at The One Show was Burger King which was named Client of the Year, in large part due to two campaigns out of Crispin Porter+Bogusky, Miami: “Whopper Freakout,” which featured reactions from consumers when they are informed that BK has discontinued its signature Whopper burger; and a tie-in with The Simpsons Movie. The latter included TV commercials and a website through which fans could turn photos of themselves into Simpsons characters.
The top winners at this year’s show included TBWA Worldwide’s Network (2 Gold Pencils, 6 Silver, 4 Bronze), BBDO New York, (5 Gold, 2 Silver, 2 Bronze), Saatchi & Saatchi, (4 Gold, 2 Silver, 1 Bronze), Ogilvy & Mather (1 Gold, 2 Silver, 3 Bronze), Leo Burnett (4 Silver, 1 Bronze), McCann Worldwide (4 Gold, 1 Bronze), Crispin Porter + Bogusky (2 Gold, 1 Silver, 1 Bronze), Jung Von Matt (1 Gold, 2 Silver, 1 Bronze) and Wieden + Kennedy (3 Silver, 1 Bronze).
The 33rd annual One Show ceremony was held at New York’s Lincoln Center in the Time Warner Center. Emcee was comedian Tom Papa.
A complete list of winners can be found at http://www.oneclub.org/.
Review: Director Alex Parkinson’s “Last Breath” Starring Woody Harrelson and Simu Liu
A routine deep sea diving mission in the North Sea goes terribly wrong when a young diver is stranded some 300 feet below the surface in the new film "Last Breath." His umbilical cable has severed. The support vessel above is aimlessly drifting away from the site through violent, stormy waters. And the diver has only ten minutes of oxygen in his backup tank.
As if that wasn't enough, it's also a true story.
If merely reading this is giving you heart palpitations already, you can only imagine the white-knuckle experience of watching this all play out on the big screen. It's 40ish minutes of pure suspense and anxiety as the story shuffles between the man at the bottom of the ocean, Chris Lemons (Finn Cole), his fellow saturation divers (Woody Harrelson as Duncan and Simu Liu as Dave) in the diving bell below the waters who are unable to help and the crew in the support vessel above (including Cliff Cutris and Mark Bonnar) scrambling to get their systems back online and operational as the clock rapidly runs out. Ten minutes has never felt so short – and then it just gets worse as the clock starts counting up, showing Chris's time without oxygen.
At one point, Liu's character Dave, a no-nonsense, all-business diver says matter-of-factly at that it's a body recovery, not a rescue. Deep sea saturation diving is a dangerous business, described at the start of the film as the most dangerous job on earth. Chris tells his fiancé, in a short introduction, that it's no more dangerous than going to space. She replies that it's funny that he thinks that is comforting.
The real incident happened in September 2012 – Dave, Duncan and Chris were just one team of divers sent to the ocean floor off the coast of Aberdeen, Scotland, to repair oil... Read More