SHORT CUTS
Dallas-based Janimation completed a cinematic trailer for Midway Home Entertainment’s "Area 51" video game and Los Angeles agency Fail+Safe Creative. The piece debuted at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles this past May. The trailer opens with a high-tech look into the Area 51 compound. A voiceover delivered by one of the doctors experimenting in Area 51 explains the results of his work. Concurrently, flashes of these experiments on aliens and humans give a glimpse of the brutal treatment and terror that has been taking place. The camera travels through the wreckage of the Area 51 sub-levels. Approaching a deceased soldier crumpled against a wall, the doctor’s dialogue describes the war that is taking place on the cellular level inside the host subject. Visually, viewers travel into the body of the dormant soldier’s blood stream and into his vital organs. His heart beats normally at first, but then a mutation process begins. The beating heart stops and flat lines, and then all hell breaks loose. Janimation credits go to director Greg Punchatz; executive producer Steve Ga?onnier; technical director Ludovick Michaud; production supervisor Mike Duffy; visual effects producer Pete Herzog; visual effects animator Lyn Caudle; lead animator John McInnis; animators Jeffrey Dates and John Griffith; compositor Jen Hudgens; systems administrator Kevin Korngut; digital artists Jimmy Gass, Steve Quentin and Rares Halmagean. "Area 51" is scheduled to be released in October.
Big Film Design (BFD) created an offbeat opening for Paramount Pictures’ The Stepford Wives. The film takes a subversive and comic look at rampant consumerism and the quest for perfection, exposing what it really means to be human by looking beneath the perfect veneer of an idyllic community nestled in an imperfect world. Stepping back in time to the optimistic 1950s and ’60s, BFD’s designers found a treasure trove of stock footage illustrating how life in the future would be better with new appliances, cars, and even robots. One major source was General Motors’ 1956 "Design for Dreaming," which showed women dancing with futuristic dream cars and Frigidaire’s "Kitchen of the Future." Another source was GM’s 1961 "A Touch of Magic," as well as dozens of other period finds. BFD designer/director J. John Corbett and creative director Randy Balsmeyer wove the stock footage into a visual that responds to the waltz-time of composer David Arnold’s score. Corbett later created a blinking graphic grid of colored squares that punctuate the images and serve as a background for the credits, which are drawn in a slightly perverse scrawl. New York-headquartered Big Film Design’s other recent credits include title sequences for the films The Ladykillers and Intolerable Cruelty, as well as the open for FOX’s new show The Jury, and HBO’s recent mini-series Angels in America.
MUSIC NOTES
Los Angeles-based Endless Noise completed original music for two American Express :30s via Ogilvy & Mather, New York. "Healthy Growth" and "Do You Know Me/Jonathan Antin" were directed by Nick Lewin of Crossroads Films, bicoastal and Chicago. Both ads are from Amex’s "Open Small Business" campaign, and feature Antin—"stylist to the stars" and the subject of Bravo’s new reality series, Blow Out—in his Beverly Hills salon, discussing how important the American Express Small Business card was in expanding his business. Jeff Elmassian is founder/creative director of Endless Noise, and Celia Williams is executive producer.
Bongo Post & Music, Sacramento, Calif., recently completed audio mix, editorial and composed original music for a California Tourism campaign titled "Welcome to California." The spots featuring California governor and actor Arnold Schwarzenegger and his wife Maria Shriver, as well as Disney CEO Michael Eisner and actors Jack Nicholson and Clint Eastwood. Bob Smith, Bongo’s composer/creative director, scored the music for the package.
CLIPLAND
Director Peter Zavadil completed work on clips for country artists Brad Cotter and Dierks Bentley. Cotter’s "I Meant To" shows the singer going through a living-on-the-edge, club party space that Zavadil shot using double speed playback. Cotter sings to himself in slow motion as the crowd bounces and undulates around him. In Bentley’s "How Am I Doin’," the artist is shown working on a beat-up motorcycle in the desert when the phone in a roadside booth starts ringing. The caller is his ex-girlfriend. From there, Bentley gets picked up by a car filled with beautiful women, winds up at a Las Vegas casino and wins big at cards. He impresses the boss at the casino who realizes that Bentley has the right qualities to become a made man, but Bentley later realizes it’s not for him and he leaves for the simpler life. His ex-girlfriend phones him again, pleading with him to take her back, but he heads out the door and into a mysterious limousine for parts unknown. Zavadil helms music videos through Picture Vision, Nashville, and is repped for commercials via Darcy/Fox Productions, Santa Monica.
