SHORT CUTS
Click 3X, New York, designed and produced a new graphics package for Hollywood at Large, Court TV’s newsmagazine show exploring the intersection of entertainment and justice in today’s popular culture. Hollywood at Large has a new host, former MTV VJ Karen "Duff" Duffy, and moved into a primetime slot this fall. Created by Click 3X’s broadcast team led by creative director Iain Greenway, the graphics mix the glamour of the movie world with the weight and authority of investigation and the law in a clean and elegant execution. In the main title, the show’s new 3-D gold logo flies in over a nighttime panorama of Los Angeles amid swaying klieg lights. Behind it, a fingerprint and the scales of justice loom as heroic icons. The graphics package included the show logo, show open, video windows, backgrounds, bumpers, lower thirds, monitor fills, segment titles, interstitials, credits rolls and other elements. Click 3X’s Tico Kanzaki designed the graphics while CG animator Anthony Filipakis built the 3-D logo and created the volumetric lighting effects. Bumpers open with the logo placed at an angle against type that stretches toward the vanishing point. When the camera swings to a frontal view, the typography morphs into the lights of a cityscape. Additional Click 3X credits go to Flame artist Mark Bernardo, executive producer/broadcast Abbe Daniel, and line producer Lana Aklilu.
Radium‘s Tuesday McGowan designed two spots for Publicis & Hal Riney, San Francisco, and its client Compaq, which promote the computer maker’s Presario S4000 PC. Radium was approached to help create a sophisticated and fluid new signature look for the computer’s advertising. "Graduate" and "To Go" feature a 3-D illustrative design look that showcases the new PC series. "Graduate" begins with a 3-D environment depicting leisure and sports gear—a guitar, tennis racket, snowboard and mountain bike. "Where you’re going, you’ll need stuff like this," states the voiceover. "And if you expect to graduate in four years, you’ll need this." The camera pulls back to reveal a desktop computer in a dorm room setting. As the 3-D animated computer transforms into a live-action tabletop computer, the voiceover continues, "Call now and you’ll get a PC that works hard and plays hard when you upgrade to a Compaq Presario." The commercial highlights the special features included in the offer, as well as the many services available to the user: "E-mail photos, play games, listen to music and, oh yeah, do school work." "To Go" follows a similar premise, opening on a 3-D illustration of a stack of books. "To get through four years of college, you can order a lot of coffee to go," says the voiceover, as the camera moves from the books to a coffee cup, "or you can order a lot of PC to go." The view then shifts to a notebook, which is situated on a table in a coffee house. The illustrated laptop transforms into a live-action tabletop version, and the voiceover presents the new Compaq Presario Notebook and its features. According to designer McGowan, the concept was to address young students getting ready to purchase a computer for college. Each spot featured an :05 opener that represented specific environments pertaining to college students. The opening design focused on a clean 3-D illustrative look. McGowan shot reference stills of various environments, and then worked closely with Radium animators to model and design in Maya. Additional Radium credits go to executive producer Anastacia Feldman, producer Kay Rough, Inferno artists/online editors Mark Holmes and Simon Mowbray, and editor Alan Chimenti.
MUSIC NOTES
Bob Giammarco of New York-based audioEngine mixed "It’s Your Watch," the latest spot for Seiko via The Martin Agency, Richmond, Va. The :30 features striking black-and-white imagery of people, directed by Nacho Guyan of Traffic Films, Venice, Calif., which is presented against a unique music and sound design track created by composer Jon Florencio of bicoastal Face The Music, and mixed by Giammarco. The people in the spot address the audience: "It’s not your hair. It’s not your lipstick. It’s not your accent." Finally it’s revealed that "you can tell more about a person by the watch they wear than by anything else." The commercial then shows a beauty shot of the Seiko Acturn Kinetic, which is powered by the movement of one’s body. Joe Sicurella was producer for Face The Music. Hillary Kew was assistant mixer to Giammarco.
San Francisco-based earwax productions worked on campaigns for Apple Computer, Cruz Bustamante, No On Proposition 54, and the Alameda County Waste Management Authority. Ross Communications, Sacramento, Calif., managed two campaigns for the Oct. 7 Statewide Special Election, otherwise known as the "Recall." Two TV spots, "No On Prop 54" and "Cruz Bustamante, Democrat for Governor" were both created by Twenty2Product. Earwax’s Jim McKee designed the sound and worked on the audio mix, while Barney Jones provided musical touches and voiced the gubernatorial spot. Helping to spread the word about recycling, Bruce Goddard of Alameda County Waste Management gave earwax free reign to create the latest pair of radio spots in its ongoing series. With composer Pat Farrell, McKee and Jones created the spots in their own signature audiograph style, setting edited "on-the-street" interview material into musical, poetic constructions. One spot features kids, and the other has adults all talking about the importance of recycling. For Apple Computer, earwax created the soundtrack for a two-minute launch video that will be playing in Apple Retail stores, theaters, and in CompUSA stores as a point-of-purchase attract loop. Created by Apple designers Adam Connelly and Barry Munsterteiger, with creative director Sam Davy, the piece feels like a gritty, low-down rock ‘n’ roll music video. It features the 64-bit processor and its applications in music and motion graphics, with images of Coldplay and the Hulk. The throbbing rock score was composed by earwax composers Kevin Gerzevitz and Rama Kolesnikow. McKee finished the score, built the sound design and mixed the audio.
IN GEAR
Panasonic Broadcast & Television Systems Company announced that the FOX Broadcasting Company has agreed to purchase AJ-HD3700A D-5 HD mastering VTRs for its network operations in Los Angeles, in order to accept high-definition programming from studios and other content providers to air on the network. With FOX’s purchase of D-5 HD VTRs, every major U.S. network has purchased and can accept D-5 HD programming. The AJ-HD3700 series D-5 HD recorders are designed for challenging program mastering, high-definition telecine, television commercial, and multi-format DTV and HDTV program production tasks. The AJ-HD3700A is a universal international mastering recorder that can record, edit and playback both 625 PAL and 525 NTSC D-5 cassettes, as well as D-5 tapes from all previous versions of this widely-adopted production machine. The AJ-HD3700A can record, edit and playback in 720p/59.84p, 1080/23.98p and 1080/24p HD formats. The AJ-HD3700A records up to 124 minutes in 1080/59.94i, 720/59.94p, and 480/59.94i. Recording times up to 149 minutes in 1080/50i and 1080/25p, and 112 minutes in 625/50i are possible, as well as 155 minutes in 24p. The AJ-HD3700A has the added benefit of recording and playing back eight discrete channels of audio in standard definition (NTSC or PAL) and high definition. Panasonic Broadcast & Television Systems Co., headquartered in Secaucus, N.J., is a unit company of Matsushita Electric Corporation of America, the principal North America subsidiary of Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.
CLIPLAND
Evan Bernard of bicoastal Chelsea Pictures directed "I Keed," a music video from Triumph the Insult Comic Dog. Triumph, from Late Night with Conan O’Brien, released his debut album, Come Poop with Me on Warner Bros. Records in early November. "I Keed" parodies several well-known pop recording artists, and visually takes its cues from hip-hop party-style videos. Surrounded by the usual bevy of video hotties, Triumph adds a bit of canine flavor with a good dose of scantily clad dogs, gangsta-looking rappers, and animated poop to humorously chide pop’s prime targets. The video premiered on MTV2 on Nov. 8, during the series Making the Video, and is currently noted as "Buzzworthy" on MTV. "I Keed" premiered on MTV’s TRL on Nov. 14.
