By Theresa Piti
SHORT CUTS
Griot Editorial and sister division Postique completed editorial and film transfer services to Doner, Southfield, Mich., for an Arby’s 15-spot campaign. The commercials feature an Oven Mitt character, voiced by actor Tom Arnold (FOX SportsNet’s The Best Damn Sports Show), who boasts that Arby’s roast beef is oven-roasted, rather than fried. Griot editors Jim Talbot, Louis Lyne and Dave Mariani, and associate editors Kevin Stewart and Dan Succarde teamed up to complete the creative editorial. Postique colorist Eric Maurer performed the film transfer. The campaign was shot by director Tim Hamilton for Toronto-headquartered Avion Films. The Oven Mitt character animation and finishing was done by Vinton Studios, Portland, Ore. Griot and Postique are located in Southfield, and both are a division of Grace & Wild Inc.
New York-based rhinofx created effects for Lamisil AT’s "Up the Wall," a :30 created by Grey Worldwide, New York. The spot—directed by Fritz Flieder of bicoastal Cohn+Company—shows a basketball game in progress. Among the players is a fellow who suffers from athlete’s foot. He loses control of the ball and literally goes up a wall. When he uses Lamisil, however, he gets relief and regains his hoop moves. Rhinofx partner/Inferno artist Vico Sharabani supervised the shoot and later worked in Maya to manipulate the basketball players’ motion shots, lower the buildings, brighten the sky, remove rigs and equipment, and create billboards. While working in Maya, Sharabani used the FBX file format for integration between 3-D projects and Inferno. Additional rhinofx credits go to partner/executive producer Rick Wagonheim, executive producer Yfat Neev, Inferno artists John Budion and Ronen Sharabani, Inferno assistant J.R. Starace, and digital artist Joe Burrascano.
Sam Selis of charlieuniformtango, Dallas and Austin, Texas, edited Kohler’s "Waterboy" for Austin agency GSD&M. The :60 shows a young altar boy who is sent on a mission to collect water for a blessing. He winds up finding the purest water from his family’s faucet—made by Kohler. The ad was directed by Colin Gregg of Stark Films, London. (Stark Films and Spectre, London, recently merged to form Large.) Other charlieuniformtango credits include assistant editor Seth Sherman, online Fire/Inferno artist Dave Laird, and mixer/engineer Russell Smith.
MUSIC NOTES
615 Music Companies, Nashville, is entering the fall season with new work now being seen and heard at sporting events, cable networks and local television stations across the country. Among the major projects completed over the summer months for cable networks and syndicated shows were: a new theme package for Buena Vista Television’s Regis and Kelly, which is currently being heard in promotions for the nationally-syndicated show; "You Should See HGTV," the theme for a new national promo campaign created for HGTV, which is now airing on the network; a promotional package for Animal Planet’s Pet Star series, as well as new themes for the network’s "crime" shows, Animal Precinct and Animal Cops; and music for new MSNBC IDs that was completed in conjunction with Linda Kane Design, a Pasadena, Calif.-based company specializing in project supervision and graphic design for television, film and other media. 615 Music also completed a number of projects for major local television markets, including new post scores for KCBS-TV and KCAL-TV/Los Angeles; the creation of a new image campaign, "Leading the Way," for WCVB-TV/Boston; and the creation of "It Starts with the Heart," a new station theme for WBIR-TV/Knoxville. In the area of sports marketing and promotion, 615 Music worked on new theme packages for the Boston Bruins, the Boston Red Sox and the show Sportsdesk, which was developed for the New England Sports Network.
Crescendo! Studios, San Francisco, has been busy with several projects. Senior engineer Jay Shilliday mixed a three-spot TV campaign—"Water," "Sand" and "Brick"—for AARP/Hispanic and Headquarters Advertising, San Francisco; three TV :15s for 409 Wipes and DDB San Francisco ("Towel Rack," "Unroll" and "Wooden Holder"); and a :30 Taco Bell ad for FCB San Francisco, introducing the restaurant’s Western Bacon Quesadilla ("Shoes"). Shilliday also recorded and mixed a pair of :60 radio ads for Kashi Heart to Heart cereal ("B-12" and "Grapeseed Smoothies") for San Francisco agency Amazon Advertising, as well as Sprint’s :60 radio spot "Guilt," via Publicis & Hal Riney, San Francisco.
IN GEAR
Raider Productions, West Chester, Penn., recently completed primary photography on Emeril Kicks Up Halloween, a one-hour Food Network Halloween special shot with Panasonic’s new AJ-SDX900 dual-mode DVCPRO Cinema camcorders. The special, featuring the network’s star chef Emeril Lagasse demonstrating the fine art of throwing a Halloween party, airs Oct. 26. Emeril Kicks Up Halloween was shot over the course of three days at Philadelphia’s Eastern State Penitentiary, a national historic landmark. Ira Raider, the project’s DP, used three Panasonic AJ-SDX900s, one recently purchased by Raider Productions and the other two rented from Abel Cine Tech, New York. The AJ-SDX900 offers video professionals superior acquisition flexibility, expressed in the operator-controllable selection of EFP-quality 4:2:2 sampled DVCPRO50 or classic 4:1:1 sampled DVCPRO recording, and native 16:9 widescreen or 4:3 aspect ratios. The AJ-SDX900 also offers film-like 24-frames-per-second progressive scan (480/24p) acquisition, in addition to 30-frames-per-second progressive (480/30p) and 60-fields-per-second interlace scan (480/60i) capture. Emeril Kicks Up Halloween was posted in-house at the Food Network on an Avid|DS v6.01. Raider Productions specializes in documentary and commercial production, and has worked with such clients as NBC Productions, NOVA, 60 Minutes and 20/20, as well as various advertising agencies. Panasonic Broadcast & Television Systems Co., headquartered in Secaucus, N.J., is a supplier of broadcast, professional video and presentation products and systems. Panasonic Broadcast is a unit company of Matsushita Electric Corporation of America, the principal North America subsidiary of Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.
CLIPLAND
Steele VFX, Santa Monica, helped put Faith Hill in paradise for her music video "You’re Still Here." Steele Henry artists Jerry Steele, David Neuberger and Monique Eissing replaced skies and employed color and lighting effects to enhance the seaside environment surrounding the vocalist as she sings the ballad. The video was directed by Gary Halvorson, who also helmed Hill’s clip "When the Lights Go Down." Additional credits for Steele VFX go to managing director Jo Steele and executive producer Ian Dawson.
Art director Chris Dooley of bicoastal live action/design company Brand New School co-directed the Jewel clip "Stand," with Chris Applebaum of A Band Apart Music Videos, Los Angeles. Brand New School also created the environment where Jewel’s lyrics play out by building a textured, 3-D graphic world around the characters in order to illustrate the socially conscious lyrics. The video shows the irony one might experience in everyday life—a policeman holds up a grocery store for money to solicit a prostitute, then the hooker uses the money to pay for diapers in the same market. Another storyline follows a city’s mayor awarding an oversized check to a young man to keep him off the streets, only to send him off to war where he is killed in action. Jewel acts as the narrator of the clip.
First-Time Feature Directors Make Major Splash At AFI Fest, Generate Oscar Buzz
Two first-time feature directors who are generating Oscar buzz this awards season were front and center this past weekend at AFI Fest in Hollywood. Rachel Morrison, who made history as the first woman nominated for a Best Cinematography Oscar---on the strength of Mudbound in 2018--brought her feature directorial debut, The Fire Inside (Amazon MGM Studios), to the festival on Sunday (10/27), and shared insights into the film during a conversation session immediately following the screening. This came a day after William Goldenberg, an Oscar-winning editor for Argo in 2013, had his initial foray into feature directing, Unstoppable (Amazon MGM Studios), showcased at the AFI proceedings. He too spoke after the screening during a panel discussion. The Fire Inside--which made its world premiere at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival--tells the story of Claressa “T-Rex” Shields (portrayed by Ryan Destiny), a Black boxer from Flint, Mich., who trained to become the first woman in U.S. history to win an Olympic Gold Medal in the sport. She achieved this feat--with the help of coach Jason Crutchfield (Brian Tyree Henry)--only to find that her victory at the Summer Games came with relatively little fanfare and no endorsement deals. So much for the hope that the historic accomplishment would be a ticket out of socioeconomic purgatory for Shields and her family. It seemed like yet another setback in a cycle of adversity throughout Shields’ life but she persevered, going on to win her second Gold Medal at the next Olympics and becoming a champion for gender equality and equitable pay for women in sports. Shields has served as a source of inspiration for woman athletes worldwide--as well as to the community of... Read More