The Doctor Twins–Matt and Jason–via Harpoon Pictures teamed with digital studio Radium/Reel FX, Santa Monica and Dallas, to play a radical game of Jenga in “Style Points” out of TracyLocke/UPROAR! New York. The :30 features L.A. Clippers forward Blake Griffin and Minnesota Timberwolves forward Kevin Love facing off with an unconventional game of Jenga on an NBA basketball court. The Hasbro spot draws inspiration from an ESPN tongue-in-cheek short, Behind The Scenes at The ESPYs, which featured Griffin and Love playing a heated game of Jenga back in July. Radium/Reel FX exec creative director Dale Carman served as on-set VFX supervisor.
“Style Points” opens on Griffin feverishly dribbling a basketball on the court when Love walks on, challenging him to a game of Jenga. The two add their own personal touches. “Style points,” brags Love, spinning a Jenga block on his finger. “Just like that?” Griffin asks as he pulls a block out, dribbling it on the court before placing it on top of the tower. As his last move, Griffin steals the show by stacking hundreds of Jenga blocks and successfully leaping over them to place a block on top. But he quickly realizes that his swift moves were a bit over-the-top, causing the tower to topple over and end the game. The two are next seen cleaning up the pieces. The spot closes on Griffin doing a backward dunk before asking, “How do you Jenga?”
MUSIC TRIO HATCHES EGG Recording industry and music for picture vets Bryan Hanna, John Hermanson, and Eric Fawcett have opened up their own music production company, Egg Music. Based in Minneapolis, Egg provides original scores, complete music supervision and licensing services, audio production, and final mixing for clients. Prior to forming Egg, creative directors Hanna and Hermanson and EP Fawcett worked together at Modern Music, a Minneapolis house best know for its work over the years on behalf of Target via agency Peterson Milla Hooks.
Egg’s principals all have roots in the recording industry. In addition to playing in a number of bands, Hanna co-owned The Terrarium, a Minneapolis studio where he produced, engineered, and mixed records for some of the Twin Cities’ most popular bands. He continues to work on records for artists here and abroad, notably for Dean Fertita (Queens Of The Stone Age, The Dead Weather) and Taiwanese pop divas Yao Yao and Lisa Djaati. Hermanson has recorded a dozen studio albums and tours nationally with his popular folk duo Storyhill. Fawcett was the drummer for Pharrell Williams’ hip hop/rock group N*E*R*D, Spymob, The Hopefuls, and currently performs with Chinese pop star Wang Lee Hom.
PEOPLE IN THE NEWS DDB Chicago has added the integrated creative team of Ariel Abramovic and Bruno Acanfora from BBDO in Argentina where they served as sr. copywriter and sr. art director, respectively. They also previously worked together at Santo Buenos Aires and Del Campo Nazca Saatchi & Saatchi. During their careers, they’ve collected nearly 50 awards, with numerous gold and silver accolades across a range of clients including Axe, Gatorade and 7-Up. Abramovic and Acanfora most recently won a Gold Lion and Gold Clio for a P&G campaign…..Editors Nadav Kurtz and Nick Tomnay–who, respectively, continue to be available in Chicago via Cutters and New York via wild(child)–have moved to San Francisco where they are being handled by Barbary Post. So far through Barbary, Kurtz has cut two projects for EVB S.F. while Tomnay was at press time slated to take on a job for S.F. shop Duncan/Channon….
