DRENCH GETS ITS HEAD TOGETHER
“Cubehead,” a spot for Britvic’s Drench bottled water, opens on a man sitting on a subway station bench. This is no ordinary gent: his face is divided into a dozen cubes, all of which are improperly placed. Realizing he needs to ‘get himself together’ before the train arrives, he begins shifting his ear square to the forehead position, his nose square to his chin position and so forth. He can’t quite get it right, so the man takes a gulp of Drench–poured into his mouth currently positioned where his forehead should be–and gets to work. A shift or three later and the man’s face looks normal again–save for the right-angle lines all over his face. He puts his MP3 player headphones in and nods his head to the beat of the music. The spot closes on the Drench bottle beside him and the super, “Brains perform best when they’re hydrated. Stay drenched.”
Ulf Johansson of Smith & Jones Films, London, directed this :60 for London agency Clemmow, Hornby, Inge & Partners. Editor was John Smith, A.C.E., of The Whitehouse, London. VFX house was The Moving Picture Company, London.
“Cubehead” has been posted on YouTube and at www.staydrenched.co.uk, and debuted in cinemas earlier this month.
YOUTUBE TOTALS 80,000 DAYS
Submissions for YouTube’s Life in a Day came to a close on July 31 with the total number of submissions reaching 80,000 and representing 197 countries, in 45 different languages. Ridley Scott, who’s EP of the project, said, “The sheer number of uploads to the channel is astonishing and exceeds our expectations. I’m as fascinated as anyone by what kind of videos people have uploaded and the kind of film which will result from this innovative endeavor.”
As the project moves into its next phase, director Kevin Macdonald (State of Play, Last King of Scotland) has assembled a team of 20 to log and vet the submissions. Macdonald said, “We’re now faced with the daunting task of selecting and shaping the wonderful array of diverse stories that have been captured around the globe…We’re hoping to soon have a more manageable 100 hours worth of footage to edit down into feature length form.”
Users will also be able to view the submissions when the gallery goes live on YouTube’s Life in a Day channel in early September. The final, feature-length film will be completed in time for a January 2011 debut at the Sundance Film Festival and will simultaneously be made available at YouTube.com.
Life in a Day is a film experiment that enlisted the global community to capture a moment of their lives on Saturday, July 24, and to upload that footage to www.youtube.com/lifeinaday. Individuals whose footage makes it into the finished film will be credited as co-directors and 20 of these contributors will be flown to Sundance for the film’s world premiere.
PEOPLE IN THE NEWS… Editorial house Beast has hired Dominique Anzano as senior producer at its L.A. facility. Anzano joins Beast from agency Deutsch LA, where as a broadcast producer she handled projects for such clients as VW, DIRECTV, Sony PlayStation and Saturn. Prior to her six years at Deutsch, Anzano served as a broadcast producer at Ogilvy & Mather LA. Her new roost, Beast, maintains editorial shops in Santa Monica, New York, Austin, Detroit, Chicago and San Francisco….Carrie Jones has been named director of the Michigan Film Office, succeeding Janet Lockwood who held the position for 18 years. Jones joined the Film Office in February as its deputy director….
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