The latest spot in a campaign promoting the 2010 MTV Movie Awards on June 6 broke today (May 27), deploying star power with actor/comedian Aziz Ansari (Parks and Recreation, Funny People) who is awards show emcee, Jeremy Renner who offers a tongue-in-cheek reprise of his Oscar-nominated role as a maverick demolition expert in The Hurt Locker, and pop music star/teenage hearthrob Justin Bieber.
Directed by Evan Silver and produced by Kris Walter of MTV on-air promos, all five spots in the comedy campaign are running globally on TV, in movie theaters and online.
In The Hurt Locker/Bieber spot, we see Ansari in his living room watching the Best Picture Academy Award winner on TV, with Bieber behind him in the kitchen munching on potato chips. Ansari explains that MTV hooked him up with the newest movie watching technology–“4D,” which is indeed leaps and bounds beyond 3D as we see Renner in Ansari’s cramped living room, performing a famous scene from The Hurt Locker. Renner tries to disarm a bomb only to be disturbed by Bieber’s chomping on potato chips. Renner has no idea who Bieber is–at least that’s the actor’s claim which turns out to be defused by an ill-timed cell phone call.
Other spots in the campaign include another “4D” screening of The Hurt Locker in Ansari’s home, this time with guest Kristen Bell (Forgetting Sara Marshall), as well as promos in which celebs all help to answer the query, Who is Aziz Ansari?
In yet another promo, “Let’s Go To The Movies, which is running on TV and in movie theaters, Ansari encourages the audience to come to the movies with him while the classic “Let’s Go To The Lobby” song starts up. Ansari walks right past a movie theater and into his apartment where he proceeds to illegally download a movie. A few moments later he gets a surprise visit from a very anxious gun toting SWAT Team.
In addition to directing the spots, Silver served as art director for MTV on-air promos, part of a creative team which also included producer Kris Walter, executive creative directors Kevin Mackall and Amy Campbell, writer Aziz Ansari, editor Tiffany Burchard at Edit No 6 with VFX by Mark Szumski at Click 3X.
Google Opens Its Defense In Antitrust Case Alleging Monopoly Over Online Ad Technology
Google opened its defense against allegations that it holds an illegal monopoly on online advertising technology Friday with witness testimony saying the industry is vastly more complex and competitive than portrayed by the federal government.
"The industry has been exceptionally fluid over the last 18 years," said Scott Sheffer, a vice president for global partnerships at Google, the company's first witness at its antitrust trial in federal court in Alexandria.
The Justice Department and a coalition of states contend that Google built and maintained an illegal monopoly over the technology that facilitates the buying and selling of online ads seen by consumers.
Google counters that the government's case improperly focuses on a narrow type of online ads — essentially the rectangular ones that appear on the top and on the right-hand side of a webpage. In its opening statement, Google's lawyers said the Supreme Court has warned judges against taking action when dealing with rapidly emerging technology like what Sheffer described because of the risk of error or unintended consequences.
Google says defining the market so narrowly ignores the competition it faces from social media companies, Amazon, streaming TV providers and others who offer advertisers the means to reach online consumers.
Justice Department lawyers called witnesses to testify for two weeks before resting their case Friday afternoon, detailing the ways that automated ad exchanges conduct auctions in a matter of milliseconds to determine which ads are placed in front of which consumers and how much they cost.
The department contends the auctions are finessed in subtle ways that benefit Google to the exclusion of would-be competitors and in ways that prevent... Read More