International VFX and design company Smoke & Mirrors has named Jeff Stevens to serve as creative director at its New York office. Additionally, the studio has secured its first-ever representation in the Midwest, signing Matt Bucher and his company, Obsidian Reps.
Stevens won a Gold Lion at the Cannes Advertising Festival in 2010 for a title sequence for that year’s OFFF Festival. He joined The Mill in 2009 as design director, charged with overseeing the development and integration of the new Design department with VFX and Digital. While there he worked on high-profile projects such as IBM’s “Data Anthem,” which brought data viz scans to life in a surrealistic narrative style. Other brands he has worked with include Ford, Coca-Cola, Verizon, L’Oreal and Pantene.
A graduate of Savannah College of Art & Design (SCAD), Stevens has also worked at Charlex in NY, where he managed the design team, and at editorial and design boutique Splice Here in Minneapolis, where he was creative director.
This is the third major hire this year for Smoke & Mirrors which brought on new managing director Mary Knox in February and executive producer Daniel Cohen in April. Knox and Stevens replace Jo Morgan, longtime managing director of the company, and Sean Broughton, former CD and one of the co-founders, who left the company at the beginning of this year.
Gary Szabo, managing director of Smoke & Mirrors in London, said that the new hires position the company well on both sides of the Atlantic with operations connected through a fully integrated technical network. Smoke & Mirrors also has offices in Shanghai and Sao Paulo. In London, Smoke & Mirrors has recently launched a live-action production company, Rock Hound, which is soon to open in the U.S. A new website showcasing the international work is launching in early June.
Recent commercial clients in the States include agencies such as BBDO, mcgarrybowen, KBS+ and JWT, and brands such as BMW, Mountain Dew, Reebok, ESPN, Google, Jaguar, Land Rover, Verizon, Absolut, MTV and Coke. Smoke & Mirrors also recently completed CGI and VFX for the pilot of Hannibal, an NBC series directed by David Slade (Twilight, Breaking Bad) that aired in April.
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