Noted snowboarding and skateboarding filmmaker Rob “Whitey” McConnaughy has signed with Hollywood-headquartered Believe Media for exclusive spot and music video representation in the U.S. and London. Believe also maintains offices in New York and London.
Among McConnaughy’s credits are a series of gritty and authentic skateboarding commercials he conceived, directed and edited for Wieden+Kennedy, Portland, Ore. He’s also contributed to the MTV series Jackass, and its feature film spin-offs, as a creative consultant and cinematographer.
Originally from Washington, D.C., and now a Portland resident, McConnaughy started filming his skateboarding buddies as he pursued the sport himself, which led him to form his own production company, Kingpin Productions. Under that banner, he has directed assorted snowboard films. Early in his snowboarding career, he became the photo editor of Blunt, a snowboarding magazine owned by Big Brother Skateboarding Magazine. Here he also began shooting skateboarding and various forms of hi-jinx for the Big Brother videos which he collaborated on with Big Brother art director Jeff Tremaine (who is now repped as a spot director by Saville Productions, Beverly Hills; Tremaine recently gained inclusion into SHOOT’s 2006 New Directors Showcase). These videos served as a template of sorts for Jackass.
In addition to the aforementioned Nike package, McConnaughy has directed an EA Games commercial with skateboarding legend Tony Hawk. Believe partner/executive producer Luke Thornton envisions McConnaughy as being able “to present agency creatives with a distinctly different take on brands and how to articulate them for young audiences.”
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