Street Talk
Director Andrews Jenkins, formerly of Food Chain Films, Portland, Ore., has joined bicoastal Go Film. In early 2003, Robert Wherry and Jonathan Weinstein, partners/executive producers in Go Film, became partners in Food Chain along with its executive producer David Cress. (Gary Rose has since joined Go as a partner/executive producer.) Per the partnership, Go Film handled the Food Chain roster of directors nationally. Now Wherry, Weinstein and Cress have disbanded their partnership. Cress will maintain Food Chain with directors Marc Greenfield and Vance Malone. The company will continue to pursue commercial projects, as well as diversify more meaningfully into the direct market….RSA and Blackdog Films–both bicoastal and in London–have signed noted Swedish directors Jonas Akerlund and Johan Renck for spot and music clip representation in the U.S. and the U.K. RSA will handle commercials while its sister shop Blackdog takes on music video assignments for the directors who work individually but are business partners at Renck Akerlund Films (RAF), Stockholm. Previously, RAF was repped stateside via bicoastal HSI Productions and in the U.K. through Exposure Films, London….Crossroads Films, bicoastal and Chicago–via its ongoing reciprocal relationship with Cowboy Films, London–has secured stateside spot representation for director Roger Michell, whose feature helming credits include Enduring Love, Notting Hill and Changing Lanes. Cowboy handles U.K. representation for Michell….DNA, Hollywood, has secured music video and commercial representation for directors Thom Oliphant and Steven Goldmann. Oliphant and Goldmann recently shuttered their production company, The Collective, LLC, to focus on directing, with DNA handling production and repping….Actor/director John Leguizamo, who’s currently starring in Assault on Precinct 13, is again available to helm commercials through CFM International, New York….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