Director Paul B. Cummings has joined the roster of Tuff Contender, the production company under the aegis of executive producers DJay Brawner and Max Rose. Cummings has directed commercials for Doritos, Dunkin’ Donuts, Hotels.com, K-Mart, McDonald’s and Taco Bell, and collaborated with agencies including Alma DDB, Dentsu, Deutsch, and Hill Holiday. Cummings was previously represented in the ad arena by Noble (formerly DUCK Studios).
“What drew me into Paul was a short film he created,” noted Brawner, referring to Margot’s Last Meal. “It was touching, it was endearing, and it made me cry–it was the opposite of his commercial work in tone, but visually at the same level as everything else he creates. I knew there was depth to him beyond the comedy we see in his commercial work, this made me want to bring him into Tuff without question. Upon meeting, the similarities in our approach to projects were unparalleled.”
Cummings enjoyed one of the early YouTube viral waves in 2006 with his stop-motion digital short Tony vs. Paul, which garnered over six million views and subsequently earned him a Webby nomination. Shortly thereafter, Cummings was signed by creative director John Andrews with production company ka-chew! where he deployed his stop-motion techniques for several brands including Red Vines and Yoplait’s Go-Gurt. In 2013, Cummings earned “Best Animated Film” from the One Screen Film Festival for his short Instagramimation. Stop-motion honed Cummings’ storyboarding methods, which contributed to his leap into live action work with celebrity talent including Paul Rudd, Sacha Baron Cohen, Jon Hamm, Zac Efron, Key & Peele and Adam DeVine.
Most recently, Cummings worked with Adult Swim to create live-action shorts for the Rick and Morty season finale featuring Emmy-Award winning actor Christopher Lloyd (Back To The Future, Taxi) and Jaeden Martell (It, Defending Jacob). Cummings also serves as creative executive on the upcoming animated series Summer Memories, an A&N Production created by Adam Yaniv and following the adventures of Jason and Ronnie as Jason looks back on the most pivotal summer of his life.
“DJay and I speak the same language when it comes to production,” said Cummings. “We both love a new project, the relationships with our crews and have an insatiable drive to create content interesting and exciting for clients. I look forward to going to bat for each other.”
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