Famous Interactive, a division of Culver City-based The Famous Group, has built agency titan Young & Rubicam’s (Y&R) new global website: www.yr.com. The interactive site features several noteworthy elements including a brand-battling Mexican wrestler game, “Contact Y&R” notes sent via homing pigeon, movable refrigerator magnets, direct Flickr feeds allowing each of Y&R’s 186 offices to upload location pictures, and the most fluid content playback found anywhere on the web.
Famous worked directly with Y&R to create a site that uses next-generation technology to clearly and creatively communicate the agency’s culture and branding mission.
Making Birds & Fists Fly: Live Action Production
The new Y&R site contains a Flash game pitting two Mexican wrestlers against one another, each representing a brand: Brand A and Brand B. With Y&R creative, Famous filmed actual Luchador wrestlers on a full-size professional ring built on location in front of Famous’ in-house greenscreen. Shooting with the RED Camera in 4K, Famous director Joel Lava worked with Y&R creatives to choreograph several Lucha Libre moves such as “Romper El Hielo,” “Style Clash” and the crowd-pleasing “Suplex Sinistra.” Famous then enhanced the mat-pounding moves with CG. The end result is a live-action and CG Flash video game intended to engage the user in the agency’s patented BAV marketing techniques.
Famous and Y&R brought an innovative component to the “Contact Y&R” section with a live-action-shot pigeon handler and his professionally trained pigeons. When the user clicks “Send Message,” composes their email and clicks “Send,” the pigeon handler steps out onto a composited urban rooftop and holds up your message, which is now re-printed on his paper. He then walks over to the coop, pulls a pigeon from the corresponding category and attaches the message. The pigeon is finally set free, flying in a hurry off screen. Famous shot the handler and pigeons on a green psych wall with the RED camera at 4K. Using After Effects and Flash, the site is able to track the message entered by the user so it transcribes exactly onto the handler’s corresponding piece of paper.
Content Population & Site Intro
Famous encoded, tested and trouble shot and the agency’s content for the “Work” section for optimal performance and clarity. Through various encoding techniques and changes to the dynamic audio and video players, Famous is able to show streaming video content, audio and print work at a very high quality as it streams seamlessly to the user’s computer.
Famous developed the website’s intro using a combination of Flash and Flex on the front-end with a custom back-end content management system developed in ASP.NET and powered by a SQL Server database. Lead by Famous’ Michael Marina, the technical team managed to achieve Y&R’s goal of marrying the two sides of the business — creative and analytical — using a line that the user drags back and forth. While the analytically inclined left side of the featured brain displays information about the agency and its work in text format, the creative right side encompasses a variety of interactive modules including the Luchador flash game, dynamic data visualizations corresponding to Y&R news articles, a refrigerator with movable magnets, Flickr-powered image galleries, and much more. “Creating the dynamic data-visualizations for the news section was one of the most difficult components of the site. The math required to dynamically graph the information in such a stylized format was especially tricky,” says Marina.
Adds Y&R’s Executive Director of Content Production Nathy Aviram, “Working with Famous on building our website was a great collaborative effort. They had both the technology and the talent to help us beautifully execute on our idea of left and right brain thinking. It was a great partnership.”
Website Credits
Client: Young & Rubicam: Global Website Redesign
Launch Date: June 2009
Programming/Production/Post: THE FAMOUS GROUP/FAMOUS INTERACTIVE, Culver City, CA
Famous Credits
Interactive
Interactive Director: Michael Marina
Interactive Producer: Nate Occhipinti
Interactive Production Coordinator: Maggie Ashla
Lead Front-End Developer: Neil Katz
Lead Server-Side Developer: Peter Bakalov
Front-End Developers: Ronnie Pirovino, Tore Kamsvaag, David Minassian, Steve Schelter, Steve De La Torre
Server-Side Developers: Brandon Fisch, Martin Hristrokov
Production
Director: Joel Lava
Director of Photography: Johnny Ching
Managing Director: David Kwan
Producer: Nate Occhipinti
Line Producer: Marc Blitstein
Post Production
Post Producer: Nate Occhipinti
Lead Artist: Chris Chernoff
Artists: Aaron Frebowitz, Ashfar Guvendik, Dennis Shen, Hillary Coe
Editors: Josh Sneider, Connor O’Brien, Matt Coddaire
Y&R Credits
Creative Director/Art Director: Neil Heymann
Creative Director/Copywriter: James Maravetz
Executive Director of Content Production: Nathy Aviram
ABOUT THE FAMOUS GROUP
Emerging in 2007 from the mean streets of Los Angeles, The Famous Group (www.thefamousgroup.com) rose to global notoriety through adrenaline-addicted design, motion graphics, interactive and live action projects for big-name sports and automotive advertisers. Today, Famous creates stand out content for major brands such as Pepsi, Gatorade, Mattel, Cisco, Toyota and Target.
Fame hasn’t softened them: while The Famous Group’s new Interactive division turns out award-winning web portals for international brands, Famous has organically morphed into a one-stop production powerhouse. Tripling the size of its facility — adding a state-of-the-art greenscreen stage plus expanded editorial and vfx resources to its already stellar live action capabilities — Famous rockets projects from concept to completion.
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