Finally someone with a magazine starts making sense around here! Dazed & Confused realized that everyone from grandmas to gaybies are tired of flat, uno dimensional pages that reward nothing but boring words and photos. So they decided to go full bore into 3D LAND! The issue also comes with a D&C designed pair of 3D glasses. On newwstands soon!!!
“We worked in a very organic way to get a very natural sounding voice over,” elaborates Nelson. “It was a thrill to be able to guide the voice performance of such a master at directing.” Nelson was also instrumental in developing the cadence and timing for the voice over which would “allow room for the action of MK12’s amazing motion graphics and design to unfold and build.”
The final project has a 2.5 minute and a :30 second version, and was completed in a variety of languages including English, French, German, and Italian. The :30 spot will air on various European television networks and the film length will screen in select theaters and online.
“Marc found a artistic and purely non-commercial way to highlight what the flying experience is with Swiss Air,” concludes editor Nelson. “As abstract as the script initially appeared, when united with the striking images it all came together to form something evocative and beautiful. Not surprising, considering the source.”
Cut+Run is a boutique editorial company with locations in Los Angeles, New York, and London. The award-winning shop features a diverse roster of talented editors who contribute their vision and skill to commercials, film and music videos. With an emphasis on client service, Cut+Run operates under a “borderless” philosophy making its editors available to work anywhere. Editors can also cut on set wherever projects are shot.
Credits
Written & Directed by Marc Forster
Creative Direction: MK12
Director of Photography: Roberto Schaefer, A.S.C.
Editor: Jay Nelson/Cut + Run
Music: Brian Reitzell
Agency: Publicis, Zurich
Creative Directors: Martin Denecke, Sacha Moser, Tim Hoppin
Producer: Tufan Tuna
Production Company: Ping Pong, Zurich
Director: Marc Forster
Producer: Peter Lehner
Associate Producer: Yves Bollag
Design/Animation: MK12
Design/Animation Production: The Ebling Group
Producers: Sue Lee, Neil Van Harte
Editorial Company: Cut + Run
Editor: James Nelson
US Managing Director: Michelle Burke
Producer: Chris Girard
Related Links
www.cutandrun.tv
MPC’s website has some making-of clips of the vfx studio’s work for two Wrigley’s 5 gum spots.
div xmlns=http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtmla href=http://mag.awn.com/index.php?ltype=pageonearticle_no=4006The Dawning of a New Ice Age/a and a href=http://mag.awn.com/index.php?ltype=pageonearticle_no=4007Saldanha Talks Ice Age/a, at AWN./div
Allow me to introduce the work of Philippe Grammaticopoulos, a French director working with the somewhat mysterious production company Mr. Hyde in Paris. Philippe has also somehow managed to evade the Motionographer radar until now, which comes as a massive shock to me after seeing the long list of his wonderful animations. His stylistic approach and animation techniques are truly unique, but for me his off-beat, strange storytelling is what makes him stand apart from the rest.
His newest animation, Les Ventres (”The Bellies”) caught our attention when it hit our inboxes last week. Take a look at this bizarre four minute tail four minute clip from the 18 minute short about snails, glut and self-consumption.
Seeing how we missed out on all the great work the this fine director has released over the years, here’s more of his work, all of which is worth viewing. In fact, any of these could be full posts of their own.
Warning: These films are not safe for work (NSFW).
We got the scoop on these deliciously macabre promos from Mainframe last week, but we’ve been holding out for a Q&A. Well, the Q&A is here, so feast on all three promos before getting the lowdown below.
Created in collaboration with Ministry of Sound’s “brand innovation group,” MSHK, and illustrator Neal Murren (Breed London), Mainframe brought to life the viciously dark novel, Tomas, written by Ministry of Sound co-founder James Palumbo.
How hard was it going from Neal Murren’s illustrations to full motion? Did you feel boxed in it all?
This did cause a few problems, as the characters weren’t really drawn for animation. It just took some careful cutting out, painting back in the hidden areas and also sourcing or drawing similar imagery. I think using black and white really helped everything to amalgamate. I tried to create each scene around the angle the characters were drawn at so I didn’t have to force them into any un natural positions, this was the only real limitation, as for what was going on around them was left to me.
Were there technical challenges that resulted from this arrangement?
I wanted to match the detail of the animation to the detail of the drawings, which was quite daunting; animating enormous breasts, a dripping penis and exploding heads was all new territory, but I always found a means to an end. The most ambitious was the first shot in cocks away where we are flying through the night sky of French Riviera amongst a squadron of cock bombers. Due to time limitations, I created the whole thing in 2.5D, building the bombers out of flat ribs like a toy balsa wood plane. Once in silhouette, they looked right.
On the whole, I tried to get the most out of camera moves and background detail. Also I had about two weeks to complete each one, so redrawing characters was out of the question.
I’d love to know what the brief was and how they ended up here!
I was given TOMAS to read and they highlighted the three scenes which they wanted animated, as well as showing us Neal’s illustrations. Then through the course of a few meetings with the client, we nailed down what we would like to focus on, how the SFX and music would work and most importantly, how the animations were going to create publicity for the book.
The client gave me a lot of creative freedom, and I knew that for this to work it would have to be shocking. I think it’s great that anyone who sees the animations and then reads TOMAS will have these strange scenes ingrained in their mind’s eye. When I read the book, I found myself seeing the story in black and white, which is quite interesting.
In an attempt to brand itself as the source for a wide range of cultural and educational programming, Australia’s SBS hired Mighty Nice to push the envelope a bit. The most recent fruits of these labors are a series of slapstick IDs that originally aired during Ashes 2009, a long-standing, wildly popular cricket series between England and Australia.
Slapstick is hard enough to pull off in live action, but to manage it with composited animation is a feat worth applauding. The comedic timing between the actor and his unseen props is perfectly in line with the cartoonish spirit of these spots—a cartoonishness brilliantly offset by the elegant end tags.
For a much more abstract take, Mighty Nice also created a set of idents that interpret SBS as shifting tableaux of form and color inspired by the sounds of SBS.
Although created for the same client, the visual and conceptual distance of these idents from the Ashes spots is a testament to Mighty Nice’s flexibility as a studio.
div xmlns=http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtmla href=http://www.vfxworld.com/?atype=articlesid=4010page=1Public Enemies: Fast and Loose VFX/a, at VFXWorld./div
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A. during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
