Directed by Jon Lajoie & Brandon Dermer Written & Edited by Jon Lajoie Check out BTS Making of Video here: https://vimeo.com/173810135 Produced by Ray Blanco Executive Produced by Djay Brawner & Blake Greenbaum Production Company: Anthem Films STARRING Gabriel Bateman as The Boy Andrew Fox as The Boy’s Brother Bodie Neme as Sebastien Leah Kilpatrick as The Woman David Rispoli as The Boyfriend Frederick Lawrence as The Murderer PRODUCTION Executive Assistant Abigail West Executive Producer Blake Greenbaum Head of Production Derek Dale General Manager Nicole Swedlow 1st AD Sam Shapson KEY PA Rion Fisher Production Assistant Joan Gallagher Production Assistant David Moore CAMERA Director Of Photography Wojciech Kielar 1st AC Chuck Shwartzbeck 2nd AC Dom Jones DIT Day One Jacqueline Lehr DIT Day Two Jorge Gomez ART Production Designer Justin McClain Art Director Jake Solano Asst Art Director Melissa Gamez Set Dresser / Truck Driver Bill Peterson Art PA Hannah Olsen Set Dresser – SUNDAY ONLY John Craighead GRIP & ELECTRIC Gaffer Kyle Fallon Key Grip Ely Gonzalez G&E Swing Driver Aaron Pong MAKEUP Make Up Artist Lili Kaytmaz MUA asst Sunny Drissia WARDROBE Wardrobe Stylist Daniel Selon POST DIT and Assistant Editor Andrew Wilsak Color: Ryan K McNeil BTS Gabriel Younes
Some Kind Of Quest
Posted in: Animation
What happens when artwork becomes life’s work? When creator becomes a caretaker? SOME KIND OF QUEST, from Sylvain Labs, Greencard Pictures and director, Andrew Wilcox, is a film that invites you into the singular world of Northlandz, a 52,000-square-foot model train installation just 75 minutes outside of Manhattan, and into the ornery mind of the man—and steadfast wife—who brought it all to life. www.somekindofquest.com
“All the world is a stage”. In this theater the dance of a puppet, destructured in time and space, shows us the mechanisms that pulls the strings. Director and animator: Dario Imbrogno Cinematography: Giancarlo Morieri Music and sound design: Enrico Ascoli Postproduction: Emilio Sapia produced by Withstand
YouTubers paid by Warner Bros. for posting positive reviews of their game, says FTC
Posted in: AnimationThe Federal Trade Commission (FTC) of the USA recently called out Warner Bros. Home Entertainment to scrutinise the fact that they had paid YouTube ‘influencers’ to promote the company’s game, Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor.
According to the report released by FTC, the publisher, through a third party marketing firm paid some YouTube creators to promote the company’s game as they were provided with a version of the game before the release. What was noted by FTC was that, the ‘influencers’ failed to inform the consumers the fact that the video was being promoted by the publishers while the YouTube personalities were provided with “cash payments often ranging from hundreds of dollars to tens of thousands of dollars.”
Roughly, these were the guidelines which were to be followed by the influencers while making content related to the game:
- The video will make positive statements about the game.
- The video will not talk about any glitches found in the game.
- The video should be further supported by the creator with one Facebook post or tweet in regards to the content.
- The video should have a strong call-to-action message, which the visitors can click and which leads to game’s website where they can learn more about the game.
- The video should feature gameplay of Middle earth: Shadow of Modor.
It was noted that the attempt not only is unethical as it tampers the decision making process of the consumers as they have no clue that the content is indeed sponsored, but it also breaches the FTC’s guidelines.
It was also said that the information the video is sponsored was kept at the bottom where the visitors had to click on “Show more” button to navigate, which is barely visible when it was shared on other social media websites like Facebook or Twitter.
“Consumers have the right to know if reviewers are providing their own opinions or paid sales pitches,” said FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection, director, Jessica Rich in a statement in the commission’s press release. “Companies like Warner Brothers need to be straight with consumers in their online ad campaigns.”
No influencers were named except from one who’s the most well known YouTube stars – Felix “PewDiePie” Kjellberg whose videos were viewed around 3.7 million times out of the total 5.5 million times all the sponsored videos were watched.
This is not the first time, sponsored content were masqueraded as original content. Last year, Machinima, the digital entertainment company also settled with FTC because of their promotion of Xbox One through their videos and most recently, YouTube stars, Trevor “TmarTn” Martin and Tom “Syndicate” Cassell extensively promoted a Counter Strike: Global Offensive betting site owned by them, which they failed to mention.
In the settlement, FTC asked Warner Bros. to follow the rules of disclosure in future marketing campaigns, which include educating influencers on how to disclose the arrangement and ceasing payment agreements if these steps are not adhered to. The company has 30 days to make a public comment on FTC’s website, following which the commission will finalise if to go with the proposed agreement or not.
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Alice Through the Looking Glass VFX supervisor is set to embark on a new journey. Working with VFX studio Double Negative since the past one year, Ollie Rankin has now moved to Uncorporeal Systems as Head of VFX and VR Production.
Hailing from New Zealand, Rankin has been a virtual reality storyteller and visual effects supervisor whose feature film career spans more than 16 years and 26 films. He has been involved in many of cinema’s VFX heavy franchises like the Lord of the Rings, X-Men and Transformers series.
His recent credits include Pelé: Birth of a Legend and Alice Through the Looking Glass where he served as the VFX supervisor. His journey with Double Negative was a shorter one as compared to his career at Method Studios which lasted for almost five years. He served at Method Studios as a VFX supervisor and completed his latest work for the legendary footballer based film.
Before Method Studios, Rankin mastered various roles at MPC for around five years. He tried his hands on as crowd R&D technical director, crowd lead, crowd and Mocap supervisor. MPC is the studio behind the VFX for Batman vs Superman, Suicide Squad and also the recent The Jungle Book.
Recently in 2012, he founded Pansensory Interactive, a Vancouver, BC startup focused on pioneering the new forms of storytelling made possible by virtual/augmented reality and artificial intelligence. He also has a year’s experience at WETA Digital studio.
As far as Rankin’s future workplace is concerned, Uncorporeal Systems is known for its industry leading light-field capture technology, called 10DVR. This unique technology marks the first opportunity for VR filmmakers to tell room-scale character driven stories featuring real actors.
“When I went looking for the highest fidelity performance capture on the market, I was impressed with how far ahead Uncorporeal was in that field. I went on to co-direct a VR short, `Alcatraz Island Lofts`, with their talented team. I’m passionate about exploring the potential of this company’s unique technology to create narrative VR that’s truly cinematic, featuring real actors and performances,“ said Rankin.
Rankin’s vast pool of knowledge and experience can be used to help evolve the work flow at Uncorporeal Systems. His interests and ideation on virtual reality will definitely prove as an added advantage for the studio’s future endeavours. It may be an over exaggeration but what if we can experience something like an Alice Through the Looking Glass in virtual reality?
The post Double Negative VFX supervisor shifts focus to VR, joins Uncorporeal Systems appeared first on AnimationXpress.
Yes! Now we have more official information about the game that has been topping charts and winning over hearts of every fan who wanted to be a Pokemon trainer. Pokemon Go has not even been released globally and already it has so many stories built around it, both good and bad. But the fans always have questions about further releases and Niantic’s plans of further updates.
Recently in an interview with Business Insider, Niantic, CEO, John Hanke asserted that their first priority after the servers are stabilised and the game is officially released globally would be to bring the Pokemon trading feature into the Android and iOS based game which he believes is, “kind of a core element”.
While, speaking to Game Informer, Hanke said that players can expect additional features, more options to interact with pokestops and much more. The servers are already a subject for upgrade and the game will receive bi-weekly updates.
Server issues are one of the main concerns for the developers right now as a lot of players are currently being tormented with connectivity issues.
Hanke also confirmed to Game Informer that, the pokestops being temples and churches are indeed intentional as he goes on to say that these were mostly suggestions submitted by players and that these are easily accessible public places.
As it is an MMO game, the company plans to keep the game updated regularly. Hanke also hinted that the game could be coming into dedicated augmented reality devices like the Microsoft Hololens goggles, which is coming closer to a formal release.
With all that being said, Pokemon Go is already a massive success and with plans to keep the game updated, the company might very well be able to sustain it in the tough mobile market.
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Expression of Interest invited for setting up National Centre in Animation, VFX, Comics and Gaming
Posted in: AnimationAfter years of assurances and planning, the Government has invited Expression of Interest for assistance and operating the proposed National Centre of Excellence in Animation, Visual Effects, Gaming and Comics.
Although there has been no formal announcement in this regard, it is learnt that the Centre will come up at the Film City in Goregaon, Mumbai, despite demands earlier that it should be either in Hyderabad or Bengaluru which are the hubs of animation and special effects institutions.
The Expression of Interest has been invited from eligible academic institutions for a period of 10 years extendable up to 30 years.
The EoI has been asked in the form of an advertisement by the Information and Broadcastng Ministry in association with the AVGC Forum of FlCCl, a specialised consortium partner of Media and Entertainment Skill Council. A copy of the advertisement was also placed on the website of the Ministry, mib.nic.on
The complete EoI document can be viewed / downloaded from the link: mescindia.org from 13 July morning to 17 August-2016 afternoon.
A sum of Rs 5.1 crore has been set aside in the current year for setting up the Centre.
Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting, Rajyavardhan Rathore said at Cannes in May 2016 that the Government will only ‘focus on providing land and infrastructure’ for the proposed National Centre and had called upon private partners to take utilise this initiative with investment, technology and faculty.
Earlier this year, then I and B Secretary Sunil Arora had confirmed that the Maharashtra Government is providing a 25 acre land near the Film City in Goregaon for the institute.
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Viral Experiment – All Revealed
Posted in: AnimationThe Woolshed Company, a film production company in Melbourne, has released the results of “Viral Experiment”, a two-year social experiment exploring the phenomenon of ‘viral’ videos and shareable content. The objective was to experiment with the conception, creation and distribution of a series of short form, snackable content pieces intended to reach and entertain a worldwide audience regardless of medium or platform and without aid of any paid media, promotion, publicity, established channels or distribution networks. Eight videos were released on YouTube: including an outback tornado, a shark attack in Manly, Sydney, a lightning strike on Tamarama beach near Bondi, a bear chasing a snowboarder, a drone falling into Burning Man Festival, and a lion taking revenge on a game hunter. As the views picked up, media outlets and commenters debated the authenticity of the videos.
“GoPro: Man Fights Off Great White Shark In Sydney Harbour”, released on the Terry Tufferson channel in July 2014, has reached over 21.4 million views.
“Crazy Guy Runs Into Outback Tornado To Take Selfie”, starring director Richard Hughes, released in August 2014 on the Terry Tufferson channel, has had over 15.2 million views.
“USA vs JAPAN – Ultimate Selfie Stick Fight”, released on the Terry Tufferson channel in July 2015, has had over 21.4 million views.
“Stormtrooper Falls Down Stairs On The Way To Star Wars Premiere”, released on the Terry Tufferson channel in August 2015, has had over 6.8 million views.
“GoPro Falls Off Drone Into Burning Man Dance Floor”, released on the Terry Tufferson channel in September 2015, has had over 3.8 million views.
“Lightning almost strikes girl in Sydney!!! Boyfriend’s reaction is priceless!!!!”, released on the Frank DeMayo channel in February 2016, has had over 58.9 million views.
“Snowboarder Girl Chased By Bear – I Was Singing Rihanna Work And Didn’t Know It Was Behind Me!”, released on the Kelly Murphy channel in April 2016, has had over 34.4 million views.
“Lion Takes Revenge On Trophy Hunter! [LEAKED VIDEO]”, released on the Jayden Tanner channel in June 2016, has had over 11.6 million views.
The stories were viewed in 180+ countries around the world and made news headlines in countless news and entertainment services, including all three commercial networks in Australia – Network Seven, Nine and Ten. Internationally, the clips grabbed the attention of NBC, FOX, CBS, CNN, Sky News and ABC (USA) as well as networks across Europe, UK, USA, Japan, Russia, Canada, China and South Korea. Print and online publications also contributed to the buzz, with The Guardian, Sky News, News Limited, The Independent, The Mirror, The Sun, The Telegraph and Time Magazine all sharing the content, and then weighing in on the debate.
Behind The Scenes
The Woolshed Co. Managing Director, Dave Christison, said the content series was envisioned as a social experiment to explore the creation and distribution of ‘new media’, with the process involving The Woolshed Co. “strategising, creating, releasing and then integrating the learnings into the next piece”.
“We set out to better understand exactly how to create short-form, highly shareable, snackable’ content, that is capable of reaching worldwide mass audiences, without the luxury of pricey media buys, ad campaigns, publicity strategies or distribution deals,” Christison continued.
The Woolshed Company experimented with concept creation approaches (figuring out what people want to click on next), production techniques (stock footage, editing, CGI and compositing etc.), distribution, and seeding strategies – all to maximise share-ability and entertainment value as the campaign progressed.
“We learned what worked, what didn’t, and what are absolute ‘must haves’ for any viral marketing campaign. Whether the story went for twenty seconds or two minutes, we aimed to take audiences on a ride that may shock them, make them laugh, make them cringe, but most importantly entertained them, no matter how brief, and no matter how questionable,” Christison added.
Viral Experiment Credits
The Woolshed Viral Experiment project was developed at The Woolshed, Melbourne, by directors Richard Hughes and Caspar Mazzotti with producer Dave Christison.
The Floppotron
Posted in: Animation
The floppy drives are back with multiplied force.
Cover of Imperial March by computer hardware orchestra.
Which song would you like to hear next?
More info: http://silent.org.pl/home/ .
The Traveller, L’Orange and Kool Keith feat J-Live. Taken from the album Time? Astonishing! Buy it here https://lorange360.bandcamp.com/album/time-astonishing Images sourced from various sources including Google Earth and Nasa.