Digital Black Book: New Reel/Site

Recently jumped back into the freelance game so I launched a redesigned website and updated show-reel at digitalblackbook.com. Take a look around and let me know what you think – @amador_v

Happy food

Video autopromozionale… simpatico e no sense… del resto non c’è sempre una spiegazione per tutto. Realizzato dall’agenzia londinese YumYum con effetti sonori e musica di David Kamp.
Buona visione 🙂

Flash Tutorial

Nuovo prodotto dello studio canadese Tendril in collaborazione con Agency59. Il video è una sorta di tutorial su come fare acquisti in maniera comoda e sicura con una nuova carta di credito… è un approccio decisamente diverso all’attuale modo di comunicare da parte delle banche e il risultato ci piace.

Coca Cola, Happyfication

Sulla scia degli spot dove tutto è bello e tutto è “felice” (ricordate la Happyness Factory?) Coca Cola ha rilasciato lo scorso 16 Settembre questo nuovo spot /cortometraggio di 6′:30. Il video fa parte di una strategia di marketing più vasta che è volta a spiegare perchè Coca Cola rende felici le persone. […]

Unleash your fingers

Unleash your fingers è il titolo della nuova campagna Samsung per la promozione del nuovo cellulare Galaxy. Il video sembra essere l’evoluzione degli spot HP dove tutto nasceva dalle mani e dall’immaginazione dell’attore. In questo caso gli elementi creati dalle mani e dai movimenti dell’attore, il ballerino JayFunk, sono molto più semplici, ma grazie all’accurato tracking e agli eccezionali movimenti di JayFunk risultà tutto più interessante.

URWERK – UR110

Che questo orologio sia “spaziale” non c’è ombra di dubbio, è proprio quello che avranno pensato i creativi di I-réel, agenzia francese attiva dal 1998. Si tratta di un video da 3 minuti dove l’animazione particellare ambientata nello spazio genera pezzo per pezzo questo nuovo modello di orologio. Rotture, frammenti e texture rendono l’atmosfera ancora più […]

Under Armour “Julio Jones: UA E39″

Oggi presentiamo un nuovissimo spot di 60″ realizzato da Shilo da un’idea di WMIG per Under Armour. Lo spot racconta l’evoluzione di un nuovo prodotto tecnologico, UA E39, legato all’abbigliamento tecnico-sportivo. Questo tipo di tecnologia è in grado di registrare e monitorare i paramentri e le prestazioni degli sportivi. […]

Director Jose Gomez gets smart.

Click here to view the embedded video.

In this new campaign, “A Big Idea” for smart car, you can watch the beautiful walls and cityscape of Buenos Aires transform with whimsical characters telling the story about love, curiosity and individuality. Jose Gomez the director, talks about how these spots were made and how he brought life to these vignettes.

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Sheina: Hi Jose. These smart spots show some awesome views of a modern city. How did you decide to shoot this piece?

Jose: BBDO came to us with a concept of having these black and white illustrations on the walls. Not an entirely new concept, but what I loved about the project was that we could breath life into the characters and make them unique. Their script and story was so clever and we were lucky enough to be given the task of interpreting that script and making it a distinct smart story. It was really fun to come up with the different actions and vignettes to keep it simple and smart like. The agency wanted to make sure that the spots came off simple and to the point. And what I love doing is creating that simplicity of the action in storytelling.

Sheina: Do you think simplicity makes it an easier or more difficult guideline to work within?

Jose: It doesn’t make things simpler. Ton Hollander, the Creative Director from BBDO in Germany, wanted to focus on the simplicity of the spot because everything about the smart is about simplicity. We wanted the idea to transcend. Less about being generic but about being pure and paying tribute to the smart brand. The best products in the world are simple, refine, and elegant. And those aspects were emphasized in the drawings to look more mature and artistic versus cartoony. We went through a lot grounds to find the right action, take away, and tone. It was a laborious process of hitting the right mark and stripping things away to find the purest form to tell the story. We didn’t want any superficial or secondary action to complicate it. Although it looked simple we had to refine it and it was as hard as any other project we worked on. We refined it continuously until we felt we had the perfect execution.

Sheina: What was the process in shooting?

Jose: This project was something completely new for me. It was a test in patience and faith, that you were getting the shots that you needed. We shot the footage on a Canon 5D camera in a series of digital stills. Rather than video, it was captured in full high resolution 4k digital files. The overall process was pretty labor intensive. We got to Buenos Aires and immediately scoured the city to find the right angles and walls to match our storyboards. We had to make adjustments along the way because we couldn’t find exactly what we were looking for. We were running around the city for 8 days with 3 full crews in 3 different locations at once. I would drive, set up the camera at one location and than jump to another after another and finally would return to the first crew and we would rotate to another location and do it all over again. For some of these shots, we got to use a pretty innovative technique using these interesting dolly heads with motion controlled rigs to shoot the time lapse, which was really cool.

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Sheina: It’s interesting that you shot the spot with a digital camera. Do you have a specific reason for doing so?

Jose: To achieve the stop motion effect, you need to shot the spot using still photography. The inconsistency of the characters is best achieved with still photography by way of time lapse. Stop motion is a collection of still frames jumping in time. So, we didn’t really need to shoot video and we used the Canon 5D because it has one of the most robust production backbone.

Sheina: What was the illustration process? Who did you work with?

Jose: We worked with a bunch of illustrators but the main character designer is Ken Lee. His drawing sensibility hit the nail on the head. He and I worked closely to get the characters looking right. We have over hundreds and hundreds of different reiterations of the drawings between the agency and us. From changing the hair style a few times, to the size of the shirt, and the flipping of the shoes, it was a million different details going back and forth. We also worked with Brian Covalt, for the stop motion animation of the characters. We wanted to get that animation feeling just right.

Sheina: How was the overall process and collaboration of this project?

Jose: This has been a long and successful project over the course of a few months. Ton Hollander and I have been working closely together at every aspect. It’s rare that I worked closely with a CD from the agency as much as I did with him. We’ve been all over the world together. We shot in Buenos Aries, color corrected and composited in Los Angeles and we did a color session in New York too. We’ve been in the four corners of the world and back over the last three months. The agency was great to work with and it’s been a lot of fun working together.

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Superestudio: Turner tv branding

Abbiamo già scritto di Superestudio nel 2009, loro sono un’agenzia di animazione e design con sede a Buenos Aires. Recentemente sono stati incaricati da Turner Broadcasting per sviluppare e migliorare l’immagine attuale della rete, hanno realizzato così la nuova veste grafica per il 2011. I ragazzi di Superestudio, diretti da Diego Fernandez e Lucas Maccione hanno lavorato sugli script, sull’animazione e sul 3d concentrandosi […]

ShapeShifter – CHARLEX STUDIO

Nello Studio Charlex di New York c’è gente addestrata per creare stupore, anzi per costruirlo metodicamente (“design and build. It’s that simple” riporta il loro motto). Considerati nel rampante ambiente della Comunicazione d’oltreoceano pressoché come una macchina da guerra, progettano campagne […]