Advertising as Art

I really love this new commercial from Goodby, Silverstein & Partners for Sprint. It embodies everything that reminds me of life at an advertising agency. From the nit-picking clients, frazzled designers all the way to the stubborn directors, this is it. My favorite part is how they tell the client that adding pants to the character will cost them an extra million dollars… classic!

The credits sheet on this one is HUGE, so rather than talk about each individual in paragraph format, I’m going to opt for a list at the end of this post. Some people to pull out though are probably the most obvious. The Farrelly Brothers are perfect in this mini-glimpse into the daily lives of Hollywood + Advertising production teams. Rus Chaeo and Kevin Koller were the Copywriter/AD team for this piece, so I have to call attention to their role in this spot along with the folks from Semerad for their work on the animated Happy The HedgeHog. Great work guys!

credits:

Client: Sprint
Title: Pants or no Pants
Agency: Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco
Co-Chairman/Creative Director: Rich Silverstein
Group/Assoc. Creative Directors: Franklin Tipton, Paul Stechschulte
Art Director: Kevin Koller
Copywriter: Rus Chao
Producer: Rachel Seitel
Executive Producer: Josh Reynolds
Production Company: Caviar Content, LA/Brussels/Amsterdam
Director: Peter Farrelly
DP: Matthew Leionetti
Line Producer: Jasper Thomlinson
Exec Producer: Michael Sagol
Editorial Company: HutchCo Technologies, Los Angeles
Editor: Jim Hutchins
Asst. Editor: Steve Miller
Editorial Producer: Jane Hutchins
Telecine: Company 3, Los Angeles
Colorist: Stefan Sonnenfeld
Audio Post Company: Lime Studios, Los Angeles
Audio Engineer: Loren Silber
Final Online: Riot, Los Angeles
Flame Artist: Joey Brattesani
VFX Company (Happy the Hedgehog): Semerad, New York
CD/Lead Inferno Artist: Johnnie Semerad
VFX Producer: Tyler Jarrett, Lana Fehretdinov
VFX Executive Producer: Carey Gattyan
CG Artists: Chris Bernier, Tim Kim, Anderson Ko, Sandor Toledo
Music Company: Beacon Street Studios, Venice, CA
Music Producer: Adrea Lavezzolli
Graphics Company (End Titles): Roger, Los Angeles
GFX Creative Director: Mark Yamamoto
GFX Producers: Sarah Cole, Judy Bowers

Vuitton….Louis Vuitton. Everyone’s favorite James Bond, Sean Connery, can now be added to the list of recent celebrities recruited to star in a Annie Leibowitz shot campaign for fashion designer Louis Vuitton. Promoting their ‘Core Values’ effort, Sean Connery joins other celebrities like Keith Richards, Sofia and Francis Ford Coppola, Andre Agassi and Mikhail Gorbachev. The campaign benefits The Climate Project, which is run by Al Gore. In order to get Gorbachev to model for the campaign, a donation was made to Green Cross International, an environmental organization founded by the former Soviet leader in 1993.

The tag-line reads,

There are journeys that turn into legends

The 78 year old retired actor is pictured relaxing on a dock near his home in the Bahamas. Two other pieces in the campaign are shown below.

Francis Ford Coppola and Sofia Coppola:

Keith Richards:

Gorbachev:

Here’s an amazing new spot from BMW (South Africa) that features Guillaume Nery in a breathtaking look at the world of freediving. The protagonist in this commercial is Guillaume Nery, a word champion freediver. He’s got some more video of him freediving on his blog so if you liked this piece, go check it out.

John Javenport and Gina King were the Copywriter/Art Director team from Ireland Davenport, Johannesburg (with Chantal Kriel as Agency Producer). Greg Gray was the Director for Velocity Films and featured Helena Woodfine as the Producer. The Talkies was the co-production company used with Rob Malpage & Didier Noirot as DP. Kobus Loots edited this amazing video with Upstairs Post Production. The work was all done at Blade Post Production with Alun Richards as the Sound Designer from Cut & Paste.

Here’s a new Levi’s commercial, shot in black and white, by San Francisco agency Cutwater. This is a cute commercial where at first you think that it is being played in reverse, however by the time the woman ventures outside you can see that not everyone is going backwards. Great cinematography, I enjoyed watching this spot.

Marty Senn is the Creative Director over at Cutwater and Jennifer Golub is the Executive Producer (Bill Spangler is the Assistant Producer).

Michael Haussman from HSI Productions directed this commercial with Paul Laufer as the DP. Production Design was by Richard LaSalle and it was edited by Marco Perez from Mad River Post. Visual Effects were done by The Mill with Helen Hughes as the Producer. Music was by Human Worldwide.

Not far behind last weeks Mercenaries 2 spot comes the new trailer for Sony Playstation’s first person shooter Resistance 2.

Not much to comment on this trailer other than “amazing!” It’s a video game about an alternate world history. Don’t worry, eventually everyone will be counting on you to save the world from evil…that’s for certain.

The folks from Playstation had this to say about the spot:

The brief was to create a promo outlining key moments in our ‘twisted’ history of the Resistance universe. Where most first-person shooters are based in either a Sci-fi or World War II context, Resistance blends the two with a story set in an alternative version of the 20th Century. In this reality WWII never happened and there was no Nazi enemy. Instead, humanity is threatened by brutal invaders, the Chimera. And the situation is looking desperate… [source]

The transitions in this movie are absolutely stunning!
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