TV

I love a good movie parody, especially when it’s done for one of my favorite movies of all time - The Blues Brothers.

It’s 106 miles to Gainesville, we’ve got a full tank of gas and a half-rack of ribs. It’s hot and we’re wearing alligator suits.
……
Hit it.

This commercial was brought to you courtesy of Jeff Stamp, Jeff Sikaitis and Jake Wheeler from agency Southpaw (Evan Harris was the client producer).

The folks over at Southpaw directed this piece with Tom Rossano as the Executive Producer (Rich Krekian is the Line Producer). Station Film was the production company used along with Kyle Kibbie playing the part of DP.

Jake Wheeler was also the editor for this piece along with Jim Mann from Postworks. Sound Design was by Jody Nazzaro from Bionic TV.

Twitter is buzzing with the news that last night the Twitter accounts for Mad Men characters Don Draper (@don_draper) and Peggy Olson (@peggyolson) were taken down. At first the outrage was pointed towards the folks over at Twitter, with reports stating that it was because these accounts fall under their new spam restrictions - The accounts were not real people saying real things (yet all were promoting a similar product).

Twitter employees fired back that it wasn’t their initiative, but rather a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notice issued by AMC. Apparently these twitter accounts were NOT all part of a marketing campaign for the show! I will say this, each of the accounts (there’s more than just Don and Peggy on Twitter) seems to have stuck to the character they were portraying. While AMC has the legal right to protect their brand, why ruin a good campaign? Especially one that is free?

Ben Kessler found the rest of the cast who had Twitter accounts and posted them on his blog. They are:

and

- Apparently a new Peggy Olson account has been created, this time with an underscore in her name. One of her first ‘tweets’ was in regards to the account suspension:

MG Siegler from VentureBeat was the first to report of the DMCA takedown:

Twitter has responded back to me on the issue. Apparently it wasn’t a spam issue at all, but rather a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notice that Twitter’s support team responded to, co-founder Biz Stone tells me. I guess AMC didn’t like others playing the roll of its Mad Men characters besides the actors who play them on TV.

I wonder if this was the inspiration for the influx of fake Mad Men accounts (taken from SomeEcards.com):

I don’t think this is the end of this story….

UPDATE! Mario Parisé from the StrategicText blog has come forward to reveal that he has been twittering under the Paul Kinsey (@paul_kinsey) account. It is still (as of 12:45pm EST) online. He’s got a great post about it over on his site. Go check it out.

Hulu.com, one of the more prevalent online video services out on the market today, just announced that they have awarded Crispin Porter + Bogusky creative and media duties on their $50 million account.

Damn. That’s a lot of $ for a company that is barely over a year old! It was only last October that Hulu.com received a $100 million investment from private equity firm Providence Equity Partners.

I couldn’t help posting this - it’s the latest trailer from Red Bee Media to promote a new BBC documentary on Saddam Hussein called “The House of Saddam.” From the chilling Godfather-reminiscent horn solo to the stunning special effects used to melt the characters, I’ve probably watched this a dozen times…

taken from the Finish website:

Focusing on the lives of Saddam’s closest family and an elite few, this intimate portrait into the world of Saddam’s inner circle charts the rise and fall of one of the world’s most terrifying regimes.

The series takes place against the backdrop of the larger tragedy of the Iraqi people, and draws out the story of the Middle East’s relationship with the West.

Working from supplied publicity stills and a small fx shoot for elements Finish’s brief was to bring the pictures to life. Using 2D to morph between stills to add movement and create contra zooms on the family portraits. In 3D we textured a head with the available stills and using maya fluids & maya particles ‘melted’ Saddam & his daughters face, with 2D additional compositing of plates from the fx shoot to give the overall ‘melting’ of the family.

Edel Erickson was the agency producer for Red Bee Media (where Mina Patel is Creative Director). This promo was directed by Wilfred and featured the folks over at Finish as the post-production outfit. It was edited by Alex Lea from Envy. Fi Kilroe was the post-production producer with Jason Watts/Steve Murgatroyd getting credit for the Visual FX. The 3D animation was done by Mark Gregory, Phil Jackson and Paul Wright (Byron Wooffindin was the Flame Assistant).