Here’s a novel way to get consumers to test out your product. In March, Nokia announced a competition to shoot a short film entirely with a Nokia N8 mobile phone. It invited entrants to send in a story pitch and offered a $5,000 filming budget and two Nokia N8s to eight finalists.
“Splitscreen: A Love Story,” directed by UK-based JW Griffiths, won the first place award of $10,000.
When Dutch financial company SNS Reaal produced an online only annual report, it had its designer Fabrique summarize the salient points in a simple 2 and a half minute film. No fancy computer graphics, no elaborate sets, no fuzzy corporate-speak, just three ordinary-looking people walking viewers through who they are, what they do and how they performed in 2010. The complete annual is presented just as simply, incorporating functions that let readers make a custom pdf of just the pages or paragraphs that they want to keep for reference. The first test of transparent reporting: make it understandable.
EF International Language Centers, a Swedish-based company that offers study abroad programs and language courses in some 50 countries, has just launched a new series of short video ads that have no voiceover sales pitch, no mention of what the school does or how to enroll, and no mention of Education First at all except for flashing EF briefly on the screen with a website address at the end. Elegant typography displays choice words in the language of the featured country with the phonetic pronunciation spelled out underneath, but there is no translation of what the words mean nor what they sound like when spoken aloud. And yet, it all works. The commercials aren’t about the process of learning a language, but the life-enhancing benefits of studying abroad. The message conveys the atmosphere of the culture, the experience of being there, the promise of friendships, and the carefree joy of discovery. Directed by Gustav Johansson and produced by Camp David Film, the EF “Live the Language” videos say a lot without uttering a word.
“Madagascar, Carnet de Voyage” (Madagascar, a Journey Diary) is one of five animated short films nominated for an Academy Award this year. From a purely artistic standpoint this animated short by French filmmaker Bastien Dubois is compelling to view. Colored pencil and watercolor drawings come to life, so that viewers feel like they’ve stepped into the pages of a traveler’s diary. Dubois undoubtedly achieved this using a rotoscoping technique in Adobe After Effects — a process of drawing masks, animating the path and then using the masks to define a matte.
Having trouble relating Western art history to contemporary culture? Watch this video that the French-American band Hold Your Horses made for its track “70 Million,” produced by L’Ogre. Apparently, the entire video was filmed over two weekends in a parking garage in Paris. See if you can name the painting and the artist.
Answers on next page. Read More »