El Presidente

I have to thank Alan for this one. He showed us a few music videos in a class for the Motion elective last year - this was the one that most stood out for me...



Not only is the tune catchy but the video itself is fantastic to watch. There's lots of small minute things going on throughout, so much so that this encourages you to watch again and again to see - a clever design.

Great Adaptations

Possibly my favorite film genre, novel adaptations will take a beloved piece of literature and attempt to give it justice in its visual format. Often in a one-sided contest, the film will never be as good as the book, apart from the special few that are: Angela's Ashes, The Shawshank Redemption and Enduring Love.

To celebrate these great adaptations, Film4 launched this advertisement...



It's been a long time since I've seen 'flicker-book' effects used to promote anything (in fact, the only other advert I can think of that does is the latest one from Sony Bravia). A movie snapshot appears from the pages and you can't help but be impressed with how such a straight-forward idea catches your attention. Also a nice little touch: on the quick pan shots of the stacked books you can make out some of your favorites that you know will be aired on screen over the following month.

Unbox The Box

Audi has quite the reputation of creating smart and clean adverts. Visually compelling and in-depth effects, each leave their own impressions (and ones that embed themselves in your memory for quite some time). The one that has taken the longest residency in my noggin has been this one...



Catchy score, effective use of simple technology (stop-motion photography) and a car that you believe has been crafted with care and attention to detail.

Hungry for Raw Storytelling

In all honestly, when I first picked up this DVD from one of the many HMV shelves, I thought this was the directorial debut of Steve 'The Cooler King' McQueen. Rather than being the sadly deceased screen icon of The Great Escape, Hunger was brought to us by a 40 year old Turner Prize winner.

Let's get the trivial information out of the way: Hunger depicts the lives of IRA activists during the 1981 hunger strike in Maze Prison, Northern Ireland. Initially instigated by Bobby Sands / Michael Fassbender (who survived 66 days of the strike), it lasted for seven months and resulted in a further nine men dying for their cause.

To understand this brutal epic you need to understand the director's roots, where he is best known for his work as an accomplished artist. See Deadpan (1997).
The dialogue takes an absence from the majority of the screen-time and replaced by actions that truly speak louder than words (I've put an adequate example below). In fact, the only real dialogue comes in 44minutes after pressing PLAY and stays fixed in a one-shot sequence for 22minutes.

It's strange to watch a movie with no character's opening their mouths, you begin to start interpreting their actions and filling in the blanks, so to speak. Every shot is carefully planned, further evidence that McQueen's previous experiences have helped him here.

This isn't the type of film that you can just sit down and switch off and enjoy (See example above again if unconvinced). You watch brutal scenes based on actual events and, predictably, that's the only way that these can be told with any justice.

One of the most striking images of the entire film has to be the final act where we see a transformed Bobby Sands. At first I believed that there was some kind of digital effect going on to make Fassbender (you might remember him from 300 and Eden Lake - another movie I'll be writing on soon) appear to be not amongst the living. After watching the special features of the disc (a vice that I do alongside listening to directors commentary of the film), I learnt that he was on a diet of 600 caleries per day for three months: that's a handful of nuts, berries and two sardines every day. Very few actors have that degree of commitment so to watch it on the screen made for a chilling viewing.
(Apologies for the theatrics)


It's a must see.

Toshiba

200 Toshiba digital cameras
2.5 million individual shots
20,000 gigabytes of data
60 seconds of outstanding advertising

Honda and Sony have dominated the realm of creative advertising (with extremely good reason) for the past few years. Now there's a new contender on the block.
First saw this at the cinema and was blown away by what was accomplished - I think the size of the cinema screen coupled with the immaculate effects gave this a more powerful edge. The more avid Matrix fans may recognize the technique used for this and you'd be right, it's essentially the same technology but with added oomph.

This is the type of work that you would dream of doing with a large design team and commercial sponsoring behind you.