Archive for category I Design Your Eyes

Last week I was talking to Erik Press, Executive Producer of Commercials at Zoic Studios about the future of advertising.  Erik has been working in commercials for over twenty years so has seen a great deal of changes in the advertising industry over that time.  Erik considers himself, “an orchestrator of putting creative teams together … Essentially my job is to manage teams of producers and artists.  I look outward to sales and client relations to foster those relationships as well as build new ones. connecting the right people together and figure out the cost implications of doing so.  I engage people to dialogue about creative solutioins inside and outside of Zoic Studios.  It’s working with people, creating ideas and building something exciting.”

Prior to my obsession with the television show Mad Men, the world of advertising and marketing has always been fascinating to me.  As a kid, I remember commercials that stuck with me to this day,

Mikey likes Life cereal:

An old woman asking, where is the beef for Wendy’s:

Madge dipping her hand in a small bowl of Palmolive:

And of course I know how to spell bologna because of Oscar Mayer:

However, the world of advertising has come a long way since then, so I wanted to pick Erik’s brain and find out where he felt the advertising industry was headed.

Press has seen his fair share of commercial production through the years and he says the economy has naturally affected the advertising industry.  Whereas years ago budgets were larger and there was only one place to put a commercial, now budgets are smaller and there re multiple places where commercials are placed, “Budgets haven’t grown, but now you have three different places to put your campaign and now you have to split up you production money.”

Besides sheer economics, another shift is the use of an interactive component in campaigns.  ”The biggest shift in the last two years is what is driving the campaign.  It used to be the broadcast driving the campaign and now the interactive and integrated components are on par with what is driving marketing and advertising in what we have been calling the ‘commercial’ world, at least in my perspective.  There is becoming less of a barrier between commercial and interactive and there should be less of a distinction.   I think there has to be a synergy amongst the different platforms and I don’t think we should call it just commercial production anymore or just interactive production, I think there is a larger picture.”

So what is the bigger picture for Erik?   “You have interactive content that keeps people’s eyes on brands longer.  They are exposed in different media outlets and platforms.”  If that is the case, then what in Erik’s mind is the future?  “I think the future of advertising and marketing is about lifestyle. It’s about the things we buy, the places we go, the environments that we live in, fully integrated into those pieces of our lives are marketing and advertising. Marketing and advertising naturally becomes a part of our everyday lives.   It’s not just a television commercial or print ad anymore. It’s about intertwining brands in lifestyle and that is the biggest impact.  It’s the Nike lifestyle or the Red Bull lifestyle; it’s literally what we surround ourselves with.”

There are interactive projects currently in the works for Zoic Studios.  “There are a lot of projects that we are talking to agencies about that will have a large interactive component, everything from athletics to communication devices.  We are talking to major brands about campaigns that the broadcast is inspired out of an interactive experience, it’s amazing stuff.”  Erik sites Zoic’s involvement in Killzone 2 as an example of an interactive experience combined with a broadcast experience.   “You can look at some of the game trailers.  Killzone 2 for example is a broadcast spot, it’s a downloadable spot on the Playstation network and within that it is an engaging and interactive experience.  You can drag a thirty second spot out to nine minutes by exploring different levels and facets of how that project was put together.  That is a spot that is a great example of interactive.”

Does Erik see any challenges with this new interactive component in the advertising world?  “The challenges are that the agencies are splintered. There are interactive people and there are broadcast people and it is a rare agency, in my experience, that completely melds the two together.  I think that is changing.  I see a lot of agency creatives and producers that are fully throwing themselves into the interactive because that’s where the growth is.”

Are we headed to a world like the one we saw in the movie Minority Report?  “Yes it’s coming.  Brands aren’t exclusively broadcasting anymore, they are narrowcasting, and they are targeting very specifically because they have all of this data of who you are as a consumer.”

In terms of interactive advertising has Erik seen anything as a consumer that has excited him?  “Something I am really excited for is the new Arcade Fire interactive music video which is basically an interactive Google Earth experience.”

http://www.thewildernessdowntown.com/

“It’s a personalized Google Earth experience where you type in an address and you zoom down to the street level you type in.  The story is then told through both the music and on the personal address you typed in so every user experience is different based on a geo spatial location.  Those kinds of things are exciting.  We are looking at a campaign now that is an advertising campaign with a very similar idea.  It’s inspiring.”

I agree with Erik it is inspiring. I don’t think Mikey, Madge or Don Draper ever anticipated being part of an advertising campaign that was personally geared toward them and definitely check out the Google Earth/ Arcade Fire experience above.  It will seriously blow your mind!

I recently came across this article from Mashable.  It was an article on a site called Chatroulette that was coming back after being down for several weeks.  No one was exactly sure why it took several weeks to relaunch the site, and I was interested in what this site was all about.  I had only just heard about Chatroulette last week because of the viral marketing campaign for Eli Roth’s latest producing effort, The Last Exorcism, which came out over the weekend to top the box office.  The viral campaign below was placed on chatroulette as a way to lure in young men to check out the website for the movie.  When I saw the viral video I found it really funny and an interesting way to market a film to the young male demographic.

However, I still didn’t understand exactly what Chatroulette was.  According to Wikipedia, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatroulette) Chatroulette was invented by a seventeen-year-old student in Moscow, Russia.  His goal in creating the site was to take the video chats he had on SKYPE to the next level.  When you go to the website it asks if you want to connect your webcam. You can’t simply watch.  In order to be a part of the experience, you must accept connecting your webcam to the site, and if you decline the site goes black.  Once you approve, you have access to anyone in the world that is also connected.  What you find is literally a roulette situation, random strangers pop up in a larger window next to your smaller one and will either start a chat dialogue in another pop up box below or will “next” you, click off of your connection to connect to someone else.

In my research, I also came across this article in NY Magazine by Sam Anderson, http://nymag.com/news/media/63663/.  Anderson actually spent some time on the  Chatroulette site to understand the ins and outs before writing his piece and so naturally I did the same.  I logged in, accepted my webcam and in less than five minutes about 10 people “nexted” me, a few nude people popped up so I “nexted” them and that was the extent of it.  I found the experience in general a little unnerving to be honest.  A bunch of random strangers can see me and strike up a conversation; frankly it seems a little odd.  Someone could say there isn’t much difference when a perfect stranger comes up to you and asks if you prefer Gouda or Muenster while shopping for cheese, but typically they aren’t naked or trying to flash me and there are other people around which is comforting. The site in general is not exactly work safe.  From exploring the site and my other research, a lot of what you find is x rated, a lot of nudity and other sexually explicit situations, people who get a kick out of exhibiting their naughty bits.  However, this didn’t deter me from taking a look at the site during work.  A couple of screen grabs are below to show my reaction to some of what I came across.

However, besides my reaction to the site, I have found some entertaining uses for Chatroulette.  Besides the advantages of viral marketing in film campaigns like The Last Exorcism, Chatroulette has also been used for a Dr. Pepper campaign that ran in the UK for April Fools Day that involved a buxom blonde cheerleader that suddenly became a man in a cheerleading uniform sporting a blonde wig.

Chatroulette also has turned some every day people into web super stars. Take Merton, an Internet sensation that posted his first YouTube video of himself connecting to people on the site in March of this year.  Merton improvises songs on piano about the people he comes in contact with.

http://www.youtube.com/user/PianoChatImprov

Merton refuses to reveal his actual identity and feels the anonymity makes his Chatroulette experience more fun.  Compared to Ben Folds in both looks and musical style, Merton’s videos have been rated the highest in YouTube history and in only five months has almost three and a half million channel views and his individual videos have surpassed six million.  Here is Ben Folds response to his doppelganger Merton:

I think Folds sums Chatroulette up nicely when he says for him, “It’s like going to the mall.  I mean I like going to the mall once in awhile, but it would be weird to sit down with a thing of nachos all day long with the teenagers.  It’s fun for a moment giving me a glimpse into the world of mainstream YouTube users.”  I concur.  Learning about Chatroulette for the I Design Your Eyes community was enjoyable, but too much could give me indigestion.

What do you think I Design Your Eyes?  Is Chatroulette just another fad or does it have legs, growing to what could be a far bigger phenomenon? Let me know with comments below.

On August 19^th, 2010 I had the great pleasure of getting to know the Zoic Studios Vancouver staff.  Zoic Studios has two office locations, one in Culver City, California and one in Vancouver, British Columbia.  Though located in different countries, and separated by 1275 miles, the two offices work hand in hand to bring the best in visual effects for feature films, television, commercials and gaming.  I remember the moment when Loni Peristere and Chris Jones, the Co-Founders and Co-Executive Directors told me they were sending me on the trip.  My reaction was something like this:

Not only would I have four days to explore this beautiful city, but it was a chance for me to connect to another part of the company, and a whole new set of people that I had only emailed or spoken to by phone.  As I soon found out, The Zoic Vancouver office is filled with talented and down to earth staff members.  It was a unique opportunity for me to look at some of the projects the staff were working on as well as simply get to know some of the people.  I thought that the I Design Your Eyes community should get the opportunity to know some of the staff as well so I documented it in this video, which incorporates the office, interviews with some of the staff as well as will give you, the I Design Your Eyes Readers, a glimpse into the fabulous city of Vancouver.

For me, on a personal level, it was an eye- opening trip on several levels.  First, there is a very rich artistic community that I was not aware of.  Up the street from my hotel a group of young airbrush artists were commissioned to paint a wall with figures from British Columbia’s past and present.  None of the artists wanted to be filmed, but I was able to hang back and watch them create something really incredible.

On my second night in Vancouver I had an opportunity to go on a cocktail tour, Vancouver Food Tour, around the Gastown district with food and beverage expert Melody Fury and veteran barman/ cocktail expert Jay Jones, who was a partner in the restaurant Pourhouse.

Besides the fabulous sampling of food and beverages, I also got a brief history lesson in the up and coming area of Gastown.

Part of Fury and Jones’ mission with the tour is to educate both the locals and tourists about the homeless population that still resides in the area.  As we walk the streets, Fury talks about how it is important that everyone reside together and that she doesn’t want people to be afraid, but instead to acknowledge that a problem does exist and that the community needs to take part in embracing this instead of being fearful and shying away from it.  The other lesson I got that night is that there is an incredible local music scene in Vancouver.  With the opening of Calabash Bistro just a month ago, local bands play in the bar’s stage area downstairs.  I am a huge music fan, so it was a really special treat to get to listen in on the local music scene.  It was a fun and informative night.

The following day, Friday, I met the Zoic Vancouver staff.  Everyone greeted me with a smile. They were curious why I had come all the way to Vancouver and so I told them it was to get to know them and to interview them on camera.  A few of the staff were a bit camera shy.  However, I was able to coax most of them into sharing their thoughts about the places I should explore while in Vancouver, which I was excited to do on Saturday afternoon.

That night around 5pm, I drove one hour outside of Vancouver to Fort Langley, a quaint town with a lot of local artisans, http://www.fortlangley.com/ to take a behind the scenes look of a commercial shoot that was directed by Loni Peristere.

For me, being on set was a highlight, not simply because I got my fill of craft service.

I also had the opportunity to get to know the crew who were both amiable and hard working.  Plus a lot of the people in the neighborhood came out to watch the shoot.  They were all so excited to have a camera crew virtually in their backyards and of course, I got out my trusty Flip Cam to document their reactions.  Some even brought their dogs.

The shoot ended at 5am, and I got into my trusty Nissan Vestra rental car and drove the hour back into the city to crash until 9am when I returned said vehicle and did some more exploring of Vancouver on foot.  Per the recommendation of the Zoic Vancouver staff, I rented a bicycle and rode around the Seawall and parts of Stanley Park.

It was a beautiful ride until around 3pm when my legs seemed to turn to Jell-O and exhaustion set in.  I returned the bike, walked back to the hotel and passed out in my comfy Hampton Inn bed to not awaken until 4am when I had to pack and catch my flight back to Los Angeles.

All in all it was an amazing experience to get to explore the people and places of Vancouver.   I am incredibly grateful I was sent to check out what the city has to offer and get to know the Zoic Vancouver staff.  So I Design Your Eyes Community, without further ado here is my video of the experience.

I Design Your Eyes Community what do you think?  Anyone familiar with the Vancouver area and if so anywhere or anything I missed on my journey?

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of being on set at Quixote Studios located just off the 5N here in southern California.

Zoic partnered with Maneater Productions and worked with Goodby Silverstein to produce a killer Yahoo! banner spot.

It was a really fun, high flying day on set.  Chris Jones, one of the executive creative directors and co-founder of Zoic Studios directed the spot.  The crew and talent really came together to make something that all of you can enjoy.

For now go over to mtv.com to check out the banner ad.

I, along with the team at Maneater,  got some great behind the scenes footage that I will be posting it soon.  You will  really get to see what it takes to make something from soup to nuts.   I can’t wait to share with the community, but in the meantime I can show you a quick sample of what the day was like.  Enjoy the pictures  and don’t forget for up to the minute information follow I Design Your Eyes on both twitter and facebook!

“I make 3D movies for  NASA.”  It isn’t every day someone says that to you.  Last week I had the opportunity to speak to Michael Starobin.  Starobin is the Founder and Creative Director of 1AU Global Media who works for NASA and makes 3D movies for them.  I was connected to Starobin through the EP of Commercials at Zoic Studios, Erik Press.  Press and Starobin have known each other for a lifetime.  The two have been friends for thirty-nine years, knowing each other since pre-school.  The two took different paths, yet both ended up working in a creative field.  When Press told me Starobin has been working on 3D movies for NASA, I wanted to share a different perspective on 3D for the I Design Your Eyes community.

Based in Washington D.C. Starobin has seen his fair share of production, but more on the industrial and corporate side.  When Starobin was in Los Angeles two weeks ago, he was excited to get a tour of the Zoic Studios’ facilities.  “It was a thrill to come out to the nerve center and get to see what Zoic is doing.”  Starobin considers himself a film geek, and he loves being creative.  However, he does feel there are differences when you work outside of Los Angeles and for a government agency like NASA.  “There is a different philosophy and attitude because we don’t have the Los Angeles infrastructure with infinite crew and technical support.  There are a smaller number of people to draw on and production cycles tend to be slower. There is an independent way of thinking of high end post-production and production.  It isn’t just indie filmmaking by running out with a camera and you try to make your movie.  You can think about it on a really high level for short pieces and interstitials.”

Starobin is the Senior Producer at NASA and is in charge of high profile special projects including Congressional events, exotic platforms, which could be 3D and spherical projection.  In fact, a good portion of the work Starobin has been doing is for the 3D sphere.  The sphere is a screen that hangs in space; four projectors illuminate it, shining in from the corners of the room at 90 degrees.  The sphere’s technology is technically called Science On a Sphere, which was invented by NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), NOAA.  Starobin began working with NOAA in late 2005 and expanded on the uses of the original technology, “When I got a hold of it they (NOAA) were essentially doing round PowerPoint presentations.  They were showing pictures of spherical objects like planets.  If it wasn’t round they couldn’t do anything.  They couldn’t move, cut or do anything with filmmaking.  My assignment was to write a speech and use it as a round slideshow.”

After his first assignment, Starobin essentially took it upon himself to find ways to film for a round sphere object.  “If you have a ball hanging in space that is six feet in diameter, where do you put your camera?  There is no left or right end of the frame and how do you dolly in or zoom out, all of the basic things you know about filmmaking falls apart and so you have to start over like a blank sheet of paper.”  NOAA has largely distributed these screens around the country.  “These round screens are really cool.  They aren’t for everything.  I wouldn’t want to tell the next season of Desperate Housewives on one, but I do think you could do more than planets.  You don’t have to show just spheres.  It’s like on a regular movie screen you don’t have to show just rectangles.”  Starobin just produced a film about renewable energy that played in Copenhagen and screened on the sphere, “You could also treat it as an elegant information device.  If you were to place a sphere in LAX in one of the main terminals you could essentially have news go around the screen, but as people are walking by they could get a sense of news events in a different format that is conducive to a circulating crowd.  You can simply make it a beautiful piece of art too.  It’s an interesting element for a large stadium to place corporate signage.”

Everything Starobin does for NASA is free and in public domain. “You can download things from various web sites or if it’s theatrical, it’s free to the public.”  Starobin has made four films that were for the spherical projection that have played all over the world in about forty five theaters and a variety of different languages.  “Our first film, Footprints, was named best invention of the year in Time Magazine.”  Currently, Starobin is focusing on low cost, high quality 3D solutions for NASA.  “NASA has done some work in 3D in partnership with movie studios, specifically Warner Brothers with Hubble 3D and a number of IMAX films.”

Starobin was an anthropology and medical ethics major and was a science reporter for many years, but always had a very keen interest in the arts.  “I had the science interest and the arts interest and then an opportunity came up and I was able to build a position and it’s grown.  I think, possibly like Zoic, it grows because you discover there is a new idea and you do the research and suddenly you enter a bold new area.”

As for the 3D space, Starobin began doing a great deal of research internally with his colleague Victoria Weeks, Chief Technologist and Senior Editor at NASA.  Weeks and her husband made a small seven minute, 3D film to showcase the importance of the 3D technology.  For Starobin, he thinks the interest in 3D didn’t really spark until Avatar was released and became a worldwide hit.  “I wrote a paper for NASA saying 3D is coming, a year and a half before Avatar came out saying we need to start doing research internally. Then Avatar hit and they said let’s give them some seed money… NASA is interested, but they are a government agency.  They don’t make money and they don’t have shareholders so they are nervous to get in.  At a federal agency there aren’t commercial budgets.”

Even though Satrobin believes in the opportunities of 3D, he has some hesitancy about it.  For one Starobin hopes that people don’t forget about story when utilizing the 3D technology.  Like with fictional narrative films, the non fiction films of NASA also rely heavily on story.  “By being immersive, 3D says, ‘come be in this world.’  I think there is excellent non fiction 3D out there.  I am interested in it and doing it, but we just don’t want the technology leading the story.”

Does Starobin have an interest in taking more of a Hollywood approach?  “Yes I have interest.  To be honest, it would help facilitate story telling.  One of the things that Vicky, myself and our colleagues at NASA appreciate, is how we are freed a little bit from the extraordinary clock pressures that I think Hollywood can impose on creatives.  On the other hand, we don’t have the budgets.  It’s a trade.  We would love to continue to build our relationships to the west coast community without giving up some eastern aesthetics if you will.  In an era of high speed Internet and inexpensive plane travel, that’s a very exciting proposition.  I think it is possible to benefit from the best of both worlds.  I do insist on creative meetings that we get together face to face if we can.  The ability to talk via phone or Internet is not the same; I think evolution has trained you over two million years to read people’s faces, bodies and tone of voice.  Isn’t it incredible when people are actually together?  So we try getting together in person as often as we can, though we all have a SKYPE account.”

So does Starobin know what is coming next?  The short answer is no.  There will always be something new when it comes to technology.  “Now in the digital era of storytelling there is no new next big thing.  The skies are pretty much the limit.  Now it’s about invention and storytelling.  Do what you want, choose whatever color brush you want.  That to me is exciting.”

So I Design Your Eyes readers what do you think?  Is 3D the future of all filmmaking?  Do you have ideas of what the next big idea in filmmaking is? Would love if you shared your thoughts in the comment section below.

Starobin will be launching a new website in a week so check it out at:

http://www.1auglobalmedia.com

and follow Michael’s work on the sphere on twitter @SphereNASA

To the team at Zoic Studios for their Creative Arts Emmy Award last night, August 21!

Outstanding Special Visual Effects For A Series
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation • Family Affair • CBS • A CBS Paramount Network Television production in association with Jerry Bruckheimer Television
Sabrina Arnold, VFX Producer
Rik Shorten, VFX Supervisor
Steve Meyer, 2D Lead Artist
Derek Smith, 3D Lead Artist
Christina Spring, Compositor
Joshua Cushner, Visual Effects Cameraman
Tom Bremer, 3D Artist
Mark Byers, Special Effects Supervisor
Zach Zaubi, Compositor