Blogbook
This dark short film called Learn: First World Problems by Jonathan Desbiens looks at “aging millennials” and their problems. Via Short of the Week:
Shot by fellow S/W alum Kristof Brandl, the 4:3 film is, naturally, terrific to look at, but the pleasure of the short film comes from the psychology of its characters. It’s a tonally interesting piece, described by its creator as a dark satire. It’s both a universalist look at the pressures of the artistic process, but also a incisive examination of female relationships, and the changing hierarchies in the creative industry driven by Millennial attitudes and entitlement. Desbiens, in summarizing his inspiration, wrote us stating “I often find myself very obsessed with certain problems (like many artists I suppose) then often step back and find it so absurd compared to what the real problems of this world are. I was looking to put in light some scenes and characters that would reflect this and I believed it would show how pathetic, but profoundly human the quest for recognition and respect can sometimes become.”
For our Fashion Director this quest for recognition evokes obsession and narcissism in equal measure. The showpiece of the film is its unveiling of the dress, a living artwork that evokes Marina Abramovic and the concept of “performing art”. Based off a similar piece Desbiens created in art school, the director worked with production designer Sylvain Lemaitre and dress designer Eliza Faulkner to produce a rather stunning installation for the film’s emotional climax. Desbiens to us describes the “strange contradiction” of the piece where “the strings are pulling you in all direction, trying to break you apart, but yet the lines are all pointing toward you, as if you were the centre of the world”.
Happy Halloween from Starship! To kick off the day, here’s a spooky little film called The Body, featuring Game of Thrones’ Alfie Allen as a killer who realizes Halloween is seriously useful for covering up his crimes. Via Short of the Week:
With a killer premise (pun fully intended) and star power in the form of Game of Thrones star Alfie Allen, The Body has all the ingredients to get you excited for a spooky night out. The film combines a few tones familiar to horror lovers—it is a dryly comedic social satire, yet doesn’t stint on the bloodletting either. Alfie Allen plays an immaculately dressed killer whose ice-cold nature will remind viewers of Patrick Bateman, and the obliviousness of the drunken crowds is an ever-present source of tension and humor.
It is a frequent trope that monsters feel most comfortable on Halloween, the one night a year that they are able to mingle in public without raising suspicion. Writer and director Paul Davis borrows that concept, transporting it from the supernatural to the recognizable world of the London party-scene. Recognized by an old school mate as he drags his freshest kill nonchalantly down the street, Alfie Allen’s character is cajoled into following a crew of costumed revelers on a night out, where his amazingly realistic prop ends up the toast of the party.
The Los Angeles Metro has debuted a new PSA called Superkind, starring a superheroine who tries to encourage people to be nicer to fellow commuters. Via Gizmodo:
There is no torture quite as horrible as having to deal with the sociopaths on public transportation who seem to have no idea how to exist in the world without taking up too much space. Manspreaders on the bus, people who stand too close on the subway, and those who block doorways all deserve extensive gaol time.
But until we get to a point when these menaces to society are forced to answer to the justice system for their egregious crimes, we need champions like Superkind, the magical girl superhero starring in the Los Angeles Metro service’s public service announcements about how not to be a dick.
In a series of short videos, Superkind (in her civilian persona) travels around LA on public transit only to bump into monsters committing heinous acts like blocking the aisle on the train so that no one can get by, or eating full-on meals that get spilled on other passengers.
Superkind springs into action, goes through a sick-arse transformation sequence that would make Sailor Moon proud, and then busts out a PSA which breaks down into a catchy J-Pop music video about, you know, how to act like you have an ounce of empathy for your fellow human beings.
Others Will Follow is a great sci-fi space exploration short by Andrew Finch about the last survivor of a Mars expedition. Via Space.Com:
“As I was writing the short, I was thinking about how NASA had parked its spaceships in museums in the decades since the contingency speech was written. Most humans alive today didn’t exist the last time humanity left low Earth orbit, and my generation is without a moon shot,” filmmaker Andrew Finch, who made the short, wrote in an email to Space.com.
“I wanted to make something that would outline the importance of human spaceflight by imagining a brute-force mission to Mars in the early 2000s that, despite disastrous circumstances, still manages to pass the torch of inspiration,” he added.
Human missions to Mars were popularized, in part, by the 2015 Hollywood movie “The Martian,” which coincidentally also portrayed an astronaut left behind alone on the Red Planet. In that case, however, the crew abandoned the astronaut because the others assumed he had died. As “The Martian” shows, the stranded explorer, Mark Watney, was very much alive — and had several ideas for staying alive until a rescue mission came.
NASA has not yet sent humans to Mars, of course, but the agency has said it plans to do so in the 2030s. Other groups and individuals — such as Russia, China, Mars One and Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX — have also outlined plans to bring humans to the Red Planet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kz1FOqr7828
It’s nearly Halloween, and these “Bite Size Horror” films from Mars Candy brands are some of the best horror ad shorts in years. Via Adweek:
The films are very well made. Obviously, it’s easier to present something convincing when you don’t have to squeeze the brand or product into the plot. (The giant product images that lead into the films were apparently the compromise here.) But underwriting long-form content like this, in a deal with a broadcaster to air on its network and cable properties, makes for a very entertaining product—and reflects well on the brands themselves.
AdFreak spoke with “Floor 9.5” director Toby Meakins and writer Simon Allen about their creepy creation. Meakins said the idea for the plot came from a pile of unused ideas that Allen has lying around his office.
“The fragment was a single line—someone being followed from the front,” says Meakins. “We thought how weird and creepy that would be, if someone was always a few steps ahead of you no matter which way you turned. We plugged that into the loop/hell of ‘Floor 9.5,’ which is intended to be a metaphor for modern working life.”
Meakins said he wanted “Floor 9.5” to feel like a “short Kafkaesque nightmare.”
“It had to be all about tone and atmosphere rather than creating jump scares,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong, I love a good jump scare, but if you can chill someone to the bone, the film tends to stay with the audience. We also wanted it to feel contemporary, like a two-minute Black Mirror, to find create a situation that anyone could imagine themselves in and then twist it.”
More of the ads are in the link above.
This year’s most powerful anti-bullying PSA ad is from Burger King, of all brands. Shot in-store, it’s timed for National Bullying Prevention Month. Via Adweek:
You’d think the idea of bullying a Whopper Jr. would be too goofy to work, but in the end, it does work—more memorably, in fact, than many other anti-bullying ads. It vividly demonstrates a sad truth about bullying—that bystanders would often rather not get involved. And it does so in the starkest terms, by showing how vastly more people are likely to care—or do something—about a $2 sandwich than about a fellow human’s predicament. This probably shouldn’t come as a surprise, but it’s depressing nonetheless to witness. (The bystander theme is one that played out in somewhat similar fashion in last week’s cyberbullying PSA from BBDO and Monica Lewinsky.)
That bleakness of the BK ad is eclipsed at the end, though, by a dose of optimism that feels quite inspirational—a neat trick for an ad that’s just presented you some seriously discouraging statistics. The bystanders who do step in quickly become the heroes. Hopefully, their actions will help make a difference in how other people react when they see bullying—not just adults but the teen peers who hold so much of the power to stop it.
As social-purpose advertising goes, it’s also incredibly well branded. The stunt takes place in a BK store, and is centered squarely around one of the menu items. That’s some clever product integration in a spot designed to do a lot more than sell.
The spot also fits the BK brand seamlessly, both in terms of its advertising history and its recent purpose-based marketing efforts. This is a brand that’s used hidden cameras a number of times (most famously with the Whopper Freakout) and also, more recently, supported lots of social causes via campaigns like Proud Whopper and Whopper Sign. It’s also tackled bullying before, in this Argentinian ad from last spring.
Will Ferrell’s darkly funny DeviceFreeDinner ads on behalf of the nonprofit organisation Common Sense Media highlights a common social problem. This campaign is a latest in a series encouraging people to use their phones less at dinner. Via the Washington Post:
The group, which has done extensive research into how devices affect kids and families, decided to focus on family dinner because it found that many families struggle over whether smartphones and other devices should be allowed at the table. A new survey from the group, released with the PSA, found more than half of parents or guardians said they’re concerned about technology at the table taking away from dinner. Thirty-five percent said they’d had an argument about using devices at the dinner table.
Despite those concerns, 47 percent said that they or a family member had recently taken a device with them to dinner. Nineteen percent said they keep their tech on the table while they eat — which has been shown to disrupt conversations even when the devices aren’t in use. And families are, overall, happy about the effects of technology: Sixty-one percent said they feel it brings them together.
That paints a complicated picture, said Michael Robb, director of research at Common Sense. “Clearly they’re struggling with this internally,” he said. “It feels like they’re torn on how to modernize these family moments.”
Family dinners were an obvious place to focus on, Robb said, because they’re already a place for conversation and personal connection. Studies have suggested that family meals are important for developing vocabulary as well as ideas about nutrition. Others have shown that kids who have dinner with their families are less prone to acting out or substance abuse.
In this 30 min Max Joseph animated short, Joseph explores whether you need to be a tyrant in order to be a successful leader. Via Short of the Week:
From most any vantage point, Max Joseph is a wild success. Through pieces like A Brief History of John Baldessari and 12 Years of DFA, Joseph has pioneered a highly influential and oft-imitated style of documentary editing. His frequent collaborations with social media creator extraordinaire Casey Neistat and his role as co-host of the MTV show Catfish have given him huge popular recognition as well. Joseph was able to parlay all this into a feature debut two years ago that starred big names like Zac Efron and Emily Ratajkowski titled We Are Your Friends.
But that movie…well there is no nice way to say it—it bombed. And in the wake of that disappointment, Joseph is doing some soul-searching. The result is this film, Dicks: Do You Need to Be One To Be a Successful Leader? The lengthy title is only matched by its lengthy 30+ minute runtime, but it’s a fascinating back to basics move for Joseph, employing his kinetic and humorous editing style while leveraging the charismatic persona he’s honed on TV to tackle a question that’s haunted him since We Are Your Friends—to what extent does a successful director need to be tyrant? Was his feature hurt by him being too nice of a guy?
Tile, a bluetooth tracker, launched its first major ad campaign. By Deutsch and Mark Molloy, it’s a sad, sweet saga of a lost panda called Ernie. Via Adweek:
“When we lose something and then find it, it’s an indescribably good feeling,” Deutsch executive creative director Guto Araki tells AdFreak. “But how could we tell that story so that the lost thing is compelling to everyone? That was the challenge. So, we realized that by transforming something into someone, we could end up with a beautiful love story.”
As it turns out, the resulting tale took it cues from real life.
“The ‘Lost Panda’ story was inspired by an actual Tile customer, a young girl who lost her stuffed animal in a busy city, only to be reunited later with the help of the Tile community,” says Tile CMO Simon Fleming-Wood. “Our creative team thought it’d be powerful to tell the story from the perspective of Ernie, a stuffed panda, and to bring to life what his owner, Lucy, might have imagined her ‘best friend’ going through in trying to find his way back to her. In her imagination, Ernie gets more and more lost while looking for her, only to be helped home by the ‘good neighbors’ he meets—a metaphor for the Tile community. Of course, in reality, Ernie stays in the exact place he was likely dropped by Lucy, only to be found by a loving father who had the foresight to put a Tile in Ernie’s pocket.”
Human Flow is the latest film from director, artist, and famed political dissident Ai Weiwei, with a close look at the refugee crisis. Via The Intercept:
I want the right of life, of the leopard at the spring,
of the seed splitting open
I want the right of the first man
–Nazim Hikmet, Turkish poetThe words appear over the sea at dawn as “Human Flow” begins. A lighthouse comes into view, a boat with mountains silhouetting the horizon, a lone helicopter flies in the distance, the tones are purple, gray, the pace calm. A motor boat resolves, people in life jackets waving, tires thrown into the sea, children lifted ashore. And there’s Ai with his camera. He’s an odd, jarring image at first in this film. Why the Chinese dissident?
Now we’re in the desert. Tents as far as we can see. Dust. Iraq hosts 277,000 refugees fleeing Syria. We read that following the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, 268,000 people have been killed in violent conflicts in Iraq. More than 4 million Iraqis have been forcibly displaced from their homes. A girl appears in the entryway to her tent. We travel with the camera through streets of Dresden-like devastation in Syria. The refugees in the desert camp stand for portraits in a tent. A young woman in a red blouse and plaid long skirt. The camera doesn’t move. And in the long lingering shots, the close-up faces of refugees or police or rescue and aid workers, the sea, trainers washing their horses in the sea, a boy pushing a cart with jerry cans through a red dust storm, girls pounding dough on rocks in the mud, landscapes of beauty and destruction in Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Jordan, Lebanon, Pakistan, Turkey, Greece, Germany, France, Palestine and Kenya, our imagination is left to wander, or to relive moments from our own or our family’s history.