We had the pleasure to be taken to what felt like one of New York’s best kept secrets. Drinks are created on the whim of the bartenders, excuse me I must give them due credit, the mixologists. There is something wonderful about this call back to earlier times. Caught up in the whirlwind that is now, [and New York City may well be one of the best examples of this] there is something pleasantly ironic about taking a few steps back.

What works so well is the emphasis on quality, customization and that element of surprise. The drinks are designed around a mood or that less tangible something. I feel wild. I feel tired. I feel adventurous. I feel sweet. I feel nostalgic etc etc. Ingredients are of the highest quality - handmade candied apricots, fresh squeezed blackberry juice, small batch spirits.

Our trip to New York City was primarily to attend the annual AICP show at the Museum of Modern Art. Every year, the AICP acknowledges the best and brightest creative talent in our industry. This year marks a definitive shift in perspective. The range of work was more impressive than ever. The communications were more personal than ever. Although primarily an American Association, the breadth of the content was seemingly more global than any body of awarded work I have seen in the past. Where our means of communication are now constantly evolving, the content of those communications is becoming seemingly more relevant. The Monster.com work from BBDO is a perfect example. There is something so fundamental about the notion of an amiable thick-legged monster literally turning the world from the depths below. The shared battle with Monday morning is on par, as is the intimate self-analysis of the poignant ‘Impossible Campaign’ for Adidas recognized by the Association’s Jury. HBO’s Voyeur project stood out similarly, as did Psyop’s stunning portrayal of the life of a dot for Guinness. And I must mention Honoree K.K. Barrett’s [Lost In Translation, Marie Antoinette, Being John Malkovich] work for Zune and The Ballad of Tina Pink because imagination is universal.

Bringing it all back to the speakeasy to which we were privy, the way forward will most definitely be a combination of technology and humanity. Technology is not the end all - it is a tool that should not transcend our experiences; it will enhance them. Thank you to those taking advantage of the latest innovations. None of these creative communications would have been possible back in the day of the original speakeasies. Thank you New York for inspiring both to co-exist.

Photos from our trip to New York

The Art & Technique of the American Commercial

Little Branch
in the West Village
20 Seventh Avenue South
New York, NY 10011
212 929 4360

-Claire

The ‘boards Creative Workshop confirmed one thing. Advertising as we know it is officially over. Traditional advertising is dead. Toronto’s own, Steve Mykolyn and Jason McCann of TAXI, summed it up with an in depth analysis of the proclivity for Weird S*%t. However you may explain it, the industry is forging new paths.

I am going to take you down two paths that sparked my interest. The first being AKQA’s most impressive digital activity [their term, not mine] for Nike. “After six hugely successful years, Run London had earned a place in the hearts of 30-something occasional runners in London. This year Nike wanted to focus on a younger audience and put Nike+ at the heart of the campaign. AKQA’s answer was a brand new city attack. Supersonic invited London’s youth to prove their speed and to earn tickets for themselves and two mates to the ultimate 1K race and after party featuring two of London’s hottest underground favorites, Dizzee Rascal and The Enemy. (Creative Showcase. 2007)” AKQA Executive Creative Director, Lars Bastholm. Sounds like your standard 1K in a city? Not quite. The word ‘integrated’ took on a new meaning, and I finally get it. Integrated = experience. They took an annual event to whole new level. Speed. Night. Music. Music moves you. Literally. Nike+ technology allows information to be shared and experienced by not only the participants, but also all of London. Be the 50,016th fastest person in London. And let all of London know it. Genius.

The second thing is definitely the path less traveled. Merging architecture with advertising. President and Creative Director, Jakob Trollbäck, shared their venture into the realm of Environmental Design. Having conceptualized and produced content for one of the world’s largest high-resolution video walls, the project is more of an installation piece than it is advertising. The piece was commissioned by InterActive Corp. for their new Frank Gehry-designed headquarters as a means of building brand awareness for their primary businesses [Ask.com, Ticketmaster.com and Match.com]. The execution is both beautiful and smart, and the effect appeals to the subconscious in a seemingly unintentional way. Again, integration at its best.

I have to mention one last thing. A big thank you to ‘boards and the advisory committee for including VICE/VBS.TV/Virtue. And thank you to Virtue Founder, Spencer Baim, for answering what I feel is one of the most critical questions in advertising today: How To Stay Relevant. Everyone take note. For those of you who are not familiar with the brand, VICE is arguably the coolest identity in the world. [among other things, Spike Jonze is the Creative Director] I will let it speak for itself. Please check out

coming to select theaters in New York City and LA on May 23rd. This is but one project. I have included links below to learn more about the wonder that is VICE.

Learn More:

Wow… I just got back from the the Hollywood Post Alliance’s first meeting for sales folk in the creative media space called “Selling Into the Workflow - Red Camera.”  The stated purpose is to have panels of experts take the time to explain new technologies to the sales people who THEN get to explain the value to Studios, Networks and Advertising production. I had no idea what to expect but came away feeling like the HPA really nailed it.

Bob Glassenberg from Ascent Media did a great job setting up the conversation. He had some really nice quotes regarding the role of sales, specifically that sales reps’ credibility is a “non-renewable resource” and that it’s a real challenge to keep up a credible knowledge base in such a competitive space. Sometimes customers knows what they want. Sometimes customers think they know what they want. It’s your job to really understand what they need.  It’s not just how many baseball tickets you give them over the course of the season - they really need your vision and understanding.  

Ted from Red Camera described his simple process of educating a market on their new technology, a vital approach because they have changed the game so significantly that it can be hard for people to absorb on their own.  So, Ted and the team are actively providing education to  get the word out. 

About the Camera

The Red Camera is NOT an HD Camera, it is a Digital Film Camera and has the same depth of field as traditional film cameras. The best way to think of it is like a Digital SLR on steroids, capturing 2 to 4K Raw images from 1 to 120 fps. This helps clients get over the intimidation factor of “new technology” while also setting expectations about what they see from the camera on set. Unlike the Sony Cameras (which have a technician tweaking color dials on the camera on set), Red Cameras playback may look flat on the monitors… just like your DSLR photos in Photoshop. The difference is we are all used to adjusting colors in Photoshop, which is the same approach you would use with Red.

Once you get used to the new camera, you instantly gain time as changing digital mags can be done in 15 seconds (swapping cards) instead of 15 minutes (changing film mags). When you have millions of dollars of talent waiting around, these repeated minutes become really expensive. 

About the Workflow

“All workflows seem complex until they are explained.” 

Red Cameras introduce many different workflows, all can be right or wrong depending on your clients’ needs and comfort levels. As a DP, Brandon Lippard represents the new breed of digital shooters who have no legacy ties to Film, so he’s completely comfortable with the equipment. He did say his friends who are film DPs are a bit nervous to make the jump, because they don’t know the camera will respond under the extreme pressures of shooting. Brandon’s experience points out that shooting with the camera is really easy, but getting the video out requires a lot of planning. 

Michael Cioni from PlasterCITY and Ted elegantly explained how to get video out of the camera the New School way and the Old School way. 

“New School” Dailies Workflow

This is for clients who say, “show me instant dailies, don’t give me VHS or DVD. I want to take proxies on projector without rendering.” Red captures both Raw and Proxy video, which gives you different options for onset viewing. Ted said to think of the video coming to the monitor as an HD video assist.  Clients want to know “Will it look as good as master?” The answer is no, but if HD cam was good enough for you yesterday, Red proxies are good enough for you today. In fact, some TV shows are delivering directly from proxies.

So, how do you handle different client budget requirements on set? Give them 3 different options of software costs:

• FREE - Redcine is free software for monitoring 2K dailies on set
• CHEAP - Final Cut Pro is $1000 and offers better quality. Final Cut will give you timecode only, whereas Scratch will provide Afterburner (timecode in the data stream). 
• EXPENSIVE - Scratch is the equivalent of onset telecine (at $750/hour). It can do D5 2k in real time with grades, power windows and all sorts of cool stuff I barely understand

The important part is that clients need to know that they are not locked in a “low res” wasteland.   

“Old School” Dailies Workflow

So, what do you say to people who say “but I need tapes! Don’t confuse me with all this newfangled stuff” You can easily use Red in the a traditional low res DNX workflow. As a business proposition, this is valuable to know - make clients comfortable by introducing only small amounts of change at a time. If they have a good experience, they will come back for more.  The easiest way to tell someone who’s old school is if they ask “Should I use the Red?”

About the Client

The panel talked about one of the biggest perception problems that exists with the commoditization of technology, where some clients feel that now that workflows are becoming digital, they don’t need to pay for it or think they can do it themselves.  Why is OK to pay for dailies on Film but expect to not pay for dailies in digital? As mentioned above, it is necessary to provide pricing options, because no one size fits all. People who stick with one price may be pricing themselves out of business. There is a clear reason digital business is getting bigger, as clients are looking how “can we do it less expensively” so we can pay writers and talent more. Producers come to the production team with a set budget and ask, what can we get for this budget? Red is filling into that category faster than any other cameras, as it does eliminate certain costs in film processing.

The reality is that clients CAN do more, they just should not expect to do it ALL. If you tell them you can do it better than them, they think you are selling. Still,  clients who are comfortable handing off film to a wetlab for a “chemical processing workflow” need to respect the change to a datalab for a “HUGE file processing workflow.”  Michael  pointed out that not many people are used to a workflow based around film that only has data deliverables - very few people doing data only for dailies. This will change and do require new line items in the bid. He stressed how he’s training his clients on their shift from price per hour to price per GB. Digital dailies can be output as 480p, 720p or 1080p, which have entirely different impacts on storage and CPU processing. The challenge now is to educate the industry on the role of file size. Realistically, many clients will start of small (storage and price), but as they get comfortable they will ask for more. That’s how you continue providing value to the clients - through the magic key of quality.  

Ted gave a great example of the vital role of the modern post facility. He mentioned that feature production recently tried to build an entire post facility themselves and do everything themselves. They did about 70% OK but fooled themselves in to thinking they could do it without “adult supervision”. They didn’t get in trouble with editorial, they failed to manage the huge streams of data in the new workflow.  The non-sexy infrastructures of top post houses play a vital role in keeping creatives working smoothly  and simply should not be overlooked.   

There has been some rumors that even some big post houses have been turning down Red work because they are either unfamiliar with the workflow or see the whole effort as a commodity pricing effort. The general sense is that this wave is just starting to build and people (including post houses) should figure out how to go with the flow. Of course there is a learning curve, but that is a lot better than obsolescence. 

Finally we ended on an interesting and controversial topic - Red Users. Apparently there are quite a few fanbois on the reduser bulletin boards who get caught up in the new revolution. The prevailing theory is that the louder they are, the the less they have used the camera. The problem is that they are following all the rumors and are trying to influence people (price negotiating, planning for shoots) without the necessary understanding of the territory. Ted recommends everyone download the operations guide for the Red Camera and actually learn all the information themselves to be better informed. 

Final Thoughts

I really enjoyed seeing this kind of dialogue get started and am really glad to know that HPA is starting this new line of Luncheons. I never felt that we were being sold to, even though the entire conversation was on one particular vendor and their unique workflow. That’s pretty impressive, considering I’ve witnessed so many other companies cross the line and give essentially a paid sales presentation. I definitely look forward to the next event. 

I’m also looking forward to working with Red users and getting their proxy files up online through Wiredrive. This is starting to happen now and we are getting really good feedback from the guys at Red and their clients

Regards, 

Bill

NAB 2008 Thoughts from the floor

I just flew back from NAB 2008 in Las Vegas and boy do my arms, I mean feet, hurt. I estimate we logged 5 to 6 miles and were on our feet for upwards to 10 hours each day.

This was the first year for me where Avid AND Apple were absent from the show floor. Both companies were very much present though, taking up meeting rooms near by at the Renaissance Hotel and throughout the Vegas hotels. In a weird way, the techno-spiritual center of the South Hall had been hollowed out and replaced by Thompson and Matrox… not exactly the intriguing rivalry of years past.

Red Camera alone stood out as the booth with crazy wild products that just might work and change the industry. I just hope they make their camera mounted remote controlled helicopter into an available product I got to what Jim Jinnard, the owner of Oakley and Red, pitch his new product line. Clearly he knows his stuff and is having a great time disrupting the industry! As he mentioned, a lot has changed in 2 years… from people thinking Red was a scam to now having over 2000 4K cameras in the field.

A big take away was that digital workflow really is here now. The last few years everyone was talking about “convergence”. Now everyone is actually doing it and fortunately not using that word anymore. Adobe’s broadcasting technology preview was really cool, starting from interactive video authoring to realtime mobile conversion to Flash streaming with advanced bandwidth management. Its OnLocation app lets a person capture, organize and tag video in the field with a neat trick - the ability skip around video by clicking on speech-to-text translations of the interview. Unfortunately, those kinds of demos are usually smoke & mirrors - the most advanced recognition software out there (Dragon’s Naturally Speaking) requires ideal environments, closely placed microphones and significant training in order to achieve usable results. Capturing an interview of your friend outside will still result in a transcript worthy of a Dilbert comic strip.

Apple and AICE got together again this year to wine and dine a handful of editing companies at the Hard Rock Foundation Room at the Mandalay Bay. We were able to talk with the Apple Pro Apps team and really drill down into Final Cut Server capabilities, which to me is the most intriguing development of the last few months (more posts to come on that!). The FCS guys definitely seemed a lot more relaxed than last year, now that the product is shipping.

So what was new and futuristic? 3D stereoscopic video seems like next year’s new thing available almost today. I saw someone walking around with stereoscopic handheld video camera shooting the NAB floor, which looked like a pair of binoculars with a digital screen sticking out. And yes, the playback systems require those awesome polarized 3D glasses. Isilon had a great 3D demo room with clips from Nascar and U2’s concert streaming out in two uncompressed HD stereo streams running through a single 10 GB/s accelerator box and a bunch of storage. For me, I really did feel closer to the action but I started to get a slight headache just after a few minutes

Random thought - this was the first trip that my wireless card really worked well, connecting at 3G. My only complaint is that it takes almost a minute from sliding in the card to being connected on the web.

We are a week out from NAB 2008, the first one without either Apple OR Avid battling it out with mega booths in the South Hall. Should be interesting, for sure. Nick and I will be there from Monday morning to Wednesday evening (actually Nick will be out earlier), so if any of you are reading this, give us a shout.

It’s great to see that Apple is finally shipping Final Cut Server, even if it was a tad late. FCS will finally give creative production facilities a cost effective way of ingesting, managing, tagging and searching their high resolution assets (video, images, audio, etc) - think of it as iPhoto + iTunes for professionals. Add a little transcoding and delivery services and you have quite a valuable organizational tool. We’ve been looking for a realistic smart vault solution like this for years, so it’s great to finally see what they have to offer. Version 1.0 will come with a few bumps, like always, but over time it will be the new core foundation for any company serious about storing media (for under $4,000).

Rambling on… I’m now several weeks into the Wiki experience and still loving it. It’s like a well organized sticky note system, where I can ask a bunch of questions and provide an ever growing resource of answers that are all interlinked. This feels totally different than storing thoughts in standard documents and folder trees, because communicating the “flow” of information is almost strangled by the limited length of folder names. I’ve also found that hooking up Wiredrive presentations to blog entries makes the best of both worlds - a great way to manage text entries and a great way to handle images and videos, either on their own or as a group.

I’ve finally added Facebook to my list of technologies that I love, for one simple reason. People have photographs of themselves AND of their friends. What an amazing part of the business networking process… something that LinkedIn still hasn’t figured out yet. Seeing what people are into feels so much more natural than lists of references and job experiences.

So, yeah… I’m joining in on what all the cool kids have known for years a touch late. But better late than never.

Regards,

Bill

Hmmmm - nearly all the big MacWorld rumors were accurate this year, including a leaked snapshot of the amazingly thin MacBook Air. Compared to last year, Steve’s new product lineups are definitely more evolutionary than revolutionary (AppleTV Take 2 hardware is EXACTLY the same), but what was more interesting was the impending end to DVDs that seem to crop up.

* First, the sexy new MacBook Air requires either an optional DVD player OR a remote connection to someone’s DVD player. It’s the first move by Apple to stop including DVD players in their machines. Remember, they were the first to stop providing floppy disks several years ago and signaled the end of floppies altogether.

* AppleTV’s box helps bring the rental market online, allowing those of us who have not purchased HD DVD or BluRay players to watch HD movies at home. I for one have been really put off by the format war between the studios and would be very happy to see all optical disks be rendered irrelevant. It’s interesting that the AppleTV hardware did not need to be revved, which actually makes sense. No network delivers 1080p feeds and not that many TV sets can play 1080p yet. At 4 GB per movie, a 720p download is plenty big already already - I’d hate to see how big a 1080p movie would be.

I am curious to see how the competition with NetFlix will help accelerate adoption of online delivery. I am still hoping that Apple gets it right and doesn’t pull a Microsoft and cripple video “sharing” within the home environment.

* MacPros did not receive a BluRay upgrade. Considering Apple wants to control the HD movies through iTunes rentals, I figure BluRay is actually a “competing” delivery source and will actually be avoided. I actually think that Microsoft will gently block BluRay success as well, in order to protect digital delivery to XBox.

* HD DVD’s poor showing in 2008 doesn’t mean that BluRay has won, it just means that BluRay is becoming irrelevant slower.

All in all it’s a great trend to encourage. Our goal is to kill off DVD’s throughout the commercial and TV production industry. Hopefully this is a trend that will increase in speed throughout the consumer world.

Regards,

Bill