Bonds Underwear Slams Ball Into Center Pocket
August 30, 2008
We know there are a lot of soccer…uh…football stars out there who can manipulate the ball in ways you never thought a ball could be manipulated but we haven’t yet seen a manipulator who can get all the balls in one pocket all at the same time.
Pet Butler Van Sports Wishful Thinking on the Rear
August 26, 2008
To better leverage the company van, Pet Butler’s marketing director built a pair of eye-catching rear-end displays — one with a dog reading on the toilet (tagline: “Until then, call us”), and one with a giant glob of poop steaming on an astroturf lawn (”Friends don’t let friends scoop poop!”).
Gehry’s Pavilion
August 24, 2008
Frank Gehry’s Serpentine Gallery Pavilion during construction, ©2008 Gehry Partners LLP
This year’s Serpentine Pavilion has been designed by architecture master Frank Gehry, and marks the first built structure by him in England.
Apparently Gehry and his team (which includes Gehry’s son, Samuel, with whom he is collaborating for the first time) took inspiration from sources as varied as Leonardo da Vinci’s wooden catapults and the striped walls of summer beach huts. The resulting pavilion offers wooden platforms for visitors to loll upon and watch passers-by and feels more robust than previous Serpentine Pavilions, which is no bad thing considering the windy, rainy summer London is experiencing.
The finished Pavilion
“The Pavilion is designed as a wooden timber structure that acts as an urban street running from the park to the existing gallery,” explains Gehry. “Inside the pavilion, glass canopies are hung from the wooden structure to protect the interior from wind and rain and provide shade during sunny days. The pavilion is much like an amphitheatre, designed to serve as a place for live events, music, performance, discussion and debate.”
The pavilion may lack that out-and-out weirdness that usually characterises Gehry’s work, but is still well worth a visit before it is dismantled on October 19. A series of talks and events will be taking place in the space during August and September - for more info visit serpentinegallery.org.
“That’s no moon. It’s a space station.”
August 24, 2008
Can we take Obi-Wan’s word on this one? Sadly not, as it seems that Star Wars fan Michael Horn is in fact behind the short film, Death Star Over San Francisco, which he created for Imperial Fleet Week (we’re not sure either) in San Francisco. According to Horn, who is interviewed on the official starwars.com blog, “I shot everything on my junkie DV camera, did motion-tracking and comping in After Effects, and basic sound design in Final Cut.” (Thanks to Coudal’s blog for the original link).
Vilhelm Hammershøi and the Poetry of Silence
August 24, 2008
The first ever UK retrospective of the work of Vilhelm Hammershøi is showing at the Royal Academy of Arts in London until 7 September writes Katya Kan and features over seventy paintings by the Danish artist. Hammershøi’s works are famed for conveying an atmosphere of equanimity and mystery: therapeutic by nature, his paintings almost lull the viewer into an absent-minded daze…
Hammershøi’s manipulation of geometrical shapes, like rectangles (above), can create a sense of stability and composure. This painting’s delicate combination of pastel-beige, pink and blue also contributes to its underlying serenity
Stylistically, Hammershøi was more preoccupied with the depiction of lines than in the portrayal of light and colour when composing his paintings. For instance, he intentionally reduced his range of colours, making them more concentrated and compliant to artistic improvisation. As he articulated in an interview in 1907: “What makes me choose a motif is as much the lines in it, what I would call the architectural stance of the picture.”
The son of a merchant, Hammershøi grew up in a well-off environment in Copenhagen and later married Ida Ilsted, the sister of an artist friend. He frequently journeyed to London, Paris, Italy and the Netherlands and, after his work was declined by official exhibitions, he established a separate Free Exhibition in Copenhagen.
With her back to the viewer, Hammershøi provides no visual clue to the identity of the sitter (above) but the painting leads the viewer’s eye in a circular movement around its internal forms
Hammershøi was to some extent influenced by the Dutch seventeenth century painter, Jan Vermeer, particularly in the isolation of his subjects and in the creation of a calm and reflective atmosphere containing geometric shapes. Similarly, Hammershøi’s cityscapes are analogous to those of the American painter, Edward Hopper, notably in his use of geometric lines and seemingly uninhabited spaces.
This outstanding exhibition offers viewers an exclusive opportunity to experience the oeuvre of a distinctive Scandinavian artist. Where Hammershøi’s interiors convey an unrivalled feeling of serenity; his rare scenes of people communicate perhaps a deeper, jarring sense of mystery. As RA curator Maryanne Stevens suggests, the show is rather like “a programme of meditation.”
For more information on Vilhelm Hammershøi: The Poetry of Silencevisit visit royalacademy.org.uk.
Tech Purchasers Committed to ‘Green,’ Women More Environmentally Conscious
August 24, 2008
Nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of business technology purchasers agree that being perceived as “green” helps their brand image, and the same percentage of affluent consumers (64 percent) say…
Somers Town - A movie or an experiment in brand communication?
August 24, 2008
Stills from Somers Town, directed by Shane Meadows, produced by Mother Vision for Eurostar
Somers Town, the new movie by Shane Meadows, director of the acclaimed This Is England, opens across the UK next week. On the surface it looks like a typically British movie, a gritty tale of urban life and friendship set on the streets near King’s Cross Station. However there is something that sets this film apart, and it comes from how it was developed, and, more keenly, how it was funded.
The film is the first release from a new division set up by Mother advertising agency, Mother Vision, which aims to create “entertainment ideas and non-traditional communications”, and it was funded by Eurostar, as part of the promotion for the UK’s first high speed rail service, which runs from the new St Pancras station. “They were interested in marking the occasion with a piece of communication that had more longevity than perhaps a traditional ad campaign, something that could be enjoyed long after the station opened,” says Mother.
“Brands are in a position - like never before - to connect or build relationships in more interesting ways,” they continue. “If we can tell genuinely entertaining stories that are authentic to the brand’s core values then it’s good news for everyone - brands find an audience, and that audience is entertained.”
Somers Town has no overt Eurostar branding - the poster advertising the film only mentions the company in the small print, and there are no logos on display in the opening credits of the movie. Yet the station and the train forms an integral part of the story.
The film opens with the arrival of Tommo, a young runaway from Nottingham who arrives at King’s Cross knowing no-one. He rapidly gets mugged, losing his money and bag, but, surprisingly undeterred, strikes up a friendship with Marek, a Polish teenager whose father is working on the rebuild of St Pancras station. From then on the film becomes a buddy movie, with the two boys vying for the attentions of a young French waitress working in a King’s Cross cafe, and generally trying to find ways to make some quick cash. There are some rich themes here - immigration, runaways, surviving and finding ways to thrive in London’s urban gloom - yet Meadows approaches them with a light, at times almost whimsical touch.
Towards its end (Spoiler Alert!!), the film, which is until this point shot in stark black-and-white, suddenly adopts colour, when the boys travel to Paris on the train in search of the French waitress who has returned to her home town. It is possible that this is meant to be a dream sequence, and the grainy Super-8 feel certainly looks nostalgic. Either way, it is an optimistic, uplifting end to the film.
It also, of course, plays well for Eurostar, as does an earlier scene when Tommo and Marek look out from the tower block where Marek lives and remark on the beauty of the new station, in construction below them. Despite this, Meadows was apparently given free reign to make the movie he wanted to make without corporate interference, and the movie certainly also has the Meadows stamp upon it.
It is easy to have a knee-jerk cynical reaction to this and accuse Mother and Eurostar of sneaky advertising tricks. Yet it would be naïve to think that the movie industry as a whole exists above such commercial tactics, after all product placement has existed almost as long as cinema itself. And ultimately a good film has been made, which has already garnered awards and rave reviews. Perhaps the key to this was Mother’s intelligent choice of working with Meadows - a director who has an audience of fans in the UK who will be interested to see a new film by him, regardless of how it was produced.
The benefits for Eurostar remain to be seen. Outside of blogs such as these, the brand’s involvement has been less trumpeted, and there have been reviews where it is not mentioned at all. Yet the movie demonstrates that such overt branding is not always necessary - we all know that it is Eurostar that operates the train between London and Paris that Tommo and Marek travel on, so we do not need the brand name shoved down our throats, in fact it would be a detriment to it if it was.
The success of the film also places Eurostar in the position of potentially being a brand that could grow to be seen as a patron of British cinema, offering funding to an industry that is always strapped for cash. This would require further investment of course, plus the even braver step of backing films that might contain no mention of trains at all. As it is, Mother and Meadows have managed to pull off a surprisingly difficult trick - making a film that is credible and watchable, which also serves as 85-minute ad.
