Director Lea Esmaili Joins Blinkink for UK Representation
November 21, 2024
London’s Electric Theater Collective supply VFX and animation back up for Rogue director Saam Farahmand‘s new stunner for Channel 4’s Born Risky campaign starring British singer-songwriter/model/multimedia performance artist/DJ Viktoria Modesta who, after spending most of her childhood in and out [Watch]
The MOOOVE from Swiss lighting company Senses has lurked on my wish list for years and now Woodblock directing team Crave (Roman Kaelin, Falko Paeper and Florian Wittmann) up the must-have factor with a cool online spot featuring the modular, magnetic-jointed lamp in action. [Watch]
Ringling College students Michael Bidinger and Michelle Kwon hit every beat perfectly in their graduation film, a stellar four-minute romantic comedy called “Jinxy Jenkins, Lucky Lou.” [Watch]
A smile-worthy and sly comment on the have and have not nature of Christmas (and life in general) From the Amsterdam, Barcelona and London studios of Glassworks who celebrate 20 years of VFX mastery in 2015. [Watch]
A riveting tour de force of broadcast promotion from director Tomek Baginski and the crew at Platige Image in Warsaw, Poland for History Channel. Tomek Baginski: “We were working with the client for a long time before we even started planning the shoot. [Watch]
The Best of Stash 2014 Collection releases in full on Dec 31 but here’s an early taste: A brilliant near-future sci-fi online ad for Greenpeace published in Stash 105 called “New Bees” directed by Polynoid and produced and animated at Woodblock in Berlin. [Watch]
Witness the behind-the-scenes tension and ultimate victory as Framestore takes on their biggest project to date pulling in every department in every Framestore location worldwide.
“Project X has been under wraps for months and required the full might of the Framestore renderfarm. It is easily our most realistic and immersive creation. It is so complex that if the project was to be rendered on a single laptop it would need to have been started approximately 2014 years ago, on the first ever Christmas Day.” [Watch]
Mill+ co-directors Ben Smith and Bryce Wymer hit themes of greed, betrayal, sexual intrigue and rivalry in the title sequence for the new Netflix original “Marco Polo” written by John Fusco and produced by The Weinstein Group.
“Bryce developed a technique to capture the images being ‘invisibly painted’ using an overhead projector and meticulously hand-painting the images onto a dense paper stock that allowed the water to sit on the surface of the paper.
“Sumi ink (ink formulated for sumi painting and calligraphy) was then dripped onto the invisible water paintings, spreading beautifully throughout the entire image. This was captured through high-speed photography to create an elegant, monotone image, confined to the waters edges.”
Compare and contrast: Here’s a smaller scale ink-in-water treatment from 2011 called “Dirty Water” from hush.fr director/illustrator Clément Beauvais For BDDP Unlimited:
Vessel Studios in Atlanta turn their talent for highly detailed, accurate and often beautiful medical animation to the lighter task of creating a refreshingly unusual CG holiday greeting called “Whimsical Wishes.” [Watch]
Minivegas‘ fun new ASUS clip featuring working stiff birds of all types extends an idea explored by UK director Ninian Doff back in 2011 for his no-budget Fulton Lights “Staring Out of The Window” music video starring a Rat Pack of crows.
Director Nils Kloth and the Mill+ crew handled everything including the song writing on this three-minute clip for the B&B industry booking system Eviivo. Mill+ EP Luke Colson: “This is probably the most diverse Mill+ Design project we’ve done. The fact that we wrote the lyrics and composed the song, [Watch]
A new PES film is always cause for a smile or six and so it goes with “Submarine Sandwich,” two minutes of pure stop motion PES-ness with help from a sizable crew including DOP Eric Adkins and VFX super Cam Leeburg plus support from 1114 Kickstarter backers and NIKON. [Watch]
The current flood of overly earnest documentary profile films gets a slow poke in both eyes courtesy of Skittles latest silly/surreal adventure directed by Hungry Man Conor Byrne for The Corner Store Films thru BBDO Toronto with The Vanity handling post and Griff Henderson cutting. [Watch]
Spectacular lighting and atmospheric matte paintings in almost every shot help propel the warm and simple narrative of “Home Sweet Home,” the graduation film by Supinfocom Arles students Alejandro Diaz, Pierre Clenet, Romain Mazevet and Stéphane Paccolat. [Watch]
