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Tom Jucarone of Sound Lounge mixes Harrison Ford and global warming together for Conservation International’s arresting new spot about rain forest conservation via BBDO New York.

As a resolute Harrison Ford sits down for his first chest waxing, he explains that the destruction of the rain forest is releasing carbon dioxide into our atmosphere at an alarming rate. “For every bit of rain forest that’s ripped up over there, it really hurts us over here,” he says.

The sound of hair being ripped from his chest jolts our attention. He winces. The pain on Ford’s face is as real as his commitment to saving what’s left of the world’s rain forests.

About Sound Lounge:
New York-based Sound Lounge is an industry leading provider of audio post production services. The studio’s 12 mixing suites are fully equipped with the latest in digital audio technology, including all the gear necessary to perform 5.1 surround sound mixes for cinema and HD. The company is artist-owned and features a staff of mixers who set the standard for creative excellence and technical mastery. Their dedication to quality has earned a loyal patronage from top advertising agencies, television, and film studios nationwide.

The Creds:
Client: Conservation International
Spots Title: Wax
Air Date: May 2008

Agency: BBDO, New York
CCO(s): David Lubars, Bill Bruce
ACD(s): Melinda Ward, Avital Pinchevsky
AD: Melinda Ward
Copywriter: Avital Pinchevsky
Sr. Producer: Ed Zazzera
Exec. Music Producer: Loren Parkins

Production Company: Independent Media, Santa Monica
Director: Janusz Kaminski

Editor: John Murray @ Nomad

FX/SFX: The Mill

Music: “Corduroy” by Pearl Jam

Audio Post: Sound Lounge
Mixer: Tom Jucarone

Popularity: 4% [?]

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For the feature film “Paraiso Travel,” HUSH worked intimately with Columbian director, Simon Brand to create memorable end titling that keeps viewers entertained and in their seats until the last credit rolls. At the film’s thematic core is love, travel, exploration, heartache and the distorted realities of the “American Dream” for many newcomers looking to make their way in NYC.

HUSH’s concept revolves around several main characters and their distinct personalities at the most critical moments in the film. The highly-stylized animated collages seamlessly transition one character to the next. Each character’s representational journey parallels that of the film – both physically and emotionally.

“We concepted, developed, then exaggerated visual personas based on their most enticing attributes. We then stitched all of it together with the thread of travel. We created smooth transitioning from scene to scene, eventually arriving in a figurative representation of New York City. We were able to work closely with Simon, and check out rough cuts in advance to fully understand each character and their journey. We then took a piece of each character’s persona and integrated it into the titles. We were fortunate to have all the freedom we needed to take the project from concept to completion.” Director David Schwarz.

“Since the film is a multi-faceted journey, it was important for us to replicate that in the end title sequence as the virtual synopsis of the movie. I focused heavily on the 2D and 3D elements while David (Schwarz) focused on the design and creative. We shot all the stills and HD footage in our studio and created virtually everything from scratch as the film was in the rough cut stage, and we only had access to a minimal amount of elements. It was a truly amazing experience and great for the entire HUSH crew. We’re psyched to have been involved, and are currently ramping up for our next big project for Honda to be unveiled at all the major auto shows later this year.” Director Erik Karasyk.

About HUSH:
HUSH is a New York-based directorial collective led by co-founders/directors Erik Karasyk and David Schwarz. HUSH creates powerful brand-driven stories, award winning design, animation, and VFX for TV commercials, music videos, broadcast, and interactive media channels across all platforms. With over a decade of combined post and production experience at some of the most recognized companies on both coasts, the duo decided to create their own unique, agile full service creative studio.

The HUSH collective has extensive relationships with agencies, brands, record labels, and film/TV studios. HUSH seeks to utilize its directorial talents to reate engaging content from concept to completion.

Creds:
Film: Paraiso Travel

Production Company: Paraiso Pictures
Director: Simon Brand
Executive Producers: Jonathan Sanger, Ed Elbert, Sarah Black, Jorge Perez, Santiago Diaz, Alex Pereira, Juan Rendon, Isaac Lee

Post Production Company: Hush Studios, NY
Directors: Erik Karasyk, David Schwarz
Designers: Erik Karasyk, David Schwarz, Manny Bernardez
Animators: Emmett Dzeiza, Erik Karasyk, David Schwarz, Manny Bernardez
Photography: Emmett Dzeiza, David Schwarz, Erik Karasyk
Photo Retoucher: Robbie Johnstone

Popularity: 5% [?]

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Blue Room’s image-makers have created a promotional campaign for Animal Planet’s 73- minute feature documentary Meerkat Manor: The Story Begins, set to air on the network May 25. A slightly different version of the clever creative will promote the Meerkat’s fourth season on Animal Planet, which begins airing June 6th. The promotional elements began airing on May 17th 2008.

Meerkat Manor has enjoyed considerable success and is now Animal Planet’s top series, both on cable and through its video-on-demand service. The show’s experimental format broke new ground in animal documentary filming techniques and allowed viewers a long term, intimate look into the lives of its meerkat stars.

Meerkat Manor: The Story Begins, which had its world premiere at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival, is an homage to the Queen of the Kalahari, Flower, a larger than life meerkat who passed away last year in mid-season as she defended her babies, and tells the story of Flower and her family.

Animal Planet gave the Blue Room team footage of meerkats shot against green screen, some web and movie concepts and asked them to create a whimsical promo. “Blue Room found the perfect musical track, put the meerkats against a white background grooving to the beat, bobbing up and down, heads moving back and forth, then added some red flying type and, as always, delivered a great promo. You give them a little bit of direction and they absorb it, incorporate it, and come back with something better than you were looking for and exactly in line with the creative that we want here.” Michael Eisenbaum – Animal Planet Marketing Director.

“We got great shots of the meerkats in their natural habitat, keyed them out and cleaned them up. Some of the clips were short, in others the actions could not be sustained over a long enough period of time to be useful. If we decided to populate our universe with meerkats, what could they be doing in groups that would be really whimsical? We pulled most of the visual universe from Animal Planet’s print marketing and then decided to create the illusion that these meerkats were dancing. We chose a baroque hip-hop track, as we wanted to allude to the idea of royalty, and the :30 music driven tribute to the Queen turned out to be the perfect solution to our challenge.” Brian Aumueller, Creative Director of Blue Room

About Animal Planet Media:
Animal Planet Media (APM), a multi-media business unit of Discovery Communications, LLC, connects humans and animals with rich, deep content via multiple platforms and offers animal lovers and pet owners access to a centralized online, television and mobile community for entertainment, information and enrichment. APM consists of the Animal Planet television network, available in over 90 million homes in the US; online assets www.animalplanet.com, the ultimate online destination for all things animal; the 24/7 broadband channel, Animal Planet Beyond; Petfinder.com, the #1 pet-related Web property globally that facilitates pet adoption; PetsIncredible, a major producer and distributor of pet-training videos and includes web service PetVideo.com; and other media platforms including a robust Video-on-Demand (VOD) service; mobile content; and merchandising extensions.

About Blue Room:
Blue Room, founded in 2002, is an award-winning creative services agency that delivers innovative, attention-grabbing design, motion graphics and production solutions for high profile clients like History, NFL, RCN, Here TV, Versus, and Fuse, among others.

The strong partnership Blue Room has formed with its diverse client base is largely due to the comprehensive services the company provides. From concept development to final delivery, all of the resources one could need can be found in house. That includes: animation, visual effects, live action production, script writing, editorial, and an in-depth understanding of branding strategies. Visit the Blue Room website at www.blueroomnyc.com.

National Airdate: May 17
Title: campaign including a :30 promo for an Animal Planet feature doc Meerkat Manor: The Story Begins and promos for Meerkat Manor season four

Description:
Blue Room was supplied green-screen shots of the meerkats in their natural habitat. They keyed the meerkats out, cleaned them up, expanded the visual universe in Animal Planet’s print marketing materials and created the illusion that these meerkats were grooving to the beat of a baroque hip-hop track. The final promo is a :30 music driven tribute to the meerkat Queen, Flower.

Credits:
Production Company: Blue Room NYC

City/State: New York, NY
CEO/Executive Producer: Chris Gargani
Creative Director: Brian Aumueller
Editorial Director: Dave Gargani
Executive Producer: Mark Mutschler
Senior Designer: Steve Harper
Senior Composite Artist: Joonsuck Park
Composite Artist: Jason Vallen
Composite Artist: Leah L’Esperance
Producer: Lauren Muir

Hardware/Software: Adobe After Effects and Photoshop

Client: Animal Planet
City/State: New York, NY
VP/CD: Alexis Brunner
Marketing Director: Michael Eisenbaum
Stock music: Extreme Music

Popularity: 4% [?]

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The Asylum VFX team, Anonymous’ Andrew Douglas, Grey New York, 10 photographers, 300 football players, and 70,000 photos all aid in creating a picture perfect world for Canon U.S.A., Inc.’s digital camera line.

The creative process was inspired by flipbook animation. The spot created a unique methodology in both live-action and post that used a hardware/software pipeline combination of Canon, Adobe Lightroom, Avid, Final Cut, and Inferno.

This combination of software/hardware packages allowed Asylum to accomplish the comprehensive organization of over 70,000 photos; also allowing a faster final conform of individual photos in the Inferno as the edit was refined.

And with Inferno, Asylum executed the individual photo compositions, color, decay time of underlying photos, and overall look that was set forth in the edit. The resolution of the images provided Canon with a much larger canvas than conventional filmmaking; allowing the final picture to take on an unique and vibrant trail of motion photography using still images in a new way.

About Asylum:
Asylum is a premier visual effects and design company, handling high-profile features, commercials, music videos, and emerging media content for web and mobile platforms. Asylum created the visual effects for such films as Master And Commander: The Far Side Of The World (Academy Award and BAFTA nominated), Moulin Rouge, Minority Report, Phantom Of The Opera, Pirates Of The Caribbean ll & lll, Mel Gibsons’s Apocalypto, Tony Scott’s Déjà Vu, Man on Fire & Domino and Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down. Asylum has done spot work for brands such as Nike, Sony Playstation, Coke, BMW, Gatorade and Visa.

In addition, Asylum Design has created award winning title and graphic design work for such films as Tim Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, X-Men I & II, The Island, Bad Boys II and XXX.

The Creds:
Client: Canon
Spot Title: Journey
Air Date: May 2008

Agency: Grey, NY
SVP/CD(s): Ari Halper, Stephen Krauss
Art Director: Doug Fallion
EVP/Dir of Content Dev: Nick Childs
VP/EP: James McPherson
AP: Madhuri Sharma

Prod Company: Anonymous Content
Director: Andrew Douglas
DP: Flor Collins
EP: Andy Traines
EP/Head of Commercials: Dave Morrison
Head of Production: Sue Ellen Clair
Producer: Aris McGarry
Production Supervisor: Maggie Lopez

Music: Sacred Noise
Composer: Michael Montes
Music Producer: Jared Schlemovitz Post/Effects: Asylum
Visual Effects Supervisor: Paul O’ Shea
On Set Visual Effects Supervisor: Marc Varisco
Executive Producer: Michael Pardee
Producer: Mark Kurtz
Bidding Producer: Mike Hanley
Associate Producer: Ryan Meredith
Inferno Artist: Miles Essmiller
3D Tracking: Eddie Offerman
Matte Painting: Tim Clark
Texturing: Alexi Steinhauer
Rotoscoping: Junko Schugardt, Chris Cortese, Merlin Carroll

Editorial: Mad River
Editor: Michael Elliot
EP: Laura Relovsky

Telecine: Company 3
Colorist: Stefan Sonnenfeld

Popularity: 4% [?]

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New York-based Design + VFX company, Headlight was approached by Chellomedia, a world class innovative media company primarily based out of Amsterdam, to create animations based on their newly re-designed logo for the company’s seven divisions, website overhaul, and collateral materials.

These components will then be used for new business opportunities, sales presentations and internal messaging. Additionally, Headlight did a Chellocreative show reel using the new logo animation elements which integrated footage of Chello’s work. The reel was debuted at Promax Europe.

Chellomedia produces and distributes a portfolio of thematic television channels in the key areas of movies, sport, entertainment,lifestyle, kids and documentaries.

About Headlight:
New York-based Headlight Design + VFX is a creative, award-winning design, VFX, animation, and full service production company specializing in commercials, music videos, emerging media, feature and long-format clientele. Headlight’s recent projects include: creating show opens for CBS’s Kid Nation, ABC’s Men in Trees, 3D worlds for Ogilvy’s American Express Lost campaign, and executing the VFX for Vidal Partnership’s Sprint Holiday campaign.

Credits:
Client: Chellomedia
Head of Creative: Leo Noordergraaf
Commercial Director Creative Services: Claire Jones

Design Co: Headlight Design + VFX
Designer: Ders Hallgren
CG Animator: John Clausing
Animator: Eric Konan
Head of Production: Lana Aklilu
Producer: Whitney Green

Popularity: 4% [?]

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Santa Monica-based design and VFX boutique Moving Pixels was brought in early to anchor a collaborative effort between Director Nick Piper of Backyard and Draftfcb for this geared up spot from Coors Light, the official sponsor of NASCAR.

Moving Pixels is a cutting-edge VFX and design shop located in Santa Monica, California. The company specializes in high-end 3D and 2D photo-real visual effects, design, and animation, breathing life into a wide range of commercial projects through innovative, industry-standard creative VFX and design execution.

Key team members include: Executive Producer: Sam Swisher, Owner/Creative Director: Tony Smoller, VFX Supervisor/Lead Flame Artist: Andrew McKenna. Moving Pixels is growing quickly, leveraging its intimate, collaborative, and team-based approach to consistently deliver results across large-scale, high-profile projects.

CREDITS
Client: Coors Light
Spot Title: Mountain Race
Air Date: April 2008

Agency: Draftfcb
CD(s): Julio Desir, Bill Lindsey
Copywriter: Steve Baker
Art Director: Jeff Huser
Agency Producer: Jim Phox

Prod Company: Backyard
Director: Nick Piper
DP: Chris Kachikas
EP: Eriks Krumins

Post/Effects: Moving Pixels
CD/Supervisor: Tony Smoller
Lead Flame/Supervisor: Andy McKenna
Flame Artist(s): Rafael Barrios, William Higgens
Lead 3D: Mike Wynd
Senior 3D: Giancarlo Lari
Particles: Kenneth Ibrahim, Ralph Sevazlian
3D Artist(s): David Lombardi, Steve Browning, Kevin Carr
EP: Sam Swisher
Producer: Claire Cottrell

Editorial: Cutters
Editor: Nadav Kurtz
EP: Betty Jo Moore

Telecine: CO3
Colorist: Dave Hussey

Sound Design: Hum
Sound Designer: Dan Hart

Shoot Location: Rocky Mountains, Leadville Colorado

Popularity: 4% [?]

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