Hasta La Creative!

The new space thriller, Gravity, from Alfonso Cuarón, who helmed Children of Men and one of those Harry Potter films among others, hits theaters in less than two weeks. You’ve probably seen trailers for Gravity on TV with George Clooney and Sandra Bullock floating around space as classical music plays.  It’s an unusual premise for a movie, and even though Cuarón is a brilliant director, one can understand how studios might be worried about box office sales. So, to generate some buzz for the film, production company B-Reel has launched an interactive website that digitally illustrates the experience of floating around space.

The site holds brief appeal – exploring a simulation of space can get boring after a few minutes of scrolling and listening to the eerie loop of someone panting – which is the point. Floating around knowing you’d be lost forever looking at blackness sounds tremendously boring and tremendously frightening. Of course, Cuarón (I hope) will focus on the threat of that boredom, so his space thriller is, you know, thrilling. But if you’re an astronomy geek or interested film buff, the spacewalk and links to the movie trailers should be enough fun until October 4.

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If the NFL is a dictatorship (in addition to being a comparative kleptocracy), then “RGIII: The Will to Win” looks like the league’s latest piece of propaganda. This movie is the sort of self-serving piece of content that is more of a long commercial with some candid footage than an actual documentary. And my feelings on this have almost nothing to do with Robert Griffin III, his knee rehabilitation, my love of the New York Giants, or TBWA\Chiat\Day LA, the agency that worked on five respectable spots advertising the ESPN “doc.”

The above ad offers a quick and quintessentially underdog take on a comeback story that isn’t really a comeback story, since as RGIII puts it: “how can you come back if you were never gone?” The line is so perfect, it’s almost like someone wrote it for him…There’s nothing wrong with promoting whatever this piece of content is, but there is something wrong with Gatorade, ESPN, and the NFL all taking part in something that would be more interesting without their intrusions. RGIII news has gone from creation myth to creation scripture, written by Roger Goodell and network executives. It’s too disingenuous for its own good, but most of us will end up watching it anyway.

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Ted Mccagg describes himself as “a recovering ad man.” You may recognize him from the 2011 book Paper Doll Orgy, where Mccagg compiled doodles and drawings from his freelance time at places like Y&R and McCann (not to mention some juicy agency potshots in the book’s acknowledgements). Mccagg is back, now with a new film, Bloom, a John Hughes homage about two girls planning to lose their virginity the night before high school graduation.

While the film’s narrative covers standard ground in the teen-sex narrative, Mccagg has gone all out on the social media publicity front, briefly slipping back on his advertising hat. And all out might be an understatement. The movie’s promotional website includes detailed Proust questionnaires (28 questions) for the 10 main characters in their respective voices. There’s also a link to a blog where anyone can vote on who is more “V-Worthy” in head-to-head matchups. In addition to the site’s material, Mccagg has worked up an expansive world supplemental to the film: a character’s Tumblr dedicated to Neil Degrasse Tyson, another character’s book actually available for purchase on Amazon, etc. Once the movie premieres, Mccagg may want to look into a James Franco impersonation job.

Bloom will be released on August 5th.

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Would you want to work for a company that asks you to do a blindfolded trustfall off of a building? Probably not, although if Goldman Sachs asked some young jobseekers to do the trustfall while calculating a probability brainteaser, I’m sure there are people who’d sign up. That’s the point of the new faux recruiting video from SpareFoot, an Austin-based storage finder start-up. You’ll find all the trappings of an exaggerated office culture: crazy bosses, scared underlings, and an HR rep who likes Vin Diesel. We’re guessing working at SpareFoot isn’t actually like this, but CEO Chuck “Commodore” Gordon does resemble a Gary Busey stunt double (well played on the self-deprecation).

These types of office-culture riffs have been done before, but SpareFoot has chosen an interesting path by linking the video on the company website Jobs page. I’m not sure if such a jokey pitch would make me want to apply to work there, because although we get to see what SpareFoot culture isn’t like, we never really get to see what it’s actually like in the office. The risk may turn people off, but during a time when using the wrong resume font can lead employers to ignore you, having a sense of humor in the workplace feels refreshing.

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Many top brands have preferred Instagram to Vine when deciding how to complement branding with viral videos, but that hasn’t stopped Snapple, with creative direction from NYC-based Code and Theory, from choosing six over 15. As part of Snapple’s Re-enFACTments digital campaign, here’s a little stop-motion animation to kick off the weekend. The above clip was designed by Khoa Phan, who Mashable declared “Vine’s Most Creative Stop-Motion Animator.”

Snapple and Code and Theory have reached out to a number of unique people on the platform to visualize the signature series of under-the-cap facts that lost their novelty appeal about ten years ago. Phan worked with fact #754 – an alligator can go through 3,000 teeth in a lifetime, a ridiculous number that probably excites dentists and orthodontists around the world. And, as you can see in a few additional Vines below, makes eating an apple more troubling than you’d expect.

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A few months ago, we covered the announcement for the 3rd annual Saatchi & Saatchi Music Video Challenge. Well, the time has jumped by – maybe you noticed, maybe you didn’t – but we’re back to report the 12 finalists and one People’s Choice winner. The contest asked interested directors to create an original music video for OK Go’s new single, “I’m Not Through.” You can check out the finalist entries here. On June 20, the winner will be announced as part of the Saatchi & Saatchi New Directors’ Showcase.

As you’d expect with an OK Go contest, there is an abundance of quirk and artistic shenanigans. The parties involved say the finalists come from all corners of the globe, but really, they just come from western countries, mostly the US and UK. One finalist is from the Bahamas. It’s now that we’re reminded that globes don’t have corners. Not to show favoritism to my personal preferences when it comes to abundances of quirk and artistic shenanigans, I’ve randomly selected two finalist videos (one below the jump) for your viewing pleasure on this dreary Friday afternoon. Enjoy.

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While your office chair may be a standard rollie, only capable of swiveling around as you head to the bathroom to put off work, some extraordinary chairs, like the star of A Chair Named Clarity go beyond the call of duty. In a commissioned short film for office supply company Allsteel, writer/director Nickolaus Duarte tells the story of a young chair that travels to the big city for “a hero’s journey” to save his ailing mother (who happens to be human).

Why, you ask? (Humor me and ask). Because Clarity’s human mother gets sick after sitting in an uncomfortable wooden chair. At this point, it would’ve been wise for Clarity’s mother to change chairs, since her child is somehow an office chair. But then, you realize that this three-and-a-half-minute short film is a small piece of branded content that is just trying to eek out a few laughs from viewers and maybe sell some office furniture, so making sense of it might not make too much sense.

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This 30-second spot, produced by Venables Bell & Partners, attempts to show the audience how billionaire superheroes commute to work. The average worker takes the bus, the train, maybe drives an average car. Tony Stark drives an Audi R8 supercar. Of course, he could also just commute in his Iron Man suit, which would make the R8 seem irrelevant, but that wouldn’t be very good Audi product placement.

You’ve seen this type of spiel before: “It’s never a bad day at work when your commute looks like this.” I’ve never been a fan of this pitch to consumers. After enough time, a car becomes a car. And if your job still sucks, if you have that pontificating boss, or you work till 9 p.m., going home in an R8 won’t stop you from hating a job (but it might help you attract women). And with a minimum MSRP of $114,000 on last year’s model, you’ll most likely hate your bank account afterward, too. But at least it looks cool, right? Credits after the jump.

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What if people only interacted through text messaging? They could still meet up and walk around together, but is our world headed for non-verbal communication ruled by Autocorrect? These are the questions at the root of “The Dystopianest Dystopia Ever,” a short film written and directed by freelance copywriter Jon Murray, who most recently worked at Leo Burnett, Toronto.

In the short film, a guy and a girl meet outdoors with cell phones in hand, ready to talk by texting. People no longer communicate with eye contact or use their vocal cords, but the guy has his epiphany that will undermine the “dystopianest dystopia.” If our future is headed in that direction, doctors who treat Carpal Tunnel Syndrome should be patting themselves on the back.

The video is only two minutes, but it packs an efficient punch. And even if you don’t care about the future of technology, it’s a well-done creative project that you can watch for free, so why not support? Credits after the jump.

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So it would seem that the weird Lana Del Rey music video produced by Jaguar was merely a tease foreshadowing bigger things to comes. In fact, Del Ray’s four-minute warble-fest “Burning Desire” is actually the soundtrack to a new short-film that heavily integrates the Jaguar F-Type, Desire.

Starring Golden Globe-winning actor Damian Lewis (Homeland) and Shannyn Sossamon (who’s been kind of quiet since starring in such films as 40 Days and 40 Nights and Wristcutters: A Love Story), Desire is the result of a collaboration with Jaguar, Ridley Scott Associates and agency Brooklyn Brothers (the guys behind the Alec Baldwin/John Krasinski New Era spots). The short film has no official release date beyond “spring,” and a press release describes it as “a story of betrayal, retribution, passion and greed.”

In a statement, Lewis says of his involvement, “Working with the director Adam Smith from Ridley Scott Associates, it promises to be an adventure. Jaguar cars have played some iconic roles in film for many years and I’m looking forward to being the first to drive the F-TYPE in film.”

Of course, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen a car company give its marketing a turn for the cinematic. In fact, it’s been over a decade since BMW Films’s Clive Owen-starring series The Hire gained critical acclaim for its groundbreaking approach to car advertising. In 2013, will the same sort of execution move F-Types? I suppose we’ll find out soon.

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