Saman Keshavarz's enigmatic viral ad for Coca-Cola's Burn energy drink exploits his (and his co-writer Nate Eggert's) considerable storytelling skills. It was set-up through The IdeaLists.
David Knight - 23rd Aug 2011
Saman Keshavarz's enigmatic viral ad for Coca-Cola's Burn energy drink exploits his (and his co-writer Nate Eggert's) considerable storytelling skills. It was set-up through The IdeaLists.
David Knight - 23rd Aug 2011
A new viral for Amnesty directed by Henry Scholfield has just been launched, for Amnesty International's AiCandle - an iPhone app that's described as the fastest way for people to join in campaigns to end human rights abuses. The AiCandle enables people to access at their finger tips breaking news on human rights and to support Amnesty International's latest campaigns- from prisoners of conscience to ending poverty. And its starkly illustrated in Henry's viral. http://www.youtube.com/watchv=-bBCHab9Ppo
David Knight - 19th Apr 2011
A video that wrongfooted a good many British hip-hop fans - and all because of a few seconds of shaky camcorder footage of a postman delivering the mail... http://www.youtube.com/watchv=JRdOyhdIP70 This had the UK hip-hop scene abuzz with the rumour that missing-in-action rapper Jehst was now reduced to Royal Mail employee status - and what that said about the state of British rap. But the true intent of the Jehst Is My Postman!!!!!... Pt 1 footage becomes clear with the arrival of Part 2... With that it becomes clear that Ian Pons Jewell has orchestrated a very effective viral campaign for the benefit of Jehst's new track Starting Over, by simple virtue of releasing his shakycam prelude ahead of the main event - which is a whole lot slicker. "I was asked to do a video for Jehst, so I had the idea to film him in some sort of dayjob and have it look like a weirdo fan had filmed him through his window and posted it up on youtube - in order to create a narrative experience over time," Ian explains. "The idea was that we would then have the guy film him again, but reveal the joke through it shifting into a high-end looking music video - but with Jehst as a postman, handing out letters to various hiphop acts." Featured in the video are Chemo, United Vibrations, Teef, Stig of the Dump, Micall Parknsun, Q Unique, SEPST*R, Jyager and Kid Kanevil, and Ian points out that with so many fans having fallen hook, line and sinker that one of their idols had fallen on more unglamourous times, the actual video has been greeted positively - not least because it means that Jehst is releasing his first album in five years. And he defends his artful exercise in trolling. "It worked perfectly. It caused a huge debate in the comments and elsewhere on forums, and word of mouth, about the state of UK hiphop. Then this came out and it's fired a lot of people up in a good way, with many excited for Jehst's comeback." http://www.youtube.com/watchv=GSkiTj6oXAk
David Knight - 14th Apr 2011
Here's that rare thing, a proper modern protest song - from a young guy from Loughborough who works on the bins. MC NxtGen, aka 22 year old Sean Donnelly - aspiring hiphop artist and currently a dustman by trade - has skewered the motives behind controversial planned reforms of the National Health Service with his Andrew Lansley Rap - directed squarely on the UK Health Secretary who is pushing for reforms, including what have been described as the unlikeliest rap lyrics ever written. And a cheap, cheerful, charming video that's also brilliantly informative is the key vehicle for MC NxtGen to get his message across. In fact, that's all he needs. Superb, and now Lansley is (hopefully) going to have a very difficult week thanks to this passionate young man, and whoever directed the promo. And YouTube of course. http://www.youtube.com/watchv=Dl1jPqqTdNo
David Knight - 28th Mar 2011
People used to forge masterpieces - and Dougal Wilson's vid for Benni Benassi's Satisfaction happens to be a masterpiece of Noughties dance vids. So now here's Raf Reyntjes lovingly-crafted recreation of the video - with an important difference. This time round, the girls are a bit older. Which makes it very funny - or hard to watch, depending on how you feel about seventy year old ladies wielding power tools whilst wearing hot pants. Its all for a perfectly good cause, thankfully: Equal PayDay. In fact, it's a stonking way of highlighting the important issue of inequitable gender wage differentials. In Belgium. http://www.youtube.com/watchv=m_aubcM-vIs
David Knight - 10th Mar 2011
Made way back last summer but held over until now, here's the gorgeous mini-teaser campaign and main viral for the debut Fenech-Soler album by highly talented newcomers Tell No One. Featuring death and destruction, and a sexy man-bull for the ladies...
David Knight - 17th Jan 2011
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With the IKEA-sponsored version of Jona Lewie's Always In The Kitchen At Parties turning up on Best Ads of the Year lists everywhere, here's Kim Gehrig latest crowd-pleaser, skirting the border brilliantly between ad and vid. This 90 sec viral for the new Nokia music app that allows users to record their own, instantly shareable music, by looping and recording various sounds with their Nokia N8. That means recording anything - including cute yapping dogs that happen to be visiting a doggie beauty parlour in Shanghai. It's beautifully done - Ross McLennan shot it, Tom Lindsay supplied the razor-sharp edit, MPC recreate the graphics from the app and composite them to the footage - and surely going to be huge.
David Knight - 20th Dec 2010
Ewan Jones Morris & Casey Raymond's latest for Fujiya & Miyagi's Yo Yo - from the new album Ventriloquizzing - features Luke Roberts as the dextrous king of the spool and string. He's not the only talented performer in the video (the cast includes a ventriloquist, appropriately) but the only one who happens to be a homicidal maniac. And Casey and Ewan have also made a Christmas-flavoured viral for the forthcoming F&M album - incorporating a giant grotto made of bread that Casey created for an art exhibition at the G39 gallery in Cardiff. Yes, that's a grotto made of bread. And as well as the dummy from the Yo Yo video, that features a refugee from Ewan & Casey's amazing video for John Grant's Marz. Someone give these guys a proper budget to play with please.
David Knight - 17th Dec 2010
David Knight - 12th Nov 2010
After his tour visuals for Basement Jaxx and the mesmerizing Aanaatt for Japanese electronica artist Jemapur, experimental animator Max Hattler's latest work is this remarkable pair of films - or animation loops - inspired by the work of French outsider artist Augustin Lesage. Both films, 1923 (aka Heaven) and 1925 (aka Hell), were inspired by paintings by Lesage created in those years with the same name - A Symbolic Composition of the Spiritual World - and were created with the help of CG students at the Animation Workshop in Viborg, Denmark over a mere five day period in February this year. In 1923, Max has refashioned the Lesage painting as a stunning, futuristic metropolis, composed of countless separate moving elements. It is beautiful and hypnotic, and as one reviewer has already noted, like Las Vegas would be if it was pretty... 1925 aka Hell is a much darker proposition, darker in fact than the infinitely detailed Arabic style of the original painting, and faintly disturbing sound design by Adrian Dexter. But its just as compelling and hypnotic, and like 1923 can be set to loop indefinitely... There's an interview with Max Hattler about the making of both the films at Motionographer, and Max will also be featured in a one-person show at Lumen Eclipse starting April 1st.
David Knight - 26th Mar 2010
Pomplamoose - excellent exponents of the homemade VideoSong - have swiftly jumped the Gaga/Beyoncé bandwagon with their own version of Telephone. Featuring their very own Shameless Product Placement. Its had almost Gaga-like results: nearly 600,000 views on their YouTube channel in a mere three days. It's not hard to figure out why - one online phenomenon meets another, and makes 5. And you can show this one to your pre-teens too. Meanwhile, Gaga and Akerlund's video is contextualised within the history of music video in today's Daily Telegraph.
David Knight - 18th Mar 2010
"The idea was to make the opposite of the super high glossy official video and copy the sort of thing that gets unearthed on Youtube - like old episodes of Top of the Pops or the Chart Show." says Dan. " I wanted to try and emulate the track, dissolves, Kaleidoscopes, etc. of Seventies and Eighties pop TV. It was then subtitled to add an extra element of weirdness and dumped onto VHS. "Either that, or its Marina & The Diamonds' debut TV performance shot during a stint of work experience 15 years ago on an Estonian TV show called Pop! You decide."
Jimmy Brown - 10th Feb 2010
Anthony Dickenson's beautiful in-camera photographic effects work has translated seamlessly to the new big Nike viral, out of Wieden + Kennedy, for the new T6 Laser III boots, designed to improve power and accuracy. Hit The Target, created by Phil Monks and Mike Cuthell, and creatively directed by Stuart Harkness, transforms Wayne Rooney's shooting practice into a Mission Impossible-style laser challenge - controlled by fellow striker and worthy adversary Fernando Torres. In a stylised environment, fast-paced movement mixes with slow-motion contact between boot and ball, all set to a dubstep soundtrack from 16 Bit. It's not hard to see how Anthony's previous videos, like Kap Bambino, made him the right choice to make this. All in all, it's a brilliant demonstration of a couple of formidable players. One is in the form of his life, and looking forward to a big summer; the other is playing at Villa tomorrow night.
David Knight - 9th Feb 2010
Saam's clever sliding-split-screener is the official video of Cheryl's new single, but Vincent Haycock has directed the officially-sanctioned viral version for 3 Words. Atmospheric, cinematic and romantic - in the style of HK master Wong Kar-wei - it was shot by Vince and his estimable DoP Matthias Koenigswieser "on the only rainy night in Los Angeles in six months." After his excellent vids for MSTRKRFT and Miike Snow, another superb character-driven work.
David Knight - 4th Dec 2009