Nat Geo Wild "Spoiled Rotten Pets" Promo with Beth Stern

A clever new promo for the new Nat Geo Wild show "Spoiled Rotten Pets" featuring Beth Stern, directed by Ian Karr of creative boutique IKA Collective, New York. The ad is a spot-on parody of the animal cruelty PSAs featuring singer Sarah Mclachlan and her song "Angel."

Animal advocate and host, Beth Stern, leads you into a world of outrageous pet pampering and shockingly over indulgent pet owners lavishing all forms of attention on their critters, from bark mitzvahs to pig spas, and pet weddings to ferret conventions. Series Premieres Saturday, April 20 natgeowild.com/spoiledrottenpets

Credits:
Client: National Geographic Wild
Project: "Spoiled Rotten Pets" promo
Production/Post: IKA Collective, New York
Director: Ian Karr
Editor: Ronni Thomas

Brain Games With Jason Silva - National Geographic Promo Ads

Right on the heels of three extraordinarily successful projects -- garnering record breaking ratings for their clients -- BIGSMACK unveils a new promo campaign for the National Geographic Channel. The energy-packed, mind-tickling campaign for the channel’s newest series “Brain Games” broke earlier this week in anticipation of the series launch on Monday, April 22nd at 9 p.m. (ET/PT).

Under the creative leadership of Founder/Head Creative Andy Hann and Senior Creative Director Matt Hall, BIGSMACK collaborated with National Geographic’s in-house creative team to complete the creative concepting. BIGSMACK wrote, produced, and created extensive CGI and graphics for the new launch campaign. http://www.bigsmack.tv/work/nat-geo-brain-games/

Hosted by Filmmaker and TED Talks icon Jason Silva, the new television series will use illusions, mind games and interactive experiments to reveal the inner workings of the human brain. Each episode of “Brain Games” will explore a different topic. These will include attention, fear, perception, sense of time and memory. Silva is a self-professed "wonder junkie," who has spoken widely about neurology, the human brain, and technology. The timing of the show is perfect, as President Obama announces a broad new research initiative to invent and refine new technologies to understand and map the human brain. Silva is joined on “Brain Games” by “The Gentleman Thief” Apollo Robbins, a deception specialist.

“National Geographic Channel has been a great, long-term client of ours,” says BIGSMACK’s Hann. “We worked on the promo for the “Brain Games” special last year, and it was so popular and successful that Nat Geo decided to turn it into a series. We were thrilled when they came back, and asked us to work on the promo campaign for the new series. We have a very collaborative relationship with Nat Geo. They really utilize us as a collaborative creative agency, and we work very well with their in-house team. They have a great deal of creative trust in us, which we really appreciate. This was a hugely fun campaign for the BIGSMACK team to work on. One of the biggest challenges was the research that we needed to do in order to find fun, and thought provoking examples of brain puzzles and teasers; as well as the choreography of the spots which required the cameras, experiments, and the on-screen talent to be in sync. Many of the shots were all done in one-take, which was quite a feat.”

Hann shared the director’s chair on set with BIGSMACK’s Senior Creative Director Matt Hall, since a great deal of the work was done in CGI and post, after the studio production wrapped. “The series host, Jason Silva, is renowned for his ability to improv,” explains Hall. “So we gave him an outline, but he added a lot of the material on his own while we were shooting. Because of the improv, most of the CGI/effects were added in the postproduction phase, without a lot of pre-planning. The creative process was truly an evolution, with BIGSMACK working with the in-house team at Nat Geo. At every stage, something new was added on-screen, continually making the spots that much better, and leading to a great end result.”

Due to the outstanding success of promo and show launch campaigns created and produced by BIGSMACK in the last 6 months, the team has been hard at work in the studio. “I couldn’t be more proud of the quality of work that continues to come from Andy and our BIGSMACK team” says Head of Marketing Andrew Kobliska, “The idea generation is endless, and this team truly understands how to create a successful campaign for our clients.”





Credits:
Project: Multi-spot promo campaign for the launch of new series “Brain Games”
Client: National Geographic Channel
SVP/Group Creative Director: Andy Baker
CMO: Courteney Monroe
Design Director Marketing & Creative: Carla Daeninckx
Director Ad Sales & Cause Marketing: Allison Mitchell
VP Creative & Consumer Marketing: Emanuele Madeddu
Producer: Valerie Carrillo
Agency, Production & Post Company: BIGSMACK/New York & Philadelphia
Head of Creative: Andy Hann
Senior Creative Director: Matt Hall
Head of Marketing: Andrew Kobliska
Executive Producers: Heidi Erney, Kevin Lahr
Senior Producer: Rich DiNublia
Senior Writer/Producer: Laura Gillespie
Production Coordinator: Meg Hughes
Director: Andy Hann
EFX Director: Matt Hall
DP: Andrew Turman
Line Producer: Larry Schwartz
Design/Animators: Jason Harmon, Rick Malwitz
Graphic Artist: Dan Hoffman
Editor: Mark Farkas
Mixers: Bob Schachner, Mike Taylor
Colorist: Janet Falcon

Ten By Fotolia Season 2 - Soongyu Gwon "Lifestyle"

Sci-fi fantasy meets Greek mythology in this month's TEN by Fotolia design. Consumed with a passion for art and design, Soongyu Gwon, who works as a Creative Director at D.FY Inc. Design Group in Seoul (South Korea), defines himself as a "digital image maker".The work and style of this man, who is above all in search of the deeper meaning in things, materializes in his ultra-graphic, perfectly mastered works. Inspired and enriched by Korea's 5,000 years of history, as well as traditional asian culture, and being close to nature, his compositions also show the influence of contemporary arts: comics, fantasty and horror movies are Soongyu Gwon's favorite genres since he saw Peter Jackson's "Dead Alive" in high school.

Two videos, both with subtitles in 12 languages, were shot in South-Korea. The one revealing his everyday world will be available as a sneak preview on the dedicated TEN Facebook page, from February 6th. The one unveiling his work techniques will be available on release day, February 8th, on the Youtube TEN Collection channel

Credits:
Directed by Gang Corporate
Director / Editor / Colorist: Pavle Savic
Music / Sound Design: Axel Guenoun
Motion Design: Mister Gü

Immortalized - Strange Show - Strange Ads - It Works

Juniper Jones recently completed a new series of commercials cfor AMC's new reality show, Immortalized and things do get a little strange.

Immortalized, dives into the quirky and peculiar world of competitive taxidermy, and they wanted the commercial campaign to celebrate this unique brand of weirdness.

These spots are a spin on stories featured in so many nature documentaries where wild animals face off against one another in an effort to survive; a mother hen must protect her chicks from a cunning fox, for example. This concept plays into the theme of competition so prevalent in the show.

They also wanted to take the idea of these docs a step further and turn it completely on its head. Instead of taking place in the actual jungles of Africa or the forests of rural America, the animals are put in a diorama type set straight out of an eccentrically mad section of The Museum of Natural History. In the world of taxidermy the competition is just as fierce, and in the end, provides for captivating and bizarre results. Where else could you find a frankensteinian creature with the body of a gazelle and the head of a boar?

Credits:
Client: AMC Networks

Creative Director: BJ Smith


Production Company: Juniper Joness
Director: Kevin Robinson

Creative Director: Kevin Robinson

Executive Producer: Susie Shuttleworth

Associate Producer: Zachary Goldberg
Director Of Photography: Christopher Pearson

Production Designer/ Art Director: Michael Bednark
Editor: Eli Mavros

Sound Design: Digital Arts

"A Taste of ABC Sunday" | Prime-Time Promo

ABC promote's their Sunday night with new ad campaign, "A Taste of ABC Sunday" highlights Sunday night TV shows: “Once Upon A Time,” “Vengeance,” and “666 Park Avenue. Full press below.

NTROPIC CREATES VISUALLY ENTICING PROMO FOR ABC FALL SUNDAY NIGHT LINE-UP
Led by Ntropic’s Nate Robinson and Andrew Sinagra, the creative team at Ntropic has created a visually enticing promo for ABC’s Fall Sunday Night Line-Up entitled “A Taste of ABC Sunday.” Collaborating closely with Executive Producer Joseph Uliano of One World Productions in Los Angeles and the Entertainment Marketing Division of ABC, the team of Robinson + Sinagra directed the piece, while Ntropic created all of the visual effects for the ground-breaking promo which began airing last month with heavy rotation during the 2012 Primetime Emmy Awards.

The new ABC promo features a series of vignettes with an alluring, all-star cast showcasing the eclectic ABC Sunday Primetime line-up. All scenes featured in the new promo, directed by Robinson + Sinagra, were shot on a rigorous three-day schedule, on-set in Los Angeles. Elements were also shot in Vancouver and in the Hamptons. The creative process included a blending of live-action, motion-control, CGI animation and Flame effects. Shooting the background plates on different days from the talent meant that Ntropic needed to marry all of these elements and make it all appear seamless. The Ntropic team operated around the clock for three weeks creating flawless visual effects for the vignettes, interweaving a glimpse of ABC Sunday’s three prominent shows; “Once Upon A Time,” “Vengeance,” and “666 Park Avenue.” Spot on artistry combined with intricate visual effects, brings to life a “little taste” of magic, vengeance, and seduction.

“When I first saw this idea, it had so many challenging elements that I immediately thought of Ntropic for the VFX; and Nate and Andrew for their directing wizardry,” says Executive Producer Joseph Uliano. “Nate and I have had a very creative and ongoing relationship for over 10 years and there is no one I trust more to deliver. The final result of this project is even more proof of that.”

“We were super thrilled to work on this project with Joe Uliano and with ABC,” says Ntropic’s Nate Robinson. “In our research, we looked at literally hundreds of promos, and believed we could re-think what a promo could be. We had full support and collaboration from all the celebrity talent, which was amazing. On-set, we showed them the pre-vis so they could see what we needed them to do. I believe this project is a testament to Ntropic’s talent, aesthetic and philosophy; to be able to shoot and create this level of high-quality visual effects all within a three-week time period. We can’t wait to work with Joe and his clients at ABC again.”

Credits:
Ad Agency:  Ntropics
Directed by: Nate Robinson, Andrew Sinagra
Client: ABC
Supervising Shoot Producer: Christopher O’Hara
Shoot Producer: Jabali Hicks
Senior Writer/Producer: Brenda Lau

Production Company: One World Productions, inc.
Executive Producer: Joseph Uliano
Producer: Norm Reiss
Director of Photography: Maz Makhani

Visual Effects & Post Production Company: Ntropic
Executive Producer: Jim Riche
Producer: William Lemmon
VFX Coordinator: Chelsea Miller
VFX Supervisor: Rob Hubbard
Flame Artist: Maya Bello-Korenwasser
Flame Artist: MB Emigh
CG Artist: Ricardo Zanettini
CG Artist: Johnny Diaz
CG Artist: Ariel Loza
CG Artist: James McCarthy
FX Artist: Emil Balek
FX Artist: Pasha Ivanov
Matte Painter: Vlad Binas
Matte Painter: Talon Nighshade
Colorist: Marshall Plante