On Drugs...

People often ask me if I have any opinions regarding what could be seen historically as a link between creative types, artists and what-not and alcohol/ drug abuse, unchecked hedonism and promiscuous disregard for some aspects of what would be considered clean living.

I have only this to say on the matter:

I Agree with Lynch

So I think we're all agreed that the future of a large part of the work we do in digital is increasingly about the creation of interesting content. Be it small films on your phone, episodic dramas or secret codes buried about the net (remember Lost...?). A danger to be avoided is the James Bond ("Casino Royal") route.

Cut to:-

XCU sony ericsson handset

Onscreen Text: ELIPSIS

This means educating our clients, fighting their urge to go full screen on logos, or to be honest even have the sponsoring brand's product appear in the film at all:

My view on it all? I Agree with Lynch.



You just can't argue with that.

In the Future

There will be no mass production of any considered worth. We shall all have meaningful, bespoke experiences, which engage us to a suitable level.


This is why I work in digital.

Banner ads can fuck off.

The Future of Digital AdverFilms

shepperton studios, originally uploaded by donshades.

Last week I spent a long day doing an interactive Ad shoot for one of our clients at Dare. In order to get the required assets, we had to hire a very tall studio. Infact the only place with a studio big enough was London's famous Shepperton Studios.

“Great!” I thought. This is is. We're here! A digital agency shooting an ad in the same studio they used to shoot Harry Potter's Cribbage game. We've made it. We've grown up....

Then I realised. We were shooting a fucking banner Ad.

Indeed things are beginning to change. Clients are starting to trust us more frequently with budgets which extend to more than your best mate with a DV camera shooting in an empty meeting room. But where's the story? Flo's point on the creative social blog is an interesting one and something that has bothered me from day I checked out of the film world and into the land of Digital.

"Why are we trying to do everything our own way?".

It seems that we spend too much of the time getting excited by interesting interactive technology, and not enough time worrying about story, meaning, narrative. I'm just as guilty of this as everyone, by the way.

I am a bit of a film geek however and for me that makes a good story paramount. TV script writers have been bothered about this since the days of the Bulova Watch Company (obviously they fuck it up a lot..); so why do we think needn't bother?

This is something that I feel very strongly about. There is some great work about of late; but all too often an interesting understated story is left high and dry - out gunned by the technology which is packaging it up. Digital agencies are full of copy writers, not script writers and this is evident from the output of their more narrative ideas. I keep banging on about the novelty factor of youTube slowly wearing off and suddenly we're left swimming in shit... well I think this is most definitely starting to happen. Things move with sound on the interweb - great. Now tell me a story, and tell it fucking well or I'm clicking onward. I was at a lecture the other day where the speaker mused over the next layer of the web being the Visual Web. If he's right (and I don't see anything to make me think he's wrong); then surely the champion players of this visual web will be those who know how to tell a story, how to write a good story to be told in spoken words, sound and moving pictures.

For me we've got a lot of growing up to do before we can move in and start our own digital production office at Shepperton.

facebook

facebook, originally uploaded by donshades.

Well... I'm used to facebook recommending me "hot singles", sites since I changed my status... but this is the first time I've been shown a way out of my hairloss hell...

Have they gone completely bonkers? ....

...then I realised according to facebook I'm 109 years old this week. Nice try guys.

Malkovich 2.0

viao-john.com

Like Ewarwoowar, I try not to post much of the work that we do at Dare, in an effort to stay sane if nothing else. This site however is definitely worth a mention as to me it represents the good side of Web 2.0. It is a site to educate, to stir up ideas while asking for a well thought out response.

If only the Tube could have captured the essence of thinking before you upload as well as this small project. This project, of course stated it's claim in planet User Generated Content (a small moon orbiting Planet User Generated Crap) right from the start in that it was for Sony - a brand holding themselves high up.like.no.other in an otherwise over saturated technology market. Claridges, rather than McDonalds contributions please.

But beyond fast food video, there are still a large range of good video sites, quality controlled and vetted for the best which I still wouldn't think twice about sending my work too. However I took ages, with my mouse hovered over the submit button on this Malkovich site. Is it that I hold careful consideration of words as a higher art than the same of images? Or is it because I was hammered into writing with a fountain pen by my primary school teacher, while told there was no right or wrong in art class.

Who cares? The fact is that web is full of pictures of nudey girls, rude boy race-car videos, User Generated Idiocy and hastily designed pages. We are much less the land of flowing milk and honey for design as envisaged by the futurists, more like conurbation riddled with more back allies than Soho. Maybe it's time creators of 2.0 sites raised the bar in their briefs for quality over quantity of uploaded content. This is a site with a challenge I've enjoyed. Touché my friends.

5 of the Best

Just putting myself back together for another week. Last week saw Dare scooping 5 Awards at Campaign Digital, including MD Mark Collier's special award for Best Digital Achiever.

For the full serious review, see Coops Blog, however the best of it for me was to win an award for Lynx Blow. It's run a long year of turning heads, scooping various awards here and there, an this prestigious award sort of marks the end of the awards year so I'm very much a happy bunny.

And she still looks hot!

Racy Work For Barclays from Dare

Well, I've been away for a week searching for the last remains of the lost city of Atlantis (more on that soon); and it seems that Dare have been in the news while I've been away, having Barclays Ad's removed from MSN for being too racy. This YouTube video shows the full, uncut version of the Ad, written by Yasmin Quemard and edited by Kooch Chung. Nice work guys.




The project consists of a set of three Ad's, all spoofing some famous movie scenes. Each one carries comedy on its own merit, with this one being my favorite:

This is What we Do all Day

At dare....



really. Just dance



via Kooch

Ethan Haas Was Right?

Who is Ethan Haas? and what is The Clover Field Project? Looks like a film from the guys who made LOST. They're doing a good job of creating some Buzz on the net right now by selectively releasing conflicting bits of information to the world of film geeks; and now Paramount have released an official trailer which only throws up more questions.

This is Buzz working at it's best, with a neat Blogger Link also to colour the mood.

Inneresting MP3

Here's a link to an interesting mp3. Basically it's Flo and Mike sitting in Flo's garden crapping on about the state of Digital advertising and turning over some very interesting ideas about the state of Digital, where it is and where we may be going over the next few months.

Gondry does HP

Great.



Refreshing... Gondry brings a breath of fresh air to HP's campaign.

Map of the Digital Seas

...Not sure I agree whole heartedly with this, however it presents it in a much nicer cartographic way than the ugly venn diagrams that I see planners so often presenting in long-winded presentations which try to unpick the complicated relationships which keep the digital market tied together.

I'm not sure where it's from as it was sent to me in an email from my girlfriend; send me a link and I'll post the Via.

Dare do DRTV

And so, here I am, just over one year into the crazy world of Dare and ddddigital Advertising and I didn't expect to be posting a Vodafone DRTV in the folio of projects worked on at this place. For my part I have to pass on all production credits to the amazingly talented illustration hands of Gavin L from the Creative Dpt, and Luke from the creative hothouse that is Dareschool. My contribution was in the technical/ finishing area only, wrangling renders etc.

I think that the work stands by its self, without any long winded appreciations from my dulcet tones; it has all of the style that we should be expecting from (otherwise often dull) DRTV commercials, and definitely is a champion. It seems that creativity and perseverance (a lot of sweat and mouse-grease from Gav), have outperformed the super-high production budgets and professional broadcast work flows of the big-boy agencies who rule the roost in this field of putting together TV commercials. Hats off to all involved - Eduardo lists the credits on his blog. For my part, only a satisfied smile and the hope that Dare continues to play a part in bringing it's creative edge onto the Telly.

I Love this Town:

Sometimes I feel like I'm on some sort of continual trip. Only in a Digital Advertising Creative Department can time spent uploading useless videos of lunchtime excursions down the craziness of Oxford Street be constituted as time well spent. Yesterday Lunchtime I stumbled out of a book shop and into some sort of Pseudo-Religious Carnival led by a 20 foot tall Hare Krishna on a giant penny farthing bicycle. I recorded the event thus:

Nike +

Well here's one of my preferred voices from the film world, reading some bullshit nike Ad copy. I liked this up to about half way through the first time I saw it. I now think that the script should read:

"I am Jack’s worn out trainer. I wanted to burn every fucker who out paced me as I wheezed along the south bank in my overpriced, swoosh branded, air pumped pink laced training shoes; side glancing me as they passed by with their ears plugged and their beat matching software controlling the frequency of their stride.

Why run when you can drive?"

Lynx Blow : Takes to the streets

Lynx Blow live on the streets of London town.

Advertising Cocks

This is just great:

Jackarses.

We all Hate McDonalds

A nice Ad:




"I still hate them though." - Ade Rowbotham

Today I am sick. Sick in the body, sick in the mind... and now sick in the soul. My body I can heal with rest, sleep and hot whisky toddies. My mind is difficult to heal, it must be nurtured and cared for as a young newly germinated seedling if I am not to burn up and become more ashes left at the bottom of Advertising's relentless bonfire. My soul suffers a long sickness of surrounding. London. Such a rat-race as this exists in few places on Earth. The dizzy heights of modern society is to be found here, amongst the Fitness First rucksacks mounted on suited backs up close and uninvited; invading your personal space like rapists on the tube. A Noise so loud, a shout so meaningless. Here in this jungle of overworked lab-rats there is no silence to find your piece of mind. No space between the words to find subtlety or subtext. Here McDonalds owns everything and all signs point to a fast-food life style where the only winners are those who leave their morals behind and join the un-righteous march of progress.

McDonalds? McShit I say.. Fuck your French fries. I piss on your salad and excreta in your burger you tower of reconstituted waste dressed as lifestyle food. You may be able to afford nice advertising and crafty product photography however nothing you do can conceal in my burning, dull cow eyes the trickery, the burglary, the lies you spread; the lives you corrupt, the taste buds you fool the crimes against mastication committed through ignorance in your name. You want a piece of me? Then it is done - Kitchen knives at Dawn and we'll see who makes the better salad....

satire

this is bad, but fucking great at the same time.