12 Films In 12 Months

A few months back when I was working on the music video and featuring one-a-day on my Twitter feed, my friend Kerry sent me a video to check out.  Well, I slacked on posting it, but now it seems fitting to post it as I’m working on a western.  It’s the video for the song “Knights of Cydonia” by Muse and it’s a strange and awesome genre-mashing video featuring lazer-toting, kung-fu fighting cowboys…and that’s just the beginning.  Check it out:

Here’s a round-up of the videos I featured on the Twitter feed this last week.

Trumpet - Simplifying Summer - Togs or Undies?: Trumpet, an Australian ice cream company explores the moment when “togs” (speedos) switch from being a swimsuit to underwear in everyday life.

Discovery Channel - I Love the World: A fun, well-done ad that simultaneously makes you smile in fascination and joy at the world we live in and want to watch more Discovery Channel.

National Australia Bank - Climb Every Mountain: A man faces challenges and pursues his dreams while everyone around him sings an inspirational, semi-operatic score.

Nike - Defy: A beautiful, visually poetic piece of athletes going airborne.

Apple - Think Different: This is one of my favorite ads of all time. On the surface it has nothing to do with computers, but it works on a deeper level to connect emotionally with the viewer and to tie that emotional connection to Apple. The “Think Different” campaign is considered to be the marketing campaign that helped save Apple and restored it’s reputation in the late 90’s.

This last week I focused on advertisements for candy. It seems to me that candy commercials have, of late, become more and more quirky, odd, and random. I don’t know if they’re trying to reach for a different, perhaps slightly older and more ironic market (maybe assuming that younger kids are going to eat candy regardless); or if they’re trying to create commercials that become a little more buzz-worthy and viral online. Either way, there has been some strange and creative ads coming out recently. Here are a few of them.

Skittles - Touch: A slightly tragic ad of a man who has the power to turn everything he touches to Skittles.

Starburst - Berries and Cream: Oh the “Little Lad Dance” - brilliant and odd. If you want to learn how to do it, click here.

Skittles - Long Beard: This one is so weird and slightly disturbing - and yet it still makes me laugh.

Skittles - Singing Rabbit: Another somewhat tragic story from Skittles. This time it’s about the wisdom in trading your Skittles for a singing rabbit.

Snickers - Get Some Nuts!: How can you go wrong with Mr. T in a tank barking lines like, “If I ever catch you actin’ like a crazy fool again, you’re gonna meet my friend Pain!”? You can’t.

Last week I featured four Sony Bravia ads and an ad for Guinness (which was somewhat related). The Sony Bravia “Colour Like No Other” campaign has been absolutely remarkable. From the first in the series, “Balls”, the campaign has set itself apart by creating visually captivating ads that don’t rely on computer-generated special effects. In fact several of them have making-of featurettes that show off all that went into pulling off the incredible visuals.

Sony Bravia - Balls: This ad has won numerous awards and I’m stoked to have found the longer version to show you here. I think I’ve watched it dozens of times, but every single time I get sucked into the beautiful interplay between the music and the visuals. It’s amazing to watch 250,000 bouncy balls flying down the streets of San Francisco. If you’re interested the making-of can be found here.

Sony Bravia - Paint: It’s like a fireworks show with paint. It manages to follow up the “Balls” ad while remaining completely it’s own entity (not an easy feat). The making-of can be found here.

Sony Bravia - Bunnies: This is a remarkable and well-executed use of stop-motion animation. When I first saw this ad, I thought that parts, if not most, of the animation was computer generated and then placed into stop-motion footage because I thought, “No way they were able to do this in reality”. But after watching the making-of teaser, I realized the only major thing they messed with in post was to remove the braces holding the jumping bunnies in the air.

Sony Bravia - Pyramid: This is one that hasn’t appeared on the European Bravia site (which is where the others were featured) and from what I’ve read, might be exclusively for the Egypt market. Either way, it’s still fun and continues the feel of the campaign well.

Guinness - Tipping Point: From the same director who created the Sony Bravia “Balls” ad, comes this fantastic ad featuring a large, village-wide domino-effect chain reaction.

Here’s a couple more that I featured at the beginning of this week (and then I left town and slacked on putting up any more for the week). They continue in the Rube Goldberg Machine-esque theme of the Guinness ad.

Honda - Cog: A brilliantly amazing ad that took 605 takes to get right.

Brylcreem - Effortless: I’m in awe of the timing, skill, and choreography that went into producing this ad. You can watch them make it here.

This last week, I continued the music video theme with a selection of videos from director, Spike Jonze. He’s another great music video director featured in the Directors Label DVD collection. In fact, all five of these videos can be found on his Directors Label DVD. Enjoy.

Beastie Boys - Sabotage: Such a fun video. It’s a great take-off/homage to the old cop shows of the 70’s and 80’s.

Wax - California: A mesmerizing slow-motion single-shot of a man running through the streets on fire.

Weezer - Buddy Holly: The first single off of Weezer’s self-titled “blue” album, this clever video seamlessly combines footage of the band and the TV show “Happy Days” to wonderful effect.

Bjork - It’s Oh So Quiet: I love the fun and whimsy in this video. There’s a wonderful play between the quiet, soft verses and the loud, musical dance-number chorus that only gets better when you add the video to it.

Fatboy Slim - Weapon of Choice: Who’s idea was it to feature Christopher Walken solo in a dance number for an entire music video? Brilliant.

I’ve continued to feature music videos as my Favorite Video of the Day this week; and this time around I focused specifically on videos directed by Michel Gondry. Gondry is a French director with a wild, creative imagination and a love for playful, trick photography. He made a name for himself here in the States through his music videos and commercials, most of which have been collected on DVD as part of the Directors Label series (an incredible series of DVD’s, I own them all). In recent years, he’s directed films like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Be Kind, Rewind. I hope you enjoy this small selection of his music videos.

The White Stripes - Fell In Love With A Girl: How can you not love a music video animated in Lego?

Kylie Minogue - Come Into My World: A delightfully surreal single shot. The direction and choreography taken to pull it off is impressive.

Chemical Brothers - Let Forever Be: A trippy video filled with mind-twisting visuals and choreography.

The White Stripes - The Hardest Button To Button: A great stop-motion-y kind of video that plays wonderfully with the pacing and construction of the song.

Bjork - Bachelorette: This video is not only filled with cool storytelling, it also tells an interestingly provocative story.

For most of May, I’m going to be featuring music videos in my Favorite Videos of the Day. I love music videos and there is so much diverse and remarkable work out there that it’s been really fun to start digging around online to find some good videos to feature. Here’s a round-up of this week’s videos:

Radiohead: “Street Spirit (Fade Out)” - A hauntingly beautiful song mixed with incredible black and white footage that plays with variable speed shooting and high contrast lighting to wonderful effect. Directed by Jonathan Glazer.

Gnarls Barkley: “Going On” - This video just came out in the last couple of weeks and I loved it right away for the energy and movement, art direction, and the great use of text all throughout. Directed by Wendy Morgan.

Red Hot Chili Peppers: “Can’t Stop” - Inspired by the “One Minute Sculptures” of Erwin Wurm, this video is fun, whimsical, colorful, and creative. Directed by Mark Romanek.

The Shins: “Pink Bullets” - A wonderfully animated stop motion story of love found and lost. Directed by Adam Bizanski.

Johnny Cash: “Hurt” - What can I say about this video. It’s brilliant. Johnny Cash covers the Nine Inch Nails song “Hurt” and adds a deep poignancy and gravity to the lyrics as the song and video wrestle with the ideas of legacy and mortality. Directed by Mark Romanek.

Here’s a round-up of this week’s favorite videos (as posted on my Twitter feed). Enjoy.

Snickers - Red vs. Green - A brawl breaks out between the light-up red and green figures at crosswalks.

Adidas - Whole World - I really like the Adidas “Impossible Is Nothing” ad campaign and this particular ad ranks as one of my favorites.

Talk Talk Ad - Wonderfully creative and fun.

Young@Heart sing “Fix You” - Besides the fact that “Fix You” is already one of my favorite Coldplay songs, this performance of it by the English chorus Young@Heart is made all the more poignant and beautiful by the story behind it: (from the YouTube description) “The performer here is Fred Knittle, who suffers from congestive heart failure. This song was intended to be a duet between Fred and another chorus member, Bob Salvini. Sadly, Bob died of a heart attack and it was left to Fred to carry the song on his own.” The clip is from a film also titled Young@Heart that’s in theaters right now.

Stevie Wonder - Superstition live on Sesame Street - Stevie gives a fantastic performance of “Superstition” while visiting Sesame Street. It just makes me smile when I watch it.

Over the last week, I’ve posted a video each day on my Twitter feed as my “Favorite Video” of the day. My plan is to post a new one every weekday. Of course, in the back of my mind I wonder if I’ll come up against a time when I can’t find anything I want to post; but for now I’m not too worried as, let’s face it, there’s a lot of fun videos being produced and shared online. There’s no specific formula as to which videos I’m picking. Mostly I’m just picking videos that I find to be entertaining, challenging, interesting, beautiful, remarkable, inspiring, or just plain funny. Some weeks may have themes, others may be completely random; it just depends on what I manage to come across.  I’ll be posting roundups of the week’s videos each Friday, but if you want your daily fix, you can follow me on Twitter here.

Here’s a roundup of this week’s videos:

Burst - A remarkably beautiful ad full of slow-motion water balloons

Awareness Test - How did you do on it?

Karate Slow Motion - I cringed, but could not look away. So fascinating.

Penguins - BBC - So fantastic.

Garth Merenghi’s Darkplace - The is a seriously awesome series that was apparently on the BBC a couple years back. If you get sucked in and need more, there’s several more episodes on YouTube.