Making / Hacking Films: Creative Social Sydney

The latest Antipodean Creative Social, organised by Publicis Mojo took place at Finch, a very progressive content production company down here in Sydney. We met with Emad Tahtouh, their Head of Technology, who presented how Finch works with e.g. the Eye Writer in order to explore new creative concepts, innovative production and augmentation of video. Here is a doco of the evening.

To me it is remarkable that Finch invests in emerging and experimental technologies as they relate to video production. And if you look at Emad’s soldering table you know he is a real tinkerer. I’d be curious to know if other production companies worlwide are offering similar approaches. Or is it still left to the digital agencies to bring these new impulses into the video space?

Emad Tahtouh's work space

Emad Tahtouh's work space

Emad Tahtouh

Emad Tahtouh

CS Sydney donning the bipolar glasses

CS Sydney donning the bipolar glasses

Splendour in the Grass and on YouTube

This Sunday afternoon from 4pm onwards Splendour in The Grass will be running as a free live stream in the masthead on YouTube’s homepage as well as on Virgin Mobile’s channel. This is a first for paid media in our region so everyone here at Mojo is properly chuffed about getting this up.

YouTube masthead with Splendour in the Grass

YouTube masthead with Splendour in the Grass

Many people here including our partner agencies and Google have been working hard to make this happen. If you do live in the right region please enjoy the free stream of a pretty good line up consisting of Coldplay, Kaiser Chiefs, Cloud Control, Elbow, Vaccines and The Vines.

Even better, if you happen to be mucking around at Splendour itself, or know someone that is and/or have a Twitter or Instagram account, please participate with the hashtags #splendour, #splendourlive or #SITG . All tweets will be picked up and displayed underneath the videostream. And some of the Instagram shots might end up in The Vaccines new crowdsourced music video.

Splendour Live Stream Party

Splendour Live Stream Party

There are also live streaming parties running in Sydney, Perth and Melbourne this Sunday, so come on down to the Beach Road Hotel in Bondi or the Bimbo DeLuxe in Fitzroy from 4pm on Sunday and enjoy the festival atmosphere without the mud!

Old Spice reveal: Fabio challenges Isaiah

It seems like I and a lot of other interweb folk have been truly had – see my last post. In a very clever way W+K and Old Spice are pulling our leg: Fabio, the usurper of the scented throne has been copying the famous Responses with mixed results. But now is throwing down the gauntlet, challenging Mustafah to step up.

Respect to the creatives for reinventing the game and playing with social media in a new way. Because naturally Mustafah accepted the challenge and there will be a showdown.

As you can see from the Mexican wrestling-style announcement, it will be hand to hand combat in the bath (mano a mano in el bano). I am expecting a duel of wits, long flowing hair versus presidential abdomen, taking place in the Internet Arena.  It is about to go down in a good 7 hours (high noon EST in the US). Now ask yourself, who do you want to win ?

Addition:
The rules of this video combat are easy. Go here and by watching, sharing, commenting and tweeting the support-video of either camp you contribute to the outcome. My choice is the incumbent, no surprise there.

Another Greenpeace attack: Nike vs Adidas detox

It seems Greenpeace is really stepping up their game since they started to release videos that attack brands with their own visual language. This protest-ad flows in typical Adi-Nike style. I cannot judge the validity of their protest against the companies’ water pollution, but the tools Greenpeace uses have definitely evolved in recent months. On their website you can enter your own name in the adidas “(name) is all in” style and involve your friends. Vote for which one of the brands will move first and out-trump the other in correcting their environmental creds.

Even if both brands have a case of trademark infringement I doubt they will move against this – I’d say it never looks good to sue Greenpeace. Even when they attack Barbie.