Logorama from Marc Altshuler – Human Music on Vimeo.

Logorama, French Agency H5‘s film that we reported on previously, won an oscar this year. Congratulations!

Logorama is 17 minutes of Hollywood blockbuster action, rife with car chases, natural disasters, and hostage-taking, but created entirely out of real world logotypes and brand characters.  In it, you’ll see the Michelin Man, the Haribo kid, Bob’s Big Boy, Mr. Pringle and Ronald McDonald, but in some very unfamiliar roles playing the classic movie archetypes of good guys, bad guys and foils. Ultimately, Ronald’s antics bring the city to a state of chaos, but nothing like what Mother Nature herself can do – proven by the film’s climax.

part one:

part two:

part three:

from felixsmachines.com:

FELIX & HIS MACHINES

Felix’s Machines are music making sculptures. They were constructed in his bedroom and exist to facilitate music by translating rhythmic audio structures into a three-dimensional visual show.

They function as musical instruments as well as kinetic sculptures. The Machines are a performance device, but can be well suited to act as an art installation, theatre accompaniment, or standalone sculpture.

The Machines invite an audience to share the experience of their creator. He aims to exploit the complexity found behind the workings of most digital music and present it as a more accessible equivalent. These Machines do not intend to match human potential. Instead they exist to test the advantages of mechanical instruments alone.

“Although my medium focuses on the development of acoustic sounds, I am continually inspired by electronic music – the countless abstractions act as blueprints for the construction of its acoustic counterparts. I aim to build a space where artificial and dream-like environments can become a reality.” FT

Element – Claim it! from Morten Halvorsen on Vimeo.

our friends at MASH SF have sent us a little update. they’ve now got their own dedicated MASH vimeo channel. sounds great. go check it out!

Just stumbled across Yo Gabba Gabba courtesy of @Bud_Cadell on Twitter. What’s struck me is that at first I thought it was a version of either Honey Shed (now closed down) or Adult Swim… The humour’s bananas, the guests are on point, the tone is just this side of hipster cool… but then on closer inspection I wonder if it’s far cleverer than that.

Currently showing on Nickolodeon’s Nick Jr, the show clearly is targetting the kids at heart, but also recognising that the adults might have to suffer through this too. Maybe it’s not so far removed from Sesame Street using Johnny Cash or Robin Williams to talk to the kids and not alienate the grownups, but getting hipster cool people like Chromeo to sing songs about “lather up” to wash your hands is pretty full on trendy – check out the games like Biz Markie’s Beat Box (a regular segment of the show) and Mark Mothersbaugh (of Devo fame) teaching you how to draw.

The fact it clearly takes its name from The Ramones says a lot too!

Enjoy (with or without kids) Yo Gabba Gabba!

Shot by Ari Marcopoulos, I’d seen this video a while ago, but only now realised that it was in fact a promo for Adam Kimmel’s clothing. Maybe I was too excited by the actual footage – two guys racing on an insanely fast downhill skating spot in Claremont, California – to realise that it was an “advert”, but then I should have reaslied that the clothes did look just a little too good!

Nice example of real giveashitability, if you ask me: generating talkability via a very viral, engaging, passionate and entertaining piece of content; not forcing the brand into something incongrouos to sell to “the cool kids” but rather focussing on something that they actually care about and enjoy on their own terms.

EDIT: having now watched it about 4 times, it’s a little more obvious. There are many clues that tell you it’s a piece to promote the clothing… The message is just a little less obvious than Ray Ban’s Never Hide (unless you know Adam Kimmel’s a designer). See how many you can spot!

I watched Watchmen last night. I’ll not spoil it for anyone who reads this post, but I will say there’s a significant turning point in the movie. And overall I think it was a reasonably good effort.

This post is not about the film itself, so much as the marketing effort that went on behind it. I’ve posted previously about interactive marketing with regard to Batman and Cloverfield, but I’d not really taken on board the amount of stuff that Watchmen produced.

Idea IS the format blog has an awesome round-up of the marketing around Watchmen and is well worth the read as it’s a kind of personal journey for the author. Some of the highlights are below:

…I examined the pervasive presence of television, the spectre of nuclear armageddon, and a growing sense of moral ambiguity ushered in by an age of scientific enlightenment, religious disenfranchisement and the emergence of the all-powerful media industrial complex (of which I am now such a loyal and trusted servant).

I found that these recurred within the significant graphic novels of the era, both in terms of narrative development, and as visual elements, framing characters existing within a menacing grey area beyond the childish binary of black and white, right and wrong, good and evil.

Meaning that when [we] sat down and talked about how Watchmen could be adapted into a post-9/11 PG-13 superhero story, I was stumped…

Principals that they lived by in creating the marketing collateral include Making It Your Own (with enough time that momentum can build):

Build The Story:

Go Where Your Fans Are:

WATCHMEN Q&A in PlayStation Home [Official Machinima Promo] from PPC Interactive on Vimeo.

The Bigger Picture (bringing it out from the niche fans to the mainstream):

With thanks to Idea IS the format and Daniel Light for the immense personal story and insight, and Blackmaps for the Simpson’s image.

Quick update. Here’s another great (and slightly longer) video from the Rapha Tour of Califonia.

Rapha again! Text ripped straight from the Rapha Continental site. The video makes me dream about spring riding!

The Tour of California is as close as we get in this country to a Grand Tour like the Giro, the Tour de France or the Vuelta. What it lacks is the history, the legend and lore. It’s not because California is inadequate in any way, or the route is without drama and difficulty. From the Capitol in Sacramento to the Golden Gate, down the Pacific coastline and through ancient forests and wind turbine farms into the Central Valley. Then south, over the San Gabriel Mountains to the top of Palomar, the Tour of California is as epic a ride as it is a race.

One of the reasons the Rapha Continental came into being was to blend that effort more commonly associated with elite competition with the everyman’s experience of an epic ride, to suffer and test ourselves against our own limits, our friends and the topography. To witness, first-hand, a ride’s intrinsic virtues, it’s surfaces, people and places. To ride exposed to weather, distance and fatigue and then to chronicle and share the experience, so that the reader might become the rider.

That’s why we chose to ride the Tour of California, to chronicle, stage by stage, its climbs, descents and the characters along the way, to exalt both the contest and the 750 miles of roads on which it will be held. To pay homage to the professionals’ everyday heroics, to their machine-like resilience and staggering physical prowess. In return for the inspiration we draw from their efforts we offer, through our own, our humility and respect.

From the start, we committed to riding our tour as true to our ethos of being as self reliant as possible. Along the way, many things caused our collective resolve to waiver: distance; elevation gains; sheer logistics, diminishing daylight and constant attrition. That’s what this story is partly about, reconciling our expectations with the limitations imposed upon us and continuing to persevere. Those expectations are based partly on what we believe the pros will do on these same roads and partly on the epic days we ourselves have ridden in the past. The riding we encountered on the Tour route was without a doubt extraordinary – we knew it would be. The physical effort, however, although not unexpected was monumental, especially this early in the season. Yes, we suffered. But we also worked as a team and it was, in the end, something beautiful.

Every day, before each stage begins, Rapha will share its account of how six better than average, but by no means pro riders fared on the route of this professional stage race. Through photography, video and regular reports, the Rapha Continental will bring you the Tour of California from a unique perspective.