commercial

The adorable new animated spot for Oreos wonders if the iconic cookie would change the villainous fates of the Big Bad Wolf, vampires and great white sharks. The spot is set to a jaunty tune sung by Owl City.

Says Janda Lukin, director of Oreo at Mondelez International to Fast Company's Co.Create, "[the commercial] celebrates the notion that something as small as an Oreo can bring about a change in perspective and help people see the world with fresh eyes.”

Watch the spot below and read more here.

The beautiful black and white Audi commercial found below was recently shot by Bill Bennett with a prototype ARRI Alexa. Explains Momentum Blog that the camera "is only sensitive to light in the infrared part of the spectrum, with wavelengths longer than 800 nanometers."

Read more here and watch the spot below.

Filmmaker Chase Jarvis was recently tasked by Samsung to recreate his most vivid dream in order to showcase the capabilities of the Samsung Premium Monitor Series 9.

Read here as Jarvis explains the exact process behind his colorful commercial that eventually involved cannons of colored powder, a Nikon D4, a Sony FS700, Canon DSLRs and a GoPro. Watch a behind-the-scenes video below.

To shoot the launch film for Rolls Royce Wraith, director Angus Elliott set up a massive camera array with 100 Nikon DSLRs. See the set-up unfold in this behind-the-scenes video.

The final product can be found below. (via PetaPixel)

PressKitchen writes: For Indian-born, Toronto-based director Deepa Mehta's motion picture Midnight's Children, Zoic Studios VFX Supervisor Ralph Maiers and VFX Producer Lauren Weidel led a team of artists into the dizzying world of Delhi's slums during the end of British Colonial rule. Zoic Studios worked exclusively from their Vancouver studio to create the visual effects for the film, comprised of 293 VFX shots. Midnight's Children was adapted for the screen by the novel's celebrated author, Salman Rushdie. The film will release in select U.S. theatres on April 26th, with a wider national rollout beginning May 3rd through Paladin/108 Media.

READ THE FULL STORY HERE.

PressKitchen writes: For Indian-born, Toronto-based director Deepa Mehta's motion picture Midnight's Children, Zoic Studios VFX Supervisor Ralph Maiers and VFX Producer Lauren Weidel led a team of artists into the dizzying world of Delhi's slums during the end of British Colonial rule. Zoic Studios worked exclusively from their Vancouver studio to create the visual effects for the film, comprised of 293 VFX shots. Midnight's Children was adapted for the screen by the novel's celebrated author, Salman Rushdie. The film will release in select U.S. theatres on April 26th, with a wider national rollout beginning May 3rd through Paladin/108 Media.

READ THE FULL STORY HERE.

In the latest of an ongoing collaboration with software giant Adobe, Tool Director Tom Routson finds marketing solutions in the most unlikely places.

Watch the two spots below.

Pepsi has released the first commercial with Beyoncé since she was named global brand ambassador. The spot, called "Mirrors," shows the superstar interacting with herself at a variety of points in her career: from Destiny's Child to Sasha Fierce.

Says agency 180 LA's chairman Chris Mendola about Beyoncé's high level of input, "We've worked with a lot of athletes and celebrities, usually the client and agency develop something, then it's presented to the artist or athlete for approval. And then you all go make it and they sign off and approve the final content. This was nothing like that at all."

Read more here on Advertising Age. Watch the spot below.

Romain Gavras directs the epic commercial for Samsung's Smart TV featuring Spartan warriors, cheerleaders, galloping horses and wolves, 18th century French ladies and more. Why? Because when you have Samsung's TV, you can have all these things coming at ya.

See it all come together below. (via Creative Review)

To shoot CoverGirl's latest print and live-action ad in one go, Marcus K. Jones turned to the RED Epic. Jones shot the below spot and then pulled stills from his shoot to go into print including bus and magazine ads. (via RED)

This behind-the-scenes video of Justin Timberlake's charming Target commercial shows 20 of Timberlake's fans who were brought in to sing his latest single, "Mirrors." Little did they know they were actually about to be surprised by JT himself on-camera. The fans genuine reactions will likely bring a smile to your face (and possibly a twinge of jealousy).

Watch below.

Spotify has released the first television campaign for its music streaming services. The three spot, directed by Seb Edwards and from agency Droga5, extol the universal power of music via slow-motion footage and voiceover.

Watch them below.

DP Matthew Woolf turned to ARRI Alexa along with ARRI Zeiss Ultra Prime lenses to shoot two new spots for Soul Headphones starring Tim Tebow and Ludacris.

Explains Woolf, "The look of each spot was to try and fit the ethos of the campaign – 'Soul of Greatness.' The directive was to show these super personalities when they are alone with their thoughts, so a documentary feel on some level, but at the same time a gracefulness that lent itself to the product."

Read more here on ARRI's site. Watch the two spots below.

It seems like The Flaming Lips are everywhere these days, and now lead singer Wayne Coyne is sitting in a brain-shaped chair and shilling for Virgin Mobile. In a refreshingly absurd spot, Coyne asks viewers to retrain their brain as he guides them through a series of funny and silly imagery. It was directed by collective Traktor.

Watch below.

An entirely CGI Audrey Hepburn shills for Galaxy chocolate in a nostalgic new commercial directed by Daniel Kleinman with post-production by Framestore. Explains Framestore, "The process started with an exhaustive search for the perfect Audrey HepburnTM double. The hope was to find someone who could give Kleinman the performance that he needed, and ideally to share as many of her features and characteristics as possible. Framestore then completed a round of extensive pre-shoot facial scanning at its in-house Capture Lab in order to deliver the complexities demanded by this project. This included a FACS (facial action coding system) session that allowed the team to record more than 70 possible muscle movements and capture high resolution textures for building their CG AudreyTM."

Samsung's "Unicorn Apocalypse" commercials got a very special cameo on Oscar Sunday when Tim Burton guest-starred in a new 90-second spot. In the commercial, the famed director comes in for a meeting about a possible movie version of the Unicorn Apocalypse game. The spot was directed my Michael Downing of Epoch Films.

Watch below.

Production company King and Country (K&C) recently worked with ad agency RPA to direct and produce a new campaign for the 2013 Honda Civic, which has been widely lauded by the media and drivers alike.

In the first spot, “More to Love,” the camera moves through the inside of the Civic as blue and white metallic mylar balloons inflate containing kudos from major trade magazines, newspapers and websites. Cut to the outside, where the doors burst open and hundreds of quote-filled balloons spill out of the car, joining others that float together to comprise a heart-shaped cloud, as the voiceover concludes, “It's the best Civic yet.”

Director Lance Acord plays presents a series of explosions (some in slow-motion) for the Adidas spot "Blow Up." The spot comes out of agency 180LA. Watch below.

Brickyard VFX delivered animation for Adobe spot “Animals,” a tongue-in-cheek reflection on huge Super Bowl ad spends, which premiered exclusively online. Conceived by ad agency Goodby Silverstein & Partners and directed by Tom Routson of Tool of North America, the spot features a pair of whip-smart talking animals.

Bonfire Labs was recently tapped to help announce the grand reopening of the renowned San Francisco interactive learning laboratory, the Exploratorium, which is moving to Pier 15 on the historic Embarcadero.

Working closely with the Exploratorium, creative brand consultants from Landor Associates in Chicago and executive producer Lee Anne Weldon of Late for Yoga, Bonfire was challenged to create a commercial that would convey the true ethos of the museum and build excitement for the new space.

Speck and Gordon directed the spot "Party" for Reliant Energy which shows a teen house party going full steam ahead...until the teen's vacationing parents get an alert from Reliant on their phone. The visual effects work was done by Mark Leiss at ArsenalFX.

Watch below. (via Fresh News)

Apple has released two new spots for its iPad and iPad Mini, both depicting different apps that go with words like "wild," "together," and "loud." The ads tout the devices by focusing on the 300,000 apps that are available for them. Mark Coppos and Rebecca Baehler directed.

Watch both spots below.

Reinforcing their position as a leader in character animation (Fox’s Vinnie, Fly Buys, Cadburys, Narnia’s Reepicheep and Eustace the Dragon), MPC introduces “Thomas,” a photo-real VFX-fueled spot for Dell that reveals the transformative power of imagination. The creative effort highlights a strong partnership between MPC, live action production company Furlined, and Director Bjoern Ruehmann.

Visual effects artist Tomas Wall decided to take on the task of directing, producing, writing, shooting and editing this branded promo for glove company Tatchies. He explains about the sci-fi project, "I had an idea about making my own thing. I decided to do what other people want to do but don't have time for doing: a personal project..I wanted to do this project as an experiment to myself. I was the writer, director, producer, D.O.P, post-producer and VFX Artist. How much could I do on my own?"

Watch the full spot and a behind-the-scene below and read more about Wall's process here on The Mill.