Daily Planet Type Reel

Here's a new reel for the new year. This video comes from Daily Planet.

I love kinetic typography and anything with type animation. So therefore, I love this. There's a mix of 2D and 3D type throughout and nothing about the video is just boring text. Its exciting and upbeat. It showcases all their various commercial and advertising. There's even a couple dailyplanet logo animations thrown in there as well.

There seems to be a cut every 2-3 seconds in this 1:14 video, but one cut flows right into the next and it never gets stale. In fact, its a pretty awesome testament to all the cool things you can do with text.

I hope I start seeing more 2011 type reels in the near future. Any others out there that should be checked out?

Frequency Television

Lots of new things coming up this semester from Frequency Television!


Frequency Television is Columbia College Chicago's television station run by CCC students. FTV features talk shows, news shows, sitcoms, and sketch comedy. All content is produced and edited by college students at Columbia College.

Last year, Frequency won many awards and were even Emmy nominated for a few of their shows, including Debbie's Got Class, a sitcom set in the 1950's. Here's a clip from the pilot of Debbie's Got Class.

They even have cooking shows!

Shows in production for the upcoming semester include FreqOut, ENT. 101, and The Stalker. So if you want to learn more about new stuff at Frequency you can follow them here on Facebook or Twitter to get more information on these upcoming shows and more.

Glance

Stumbled upon this short video this morning, which I really enjoyed.

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ScalesoffMedia presents "glance", a look at one morning in downtown Chicago. Its a short glance though, as the video is only a little over a minute long, but its definitely worth checking out.

Here are the credits taken from the Vimeo page:

Length: 1 minute 11 seconds

Camera 60D - 50mm 1.8
Sony Vegas Platinum 10
Magic Bullet Mojo

Music : Imaginations by Jinesis - I'll Be (the gold edition)

The video starts and ends with a shot of an escalator, which I believe is at Union Station. Its an interesting collage of Chicago streets, landmarks, and other buildings. With mostly close-up shots, its sometimes hard to decipher where in Chicago we are at and it becomes somewhat of a guessing game. I also really like the slowed down taxi shot thats cut in somewhere in the middle.

Towers wins awards in 2010

Towers Productions is a production company in Chicago, IL that has helped bring us shows like Gangland, High School Confidential, and American Justice.


Towers is a great production company in the city of Chicago that deals with a lot of documentary-based work. Year after year they win awards for their work and 2010 was no different.

From their website:

Silver Telly Award - Videography/Cinematography - Undercover: "Mark Whitacre: Operation Harvest King"
Silver Telly Award - Editing - "Undercover: Mark Whitacre: Operation Harvest King"
Bronze Telly Award - Documentary - "Inside the Iraq War"
Bronze Telly Award - Set Design - "Undercover: Heidi Landgraf: Operation Green Ice"
CINE Golden Eagle Award - "Inside the Iraq War" for The National Geographic Channel

If you weren't able to catch "Inside the Iraq War" on The National Geographic Channel, it was a very interesting documentary.

Reel Time

Reels are important for any company, designer or editor. They showcase who you are as an artist in one 3-4 minute clip.

Protokulture's reel (from August 2010) is a great example of how to mesh work/projects together into one cohesive statement about your company. They used the song We Are Rockstars by Dawn of the Dead. I like this choice because its a fast, fun song and they match the pacing of the song with all their work very seamlessly.

I'm a fan of reels that are fast-paced with fast cuts and I think Protokulture executes this well here. A lot of times it can be hard to match up work from different clients and make it fit into another piece that doesn't stand alone. One advantage of Protokulture's reel is that a lot of work they do is advertising based so there are a lot of commercials cut up in there. But even that is done nicely when we see different company logo bumpers pop up on screen one after another.

Soundlapse

Take a few people from ONE at Optimus, mix in some everyday production/office equipment and what do you get? A cool video with a catchy beat.

This "day in the life" look into ONE at Optimus is short and sweet. ONE at Optimus is a production/post-production facility under one roof that is apart of Optimus located in the heart of downtown Chicago. With "Soundlapse" we are able to get a small glimpse into their facilities and the way they operate. Pretty neat.


Plus, they look like they are having fun. Maybe they enjoy their jobs so much because they get such nice greeting cards.

American Arab

Here's a look at American Arab, directed by Usama Alshaibi and edited by Leslie Simmer.

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Kartemquin is most widely known for their 1994 documentary, Hoop Dreams, a story surrounding two high school students on their quest to follow their dreams and reach the NBA. If you have not seen this film, I highly recommend checking it out. It remains one of my favorite documentaries.

American Arab , a project of Kartemquin's Diversity Fellowship, appears to be a gripping portrayal of the struggle of one filmmaker's journey after 9/11. Through the use of historical footage and animated sequences, the film attempts to answer what it means to be an American Arab in post-9/11 society.

In the world of advertising and tacos...

Here's some recent work on the advertising side of things from Protokulture. Protokulture is a post-production company located in downtown Chicago that focuses on design, animation, and visual effects. They often produce work for commerical advertising, including this Taco Bell commercial spot below.

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From Protokulture's website:

Protokulture loves tacos. We created a variety of word-mark designs and visual effects for these Taco Bell spots.

Want to see more? You can find the other two Taco Bell spots on their website.

While She Sleeps

Check out this stop-motion piece from DK Chicago interns back in October 2010. Featured on Digital Kitchen's blog, this short piece shows the transformation of a blank chalk wall into the Digital Kitchen logo. It's always great to see projects created by interns and even better to see companies like Digital Kitchen showcasing the work.

Post Magazine Talks Oscars

In other news around the world, its almost that time of year again when the best movies from 2010 will duke it out in the hopes of taking home the Academy's top prize. January's edition of Post Magazine talks about which films they think will win an Oscar this February.

Since the nominations don't come out for a few more weeks, the playing field hasn't been narrowed down yet, so Post covered which films they think will be in the running.

In the Best Editing category, Post mentioned The Social Network, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, Inception, 127 Hours, and Unstoppable.

Animation had Toy Story 3, How to Train Your Dragon, Shrek Forever After, Tangled, and Despicable Me as the top picks.


Interesting notes from the article:

-The Social Network was edited using Final Cut Pro, but both Inception and Unstoppable were cut on Avid.
-If you were a fan of the first part of the seventh Harry Potter film, you'll be glad to know that Mark Day, editor of the last three Harry Potter films, is busy working on the second part of the Deathly Hallows.
-Toy Story 3 looks like it could bring in another win for Pixar. It made over a billion dollars this year worldwide.
-127 Hours shares a similar editing style with The Hurt Locker which won the category last year.


To read the article, visit Post Magazine online.