Archive for August, 2007
Marcus Nispel
German born Marcus Nispel started his career in advertising as an art director for Young & Rubicam in Frankfurt, Germany. He came to America on a Fulbright scholarship in 1984 at the age of 20 and made his directing debut in 1989 with a series of music videos for C&C Music Factory.
While living in New York, Nispel co-founded and operated his own production company, Portfolio Artists Network, before merging with Ridley Scott and Tony Scott’s RSA-USA to form Portfolio/Black Dog. He joined MJZ in 2000.
To date, Nispel has directed over one thousand commercials and music videos. His commercial clients include: AT&T, Audi, Canon, Chase, Coca-Cola, Dr. Pepper, Fidelity, Kodak, Levi’s, L’Oreal, Marlboro, Mercedes, Motorola, Nike, Panasonic, Pepsi, RCA, Showtime, Sprint, Sprite, Unisys, UPS, US Postal Service, VISA Gold as well as MTV, ABC, CBS and NBC.
His music videos include over fifteen #1 songs and several breakthrough videos for artists such as Puff Daddy, Bush, No Doubt, the Fugees, George Michael, Janet Jackson, Elton John, Billy Joel, Aretha Franklin, Cher, Mariah Carey, Brian McKnight,k.d. Lang, EnVogue, Tony Bennett, C&C Music Factory, Bette Midler, LL Cool J, Bryan Adams and Gloria Estefan.
Nispel has been awarded numerous international advertising accolades for his commercial work, including several Clio Awards, the Moebius Award, the Grand Prix at the BDA Awards, honors from the New York, Houston and Chicago Film Festivals and the Art Directors Club.
His work has garnered 12 MTV Music Video Award nominations resulting in four MTV Music Video Awards, including a 1993 MTV Best European Video Award for “Killer/Papa was a Rolling Stone” by George Michael. Nispel has won two Billboard awards and Music Video Filmmaker Association Awards as well as the MVPA Lifetime Achievement Award in 2001.
Marcus Nispel has been the subject of two documentaries and was featured in Time Magazine’s year-end issue “Best of 1996″ for his Fidelity Investments campaign, “A Time Has Come Today.”
In 1997, Nispel was featured as a speaker at the AICP MOMA Show. The AICP has honored him with several awards and his work is now part of the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art.
His work has been highlighted and screened at the New York Film Festival, the Art Director’s Club and at the Film and Broadcast Museum in Frankfurt.
In 1996 he was honored at the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s “Cross Cultural Dreams” retrospective of his music videos. He was featured in a chapter of Armond White’s book on the pop revolution and was a recipient of the Black Achievement Award for the positive portrayal of African Americans in mass media.
Nispel has been featured in Vogue, Vanity Fair, Details, The New York Times, The LA Times, AdWeek, AdAge and Creativity.
In 2003 his feature film debut “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” for New Line Cinema grossed over 100,000,000 dollars, making it the most profitable movie of the year.
His first venture in directing and producing for television: a modern retelling of “Frankenstein” written by Dean Koontz and co-produced by Nispel and Martin Scorsese.
Presently, Marcus is about to begin pre production on his next feature film, “Pathfinder”, which he developed and is co-producing with producer Mike Medavoy at Phoenix Pictures. In tandem, Marcus will publish the three-part Graphic Novel of “Pathfinder”.
Matthijs Van Heijningen
Matthijs Van Heijningen (1944) has been a director for over a decade, but he has lived and breathed film his entire life. The son of a prominent Dutch movie producer, Matthjs spent his teenage years taking photographs and working on his father’s films in every capacity, learning each facet of filmmaking from building sets to lighting to editing. It’s no surprise, then, that he has a preternatural talent for telling stories on film, nor that he has become one of the most acclaimed commercial directors in Europe.
on the left
Since1999, Matthijs has won a half-dozen Cannes Lions, the most prestigious awards in advertising, as well as countless other festival honors and awards. His work on behalf of Toyota, Peugeot, Renault, Stella Artois, Pepsi, Heineken, Visa, insurance companies Delta Lloyd and Central Beheer, and his stunning spot “Chess” for the Archipelago electronic stock exchange-among many others-have all reinforced Matthijs’ commitment to developing multi-dimensional, human characters within the short-form context. “People are interested in characters’ adventures and this catches the audience’s attention for the message,” he says. His deeply-felt connection to his characters gives Matthijs’ spots a uniquely warm quality and a vividly intelligent sense of humor. “Your commercials should be personal,” he says. “If you don’t feel a personal attachment to what you make, it’s somebody else’s and it probably won’t have a soul.”
Joining MJZ in 2003, Matthijs has brought his dry, sometimes absurdist, world view to an American audience. “Nobody asks to watch a commercial,” he says. “I think you should entertain people one way or another.” Matthijs collaborates with agency creatives throughout the development process, to find unexpected depths in any concept. This commitment to telling great stories with arresting visuals, combined with his interest in the quirks of his characters, leads to a smart, comic sensibility that plays on either continent.
Finally, his process is about having fun. From the short films he made during his legal studies as a young man, to some of the biggest, most high-profile jobs in the global advertising world, this signature sensibility is visible in all the film he shoots. Ironic comedy, solid narratives and a beautiful cinematic aesthetic will always be fundamental to his work. For all his filmic dexterity, however, Matthijs does admit, when pressed, that he is an extremely clumsy man.
Vaseline – Sea Of Skin
Title: Sea Of Skin
Advertiser/Client: Unilever
Product/Service: Vaseline
Entrant Company, City: Bartle Bogle Hegarty, New York
Country: USA
Advertising Agency, City: Bartle Bogle Hegarty, New York
Country: USA
Executive Creative Director: Kevin Roddy
Creative Director: Kash Sree/Craig Smith
Copywriter: Jordan Kramer/Amir Farhang
Art Director: Jon Randazzo/Andre Massis
Agency Producer: Julian Katz
Account Supervisor: Maxim Dashin
Production Company, City: SMUGGLER, Hollywood
Country: USA
Director: Ivan Zacharias
Producer: Nick Landon
D.O.P/Lighting Cameraman: Jan Velicky
Editor: Filip Malasek
Music – Artist/Title: “String Quartet No. 2 3-III” by Michael Nyman
Sound Design/Arrangement: Srdjan Kurpjel/Zound/London
Post Production: The Mill/London
Other Credits: Bruce Wellington – Executive Producer/Production company executive producers-Brian Carmody/Patrick Milling Smith
In “Sea,” large masses of people represent the fabric of skin, using interpretive choreography and placement in landscapes to dramatize some of the skin’s amazing qualities.
Honda – Cog
Title: Cog
Client: Honda
Agency: Wieden & Kennedy, London
Executive Creative Directors: Tony Davidson & Kim Papworth
Art Director: Matt Gooden
Copywriter: Ben Walker
Director: Antoine Bardou-Jacquet
Agency Producer: Rob Steiner
Producers: Fi Kilroe, Madeleine Sanderson, James Tomkinson, Franck Montillot
Director of Photography: David Ungaro
Lighting Director / Lighting: David Ungarro
Account Director: Francesca Birch
Account Executive: Jonathan Campbell
Post Production: The Mill
Special Effects/VFX: Barnsley @ The Mill
Flame Assistant: Dave Birkill
Producer: Fi Kilroe
Editor: Bill Smedley
Sound: Jonnie Burn, Warren Hamilton @ Wave Studios
Music: SugarHill Gang – “Rapper’s Delight”
Honda Cog won countless awards, including CLIO (gold), Epica (gold), Cannes Lions (gold), The One Show (best of show), International ANDY awards (silver), British Television Advertising Awards (Best TV commercial of the year), Advertising Creative Circle Awards, (gold, platinum), Eurobest (gold), D&AD Awards (silver), IPA Advertising Effectiveness Awards (gold), International Automotive Advertising Awards (gold and best of show), and Advertising Festival Ad Awards Tenerife.
The 2 minute commercial, entitled “cog”, uses over 85 individual parts of the new Accord which precisely and intricately “knock on to” and interact with one another to form a complex chain reaction which lasts until the new Accord is finally revealed.
Interesting
This Advertisement for the new Honda Accord was shot in real time with no CGI involved in the sequence. It required 606 takes and cost $6 million to shoot and took 3 months to complete. A single cog sets off a chain reaction that sets component parts of a Honda Accord in elaborate and orchestrated motion.
Context
When Honda came to us, they were underperforming in the UK car market.
One of the most striking reasons for this under-performance was their recessive image. They were seen as dull but reliable. Good engineers, but uninspiring car makers. The car market is too cluttered and too complicated for people to consider many car brands. The more recessive ones fade from people’s attention very quickly.
Philosophy/Solution
Our task was clear – get Honda onto people’s shortlists. This meant combating perceptions of Honda as a brand, not just extolling the virtues of the cars.
Honda’s corporate culture and history are uniquely compelling. Mr. Honda himself was a fascinating, unexpected character. Not to tell these stories would have been a communications crime. So we told them in a series of brand and product ads that explain Honda’s ?Power Of Dreams’ philosophy
Results
Since we started working with Honda in 2002, their sales are up 55%. Consideration of Honda for next car is up from 12% in 2002 to 26% in 2006. Ad awareness is ahead of rivals VW and Toyota on a fraction of their spend. The campaign has delivered over £400m in incremental sales revenue and has helped Honda’s website become most visited of any car manufacturer.