Colin and Cannes

Cannes draws huge crowds this time of year, not only for this little film festival you may have heard of, but also for the presentation of the Lions to the best and brightest in advertising. Looks like Sapient acquired quite a few this year:


Including a Gold Lion for these sweet interactive vending machines:


(At a tech convention)


(At a mall)

Not that I personally had anything to do with any of that... but let's see what happens in a few years.

But back to the film festival. I got to catch up with a friend from Miami Ad School last night and he told me about this film Colin which was killing at Cannes, literally and metaphorically.



Horror's not really my thing but there are a few twists to this zombie story. Apparently it's from a single zombie's perspective, trying to figure out what has happened to him rather than a person trying to escape hoards of flesh-eating freaks. Then there's the fact that the entire budget was about $70, which was spent on a crowbar, tea, coffee and some tapes. It's the debut film of director Marc Price and Nowhere Fast Productions. Price lives in London and has no formal film training but picked up his skills from watching the DVD commentary of other directors. He's attracted the attention of some Hollywood and Japanese distributors, who are currently bidding for the rights to it.

And the entire cast of over 100 people worked for free, most of whom were found through Facebook and MySpace. All the make-up artists volunteered their services as well. And when asked where the idea came from, Price said
""A couple of friends were round a few years ago watching Romero's 'Dawn of the Dead,' recalls Price. "And we were lamenting the fact that we could never make a zombie film -- we wouldn't be able to acquire a budget."

"Then I just woke up before everyone else -- I was probably a bit hungover -- and I wondered if a zombie movie from a zombie's perspective had been done before."

Here's a few interesting articles about it from CNN and Times Online.

Funtastic!

Can I reiterate how excited I am to be going into such an innovative industry? When people ask me what I do I'm gonna say "I'm in the idea business."

Like Bugosky says "Figure out what you like to do best in the world of marketing and forget the rest. Focus your energy in those areas and develop your own philosophies. We’re all making it up as we go along. Nobody knows anymore or any better than you do so tap into that personal passion. And if it’s not fun, figure out why and change it."

I've had so much fun at the Lincoln Road office the past two days and I can't wait for us to move there for good next week.

So moving on to some cool stuff I've seen lately that is competing to go to Cannes. First is a Future Lions idea submitted by my friends Ronney and Eric. Sick idea for fusing video and photo in several digital-scapes.

Flip Fuse from Eric Roller on Vimeo.

I also checked out the banner blog today and thought it was cool that they are endorsing some of the student-made videos for the 48 hour brief I mentioned a few posts ago.



This one is so simple, yet so innovative. I'm surprised I didn't think of it. Even if I had, I wouldn't know how to make it interactive like this:



The only thing that bothers me about it is that they have a pause button flashing instead of a stop button. And it should link to the online petition, not the contest itself. But the kids that came up with this one get mad props nonetheless.

Also, thanks to MM, I found out about the CP+B Hero Factory. So of course I had to make one. Kinda resembles my superhero self at their Christmas party last year, lol.