NEW YORK, NY — Following the success of the Emmy-winning series “Intervention,” A&E has created The Recovery Project, a multimedia and community based outreach program designed to raise awareness about addiction and how it is treatable and recovery is possible. A key component to the project are two moving TV spots featuring a powerful, anthemic score composed by Alex Lasarenko, Creative Director of music/sound design house Tonal.

”The goal of the spots is to show people who are suffering from alcohol and drug addiction that they are not alone, even though they may feel alone,” Lasarenko says. ”Musically they wanted something that would symbolize that — something that began very starkly with one instrument, but slowly builds into a larger sounding piece.”

In the spots, entitled ”Share” (:60) and ”Lifetime” (:30) we see vignettes of recovering addicts going through their daily lives while they talk about the more

OAK PARK, Mich. – RingSide Creative has unveiled a newly-built digital intermediate (DI) color grading suite, providing the production and film community with a powerful resource whose video and audio features far exceed anything else in Michigan. The investment in the suite is a clear statement of the company’s support for the film and advertising industries, bringing a Hollywood-style post production experience to Detroit. more

DALLAS, TX — The premiere of “Amanpour” on CNN represents a pivotal new chapter in the career of the news network’s chief international correspondent, Christiane Amanpour. A live global interview program that hosts the world’s elite in politics, culture and beyond, the show makes its presence known with a gripping custom theme from Stephen Arnold Music.

Stephen Arnold Music matched the larger-than-life profile of Amanpour with a strong set of themes – five in all – that reflected her status as one of the top journalists in the field. Written to reach an international audience, the music’s foundation draws off of a signature four-note sonic logo, unfolding via a stirring arrangement of live orchestral strings, horns, and percussion, combined subtly with advanced electronic elements.

”Christiane Amanpour is among the most recognizable talents in the more

Studio Mixing Promos for Football Series “RedZone,” “GameDay” “Replay” and “Total Access” SANTA MONICA, Calif.— Margarita Mix is currently providing sound design, voice recording and audio mixing services to the NFL Network for on-air promotions for its new NFL RedZone Channel, and its shows NFL GameDay, NFL Replay and NFL Total Access. The studio is completing more than a dozen promos each week in a project that will continue through the remainder of the NFL season. more

CHICAGO—Hybrid production studio Vitamin has teamed with DDB Chicago, on a multimedia campaign promoting the 2009 Chicago International Film Festival (CIFF) in which the power of cinema is symbolized by the fleeting movements of a single human eye.

The unusual and highly affecting film consists almost entirely of a close-up of a woman’s eye as she gazes at a movie screen. The eye is shot in time-lapse and undergoes a panoply of emotions from laughter to tears while bathed in the projector’s reflected light. The festival’s logo—a stylized drawing of a female eye—appears at the end along with the tag, “take a deeper look.” more

LOS ANGELES—Bully Pictures continues its hot streak with great, new advertising work. Its most recent efforts include a spot for Mohawk Flooring that’s “frozen in time” and a campaign introducing a new entrée at Panda Express that features a pair of animals that simply refuse to grin and bear it. more

Visual Effects by Mechanism Digital
for 101 Dalmatians Broadway television
commercial.

New York, NY - Mechanism Digital’s Directive: Make dogs talk! . . . to promote the upcoming 101 Dalmatians Broadway musical. Timeline: Three days.

In order to accomplish the task, Mechanism Digital adapted some unconventional visual effects techniques and simplified a typically complex workflow. In the 1940s, animators hand-painted cartoon mouths and teeth over live footage to make animals speak. In more modern times, filmmakers build wire frame CG models of entire bodies and inserted them with extensive image tracking to create the illusion of talking creatures. Mechanism’s studio found a way to replicate and improve upon this process in a lot less time and at a much lower cost. more

Team Group’s New Media Studio released their newest advocacy editorial campaign for America’s Voice. The goal for this production advocacy campaign was to make America aware of the material that is being aired every weeknight by CNN’s Lou Dobbs. America’s Voice is not the only voice that is speaking up against Lou Dobbs, but it is one of the loudest. The newest campaign editorial was developed by Creative Director, Peter Davis, Graphic Designer, Dave Glanz, and Audio Mixer, Howard Brown.

Team has developed weekly video editorials for America’s Voice which are widely viewed and distributed to promote immigration reform through public awareness. In addition to direct distribution through a variety of online portals, our advocacy videos have achieved widespread viral distribution and are easily embeddable on related sites. They are designed to generate political response through calls to action and have resulted in both strong immigration more

DP Eddie Marritz on set of “Gap Born to Fit”
shoot with Panasonic AJ-HPX3700
P2 VariCam. Photo courtesy of Late
Night and Weekends.

SECAUCUS, NJ (September 29, 2009) — Manhattan-based creative services company Late Night and Weekends (New York, NY) has produced a wide-ranging advertising initiative for Gap 1969 premium jeans that features theatrical and web video elements shot with the VariCam 3700, Panasonic’s premier solid-state P2 HD VariCam camcorder.

Offering the ultimate in image quality, the VariCam 3700 (model AJ-HPX3700) advances the art of high-end cinematography by teaming VariCam’s renowned filmic-look, variable frame rates, and subtle tone control with master-quality, 10-bit 4:2:2 AVC-Intra recording as well as Dual link RGB 4:4:4 output. more

DP Phil Wright shoots commercial spots
for largest Ford dealership in Virginia
with Panasonic AJ-HPX3000 P2 HD camcorder.
Photo courtesy of DBL Productions.

SECAUCUS, NJ (September 29, 2009) – Driven by Life (DBL) Productions (Norfolk, VA), providing a broad range of creative and professional services for film, television, documentary, and commercial production, recently upgraded to HD acquisition with the purchase of Panasonic’s AJ-HPX3000 native 1080p one-piece P2 HD camcorder. DBL has utilized the HPX3000 to shoot commercial spots for the largest Ford dealership in Virginia, a television pilot, and a video presentation for the annual meeting of NISH, a nonprofit that creates job opportunities for the severely disabled. more