I too was intrigued by Sylvain Dumais‘ amazingly ambitious promo The Long Haul (subtitled: Photo and Motion commit to a long life together). In case you’ve been living under a rock and haven’t seen it, here it is:
Stop Motion | The Long Haul from DUMAIS on Vimeo.
When Liz talked to him earlier last week it occurred to me: Why aren’t advertisers making a bigger shift away from traditional media in the face of the huge technological leaps and consumption trends (accessibility of the means of production and the increasing demand for user generated content, for example) that have shaped recent pop culture? And why aren’t we seeing more successful integration of print, web and broadcast production and a subsequent convergent final product? Hmmm. Let’s discuss.
And discuss we did. After an hour on the phone with Sylvain, I knew there were several different ways to go with this and all of them visionary and relevant. But we had to start somewhere:
Can you tell me about campaigns you’ve worked on that involved both still and moving parts?
Here’s where I did both: Tourism Montreal UK web banner used both still and motion. It was mostly time lapse based. And later on, the agency (Sid Lee) bought usage rights for a print campaign.
Stop Motion: Montreal in a nutshell from DUMAIS on Vimeo.
After the TV spot I did for BF Goodrich with director Renlogik, the client wanted to buy the print rights but I didn’t shoot high enough resolution to go into print – let’s say that I’ve learned my lesson, as that could have been quite lucrative.
TV Ad – Stop Motion for BF Goodrich from DUMAIS on Vimeo.
With that in mind, are you using any of this exciting new technology: the Red One camera, the 5D?
I’m using a Canon 5D Mark II. God, I wish I had a Red! But the footage of the 5D Mark II is quite something (crispy footage, shallow depth of field and access to a lot of great lenses) and I’m looking into ”pimping accessories” for it for an upcoming project.
Pimping accessories? Go on…
Introducing the DSLR Gunstock Shooters from Steve Weiss, Zacuto USA on Vimeo.
Gotcha. And what about the Artv 5th Anniversary job?
About the Artv 5th Anniversary Ads: Well, as I said, the client is the only art channel in Quebec. Obviously, they are not sitting on piles of cash. So, went they had their 5th year anniversary on air they wanted to do some short tv spot for it. Talking with the client, they come to a fairly cheap (moneywise) concept: a 8 foot tall #5 that we put into art related contexts around Montreal. I don’t know what the total budget of the whole project was, but I’m quite sure that it was under 15K, which is really little for broadcast. So I was pretty much given carte blanche as the agency just decided the locations where we (me, an assistant and the project coordinator) would go, we would then check out the scene, decide our point of view and moves, install the #5 and the rails for the dolly and then shoot once and wrap.
Stop Motion – Artv from DUMAIS on Vimeo.
Stop Motion – Artv from DUMAIS on Vimeo.
We did 8 of those in 2 crazy but really awesome days! And the client finally picked 4 of them to go on air. I think the agency committed to deliver 2. As I said on the phone earlier, I have a feeling that in most of the big agencies, if someone said: ”hey, I have 15k for 2 tv spots” they would say sorry, but it’s not enough. We proved them wrong. I mean, those ads still look great, they cost close to nothing and we were all paid. Plus, they we’re on air less then a week after we shot them.
Yikes, I can hear broadcast producers wincing at that story and clients everywhere rejoicing. Can you look into your crystal ball and tell me what advertising looks like in 5 years- will there be more convergence between still and motion, is this technology driven (ie. the Red One) or is it because of the new opportunities offered by new media?
My bet is, that in 5 years the photographers who just do photo will be really slow. Advertisers are moving strongly to the web and the web loves motion (great article about the future here). Besides, even the cameras are able to do both things (the Red shoots stills and the 5D shoots video). From now on, every Canon and Nikon will shoot video and they will keep improving. At the same time, as everything is computer based now, photography is less of a craft unfortunately. Creatives in agencies have cameras and they don’t always feel the need to hire a pro photographer, sometimes they do it by themselves too. I’m teaching at Pikto where some of my student don’t know much, but have the same gear than me and are shooting here and there for corporate and commercial clients. And those CGI artist are getting really good, I would have never have guessed that these pictures were CGI.
I think that generally, the Ad world is shrinking as everything is becoming user generated content. I think Ad agencies need to make the brand better, not sell it at any cost. Besides, we’re also inundated by advertising and the ads really are not always clever or cool. This dilutes the power of advertising – people have Ad blocker in their browser, Ad blocker on their TV. But when you have a great product (ipod), well targeted branding around it and a killer Ad (with a Feist song) then everybody wants it. I think that we’re here (photographer, illustrator, designer, art director) to help make all those great products better.
A good example of the future is Sid Lee getting the Adidas Worldwide account. Instead of doing a bunch of TV and print ads, they first redesigned Adidas’s store in a really cool-dope-great-awesome way. People talked about it, and wanted to see it for themselves. No print ads could have done that. That’s one of the main subjects in the book Conversational Capital- I do believe in that quite a bit.
So, I see the future in my iphone and my computer. Mainstream media is fighting to stay mainstream but a bunch of smaller and more targeted media will emerge.
And clearly those who adapt to the new landscape (whatever that might be) are best positioned to survive. I guess this begs the question, why aren’t more photographers playing with new ways to capture images: Tyler Gray drew our attention last week to a great little piece he did for Polaroid and Angus Rowe MacPherson corralled a Red One to shoot alongside his still camera during his SuperCreative shoot of last month. Anyone else?
From the agency side I also have yet to see the embrace of new media that I expected seven years ago when interactive began to have a modest portion of the media budget. There was a lot of talk about convergence but it takes a special agency like Sid Lee to truly approach marketing in a fresh way. From Hermann Deininger, Chief Marketing Officer / adidas Sport Style:
For the adidas Originals brand, we wanted to tap into Sid Lee’s progressive approach that has taken integration to a new level by seamlessly managing all possible contact points with consumers. Sid Lee rejects boundaries between disciplines and assembles multi-disciplinary teams to a groundbreaking extent. This holistic approach is what we need in order to connect with consumers in the ever evolving post-advertising marketplace.
My guess is that any photographer who also works in a holistic way, who can evolve with a mind to the larger picture will be just fine. Kudos Sylvain.
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Kudos Sylvain indeed.
Heather I’m glad it struck you to explore this debate, Sylvain represents someone who has thrown himself into this relatively new arena whole heartedly and with great success. I’m also surprised that agencies haven’t latched onto the new media thing more but I’m guessing it will continue to be the more visionary /progressive clients and agencies forced to be even more resourceful with their budgets that will make it safe for the others to come and play.
For the client, web based media can represent a high impact vs budget ratio, which you’ve mentioned.
For the desensitised viewer of images they might get to see sponsored imagery that they actually want to see – even seek out. “The Long Haul” film – http://www.thelonghaul.ca has been seen by more than 30,000 pairs of eyeballs in seven days because people WANT to see it, and it generates a conversation. I’m guessing this is what you would call “pull” marketing with a media placement budget of pretty much $0.
For image makers it represents a whole other dimension of creative possibility (and the inevitable truckloads of questionable work). Undoubtedly the viewer’s critical eye developing in proportion to the amount of work that is thrown at them will keep us in check. There’s no match for a strong concept executed with taste, regardless of the medium you’re working with.
Speaking as the producers of this creative, we can say that we are beginning to see a shift in the projects we are being asked to quote on. Over the past year, we have seen an increase in requests for Interactive and webisode work. For us, this creative was a great foray into stop motion, a bit baptism by fire, but a great learning experience. We used the opportunity to work with crew that had diverse work experience trying to merge the film with the stills.
Sylvain’s stop motion experience, Daniel’s focus on lighting , and the crew’s collaboration on the creative is what really made the project a success.
We’re interested to see if the shift will continue, and the mediums begin to merge.
Update: The Long Haul was posted on The Atlantic Monthly’s website today- furthering Daniel Shipp’s point above re: the power of viral. Thanks to both Daniel and Full Serve for their hard work on this promo piece and adding to the discussion, above. Exciting times…
Thanks to everyone for this intriguing discussion. As a young photographer still trying to break out of my shell and expand my client base and experience, I’m finding it ever more difficult to focus on this while keeping up with new and emerging media. There seems to be an endless sea of possibility for the way we create and consume media and I’m struggling to understand which forms I’m most passionate about. I love the still image but am mesmerized by motion.
To cope with the massive amounts of knowledge and information available I have been seeking out creative people in various forms of media. I am interested in collaborating in creative ways and am excited to see how image makers of all disciplines collaborate with each other in the future. I would be interested to hear about other peoples collaborative projects.
I’ve already had clients approach me about doing video based on the promo videos I’ve made for my business. Now the challenge is developing a style as a motion photographer that draws from my still work.
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