Find out what inspires the talented artists at Nice Shoes by following our blog. This will be updated with audio, video, images, links and anything else we find interesting, exciting, or especially creative!
A boy called Anastacio.
Nice Shoes contributed to the recreation of a touching true story about this boy’s recovery from Leukemia. This Ronald McDonald House Charities spot premiered during Super Bowl 2012 and was directed by Malcolm Venville for Anonymous Content.
The spot shows a close up of Anastacio holding close up photographs of himself as a sick child. He lets the top photo fall to the ground and this reveals another photograph but of a healthier version of himself. This action is intercut between shots of his supportive family. Eventually we cut wide enough to see Anastacio as he lets go of the last photo and we get the message the his rehabilitation is complete.
Obviously Anastacio wasn’t professionally photographed at every stage of his illness. So that’s where our team came in – using one healthy base photo of Anastacio
as an end point and having reference photos from a various of stages of his recovery to achieve the immediate steps.
We created the least well version first that still had to look somewhat visual appealing. It became apparent that some immediate reference could be found in colleagues with lack of hair and winter gray skin. But ultimately we used a blend of cloning techniques and photos that we took of peach fuzz, bald heads, shaved eyebrows and skin close ups. Through 5 stages we introduce more healthier skin tones and more hair but the real challenge was capturing the subtle change in the fullness of his face.
Andy Mai and Selim Yang at Nice Shoes did a wonderful job of this subtle balance and it was their collaboration that nailed the overall success of the transformation. Kudos to them.
Sorry to lure you in with expectations of William”Refrigerator” Perry and the 1985 Chicago Bears strutting their stuff. Now that you’re here anyway, let’s take an unbiased look at the best ads from this year’s Super Bowl. (EDITOR’S NOTE: This blog post is completely biased)
First off, we have an excellent spot for Budweiser Canada color graded by Lez Rudge, “Flash Fans,” that brings big league spectacle via flash mob to a minor league hockey game.
Some of you “quicker-on-the-uptake” readers may have noticed the brand new Nice Shoes marketing campaign that debuted this week in our latest newsletter. (check it out here) (or here)
But, being an editor, I’m always interested in the out-takes – the stuff that was left on the cutting room floor, so to speak.
So here now, for you loyal Nice Shoes Blog readers, are the top slogans that, for one reason or another, didn’t quite make the cut into the final campaign:
To kick off our poster series, yours truly created the first one. I was inspired by Russian constructivism and old school architectural zipatone renderings. Download the hi-res here.
Happy Holidays everyone! What better time than the Christmas, Channukah, Kwanzaa and New Year’s Holiday Season to post my first contribution to the Nice Shoes Blog?
The Nice Shoes Creative Editorial division is the newest offering amongst the Nice Shoes brand of services, joining Design, Visual Effects, Interactive, Color and Finishing.
But, being the new guy on the block doesn’t mean we can’t strive to do things even better next year.
Here, then, are my list of 2012 New Year’s Creative Editorial Resolutions:
1. Put finishing touches on new technology that really would allow footage to “cut itself.”
2. Create clearly defined goals and some other stuff.
3. Rethink the Nice Shoes “Tub O’ Mayo” as a summertime branded client gift.
4. Kick off the “Account Execs are people too!” awareness walk-a-thon.
5. Hire 4-piece rock ensemble to play my theme song every time I enter the edit room.
6. Free Dill Pickle with every edit.
7. Wait until clients aren’t looking before rolling eyes.
8. Be more decisive. No, wait, maybe not.
9. Revolutionize the entire post-production industry by incorporating hourly “pie break” into workday.
10. Think up creative way to bill for “Facebook Time”.
3 guys embark on a 44 day adventure to 11 countries, clocking 38 thousand miles on 18 flights, with 2 cameras and just under a terabyte of footage. The result… 3 short films based on 3 ambitious linear concepts… Movement, Learning, and Food.
Rick Mereki : Director, producer, additional camera and editing
Tim White : DOP, producer, primary editing, sound
Andrew Lees : Actor, mover, groover
Jealousy is an understatement!
Here at Nice Shoes some of us are giving thanks for all that we have this holiday season – a roof over our heads, a warm meal in our bellies, and moustaches.
Why do we have moustaches? I’m glad you asked.
On behalf of Movember, our Nice Shoes team $tash Money have been occupying our upper lips with some friendly, under-rated facial hair for the month of November. Along with countless other virile males out there growing EPIC stashes, we are doing our best to raise vital funds and awareness for men’s health, specifically prostate cancer and other cancers that affect men.
Help us and our moustaches make a difference and DONATE to our official $tash Money Movember page. There is no minimum or maximum to donate and we’ll be fundraising until the end of November. So that means less than two weeks left for you to support this great cause through our magnificent moustaches of mighty magnitude.
Happy Thanksgiving and don’t forget to pass the $tash-ed potatoes!
Of course we give thanks for family and friends. Also for the blessings in our lives. Our health and happiness…
BUT….. are you looking forward to the “thanking” part that day infers? Not a chance, you are looking forward to the food, baby. Mouth watering turkey with it’s tryptophanic effect that puts us into a state of euphoric serenity. Some mashed potatoes, gravy, yams and biscuits.
If you’re wondering, I love that day. I truly do enjoy cooking and almost never get the chance. My wife’s cousin and I insist on experimenting with a new dish every year. We have tried recipes for a savory cranberry/raspberry sauce, deep fried Mac & Cheese (no boxed stuff here), Guyere Popovers and a delicious spinach quiche. This year we will be trying out a few new ones: candied bacon & a fresh recipe for apple pie are going to be the experiments.
I am including the recipes that we have found most successful and hope that you have some of your own to add below….
If ever you walk pass the aquarium here at Nice Shoes, it is very easy to get caught up in all the beauty; simply taking your eyes off of it becomes a challenge and pretty soon you realize you’ve spent a few minutes just standing there, staring into this whole other world. If you watch the creatures that reside in the tank long enough, like I do, you start to wonder what it is they are saying to each other. Are they fighting about something? Do they ever feel threatened by one another? Do they have any insecurities? Any romances going on?
"Don't Burst My Bubble!" by BrittanyRose LaFemina
I’ve started a small series of drawings that illustrate the relationships inside of the fish tank. Some of the fish may be bullies, others may just innocent bystanders. One or two might just be enjoying the wonders of being a water creature. I like to illustrate different situations that I come across; the Nice Shoes aquarium is a personal favorite. This drawing is inspired by the relationship of the innocent bubble coral, and the bully Sea Urchin. He likes to bust chops and tease the other life forms in the tank that may not be able to fight him off. What many people may not know, is that the bubble coral happens to have quite the temperament, so the Sea Urchin better watch out!
Click here or on the pictures to enjoy some other pieces I have done!
This is a peek into my process of building the Verses Poetry Slam case study, which you should definitely check out if you haven’t. If you have already, check it out again anyway. Brian came to me with a song and some footage of the performance and the task of creating an edit that would show people what we created for the event. I was pretty excited about the opportunity and got started right away.
I like to start with the music, which happened to be Flower by Moby. I listened to the song a couple of times through and found moments that I liked, moments that I didn’t like, and moments that would be good for hiding the edits when cutting it down to the length that we want. With the music as the base, I began to fill the edit with shots that I thought fit with the music beneath it. I find it best to start with something that represents a beginning. In this case, I was able to find a lone microphone followed by Rico preparing for the spotlight.
Then I started creating a rhythm to use for the edit. I didn’t want to get too crazy with the cuts because I didn’t want the editing to distract the viewer from the content. But I felt that a nice, steady beat would help to enhance the visuals and get the viewer interested even though we don’t hear what the performers are saying. So I began to look for dynamic moments in the footage to add to this beat I was creating.
Before getting too carried away, it’s nice to insert a breathing moment. Take the music down a bit and allow the viewer to take in some longer shots that help build the tension for the imminent edit. This long shot of the Brooklyn Bridge is really cool and I thought it would be a shame to cut this up, so this was the perfect spot for it. I also thought it would be a good opportunity to mix the performance footage with our render of the background, and I think the result is pretty neat.
Once you have your audience roped in and waiting for that next edit, hit them hard. I thought this shot of the fire coming on at the end of the poem All We Have was really cool. To quote Brian Bowman at this moment, “YES! Awesome!”
I continued to build upon this new energy, keeping in mind that the dynamic visual beats I was finding are more effective when paired with the musical beats.
Then, finally, introduce a finale. I chose the accelerating cuts of the ending to The People vs. Babylon and lined up the climax of that shot with the climax of the music. It also worked well to leave this shot up for the titles that Kristin created specifically for the ending beats of the music.
I own an iPhone, and I’ll be getting a Kindle Fire tablet shortly. And I was blown away by the iPad controlled projections the Nice Shoes design and visual effects teams created for our Poetry Slam. So I’m very excited by all the futuristic, was only available in a sci-fi movie until recently, technology that’s being put into my hands these days.
But former Apple employee Bret Victor warns against limiting interactivity to just one finger in “A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design.” He doesn’t argue against touch screen technology, only that it not be the be all end all of our technological innovation. Victor encourages inventors to think of the expressiveness of the entire human body when designing the interactive gadgets and appliances of the future. He doesn’t offer alternatives, only an exploration of the human body, and how it has interacted with tools over the years.
Like Lenny Mastrandrea, I’ve got nothing but Horror movies on my brain this month.
Horror films seem to be constantly revisited as each generation feels that what scared their parents is ‘hokey’ and ‘cheesy.’ However, rather than revisiting and revamping themes, Hollywood often repackages existing horror brands. What I’m interested in looking at today is how the marketing for those films has changed by examining the posters from the originals and the remakes. This is a little long, so click below to read more: Read the rest of this entry »
William Basinski, an ambient musician who has been composing and playing for over 25 years, woke up one day and decided to digitize his old analogue tapes. These tapes contained music he had made at the beginning of his career. Back then, William would look for found analogue tape, ranging from old classical stuff to Muzak. He would then literally cut out sections and tape them back together to create these endless ethereal, abstract loops. These ambient pieces of music are sublime in their own right where the music itself creates a space, audible to the ear but visual within the mind, while the looped phrasing does not change over time.
William was digitizing these pieces and he stepped away for a minute with his analogue tape playing over and over while it was being transcoded onto a CD. When he returned, the music had changed. At first he didn’t know what was going on and then after listening for a few minutes, he figured it out. The tape itself was so old, the iron oxide powder glued onto the tape was beginning to shed each time the tape passed through the reader head. His loops were actually disintegrating before him as iron oxide dust gathered in the air and fell to the floor. Listening to the resulting digital recordings, of these pieces of music dying before your very ears, never to be heard from again in their original form is romantically tragic. On NPR’s Radiolab William elegantly comments, “I was recording the life and death of a melody, it made me think of human beings, and how we die.” The loops become like our own lives, beautiful and present for only the briefest of time.
The time has come. The ghouls, the ghosts and the beasts abound. Seemed like the perfect time for a horror movie appreciation blog.
Horror movies have changed so much over the decades. Much of it, I believe, has to do with the introduction of color into the landscape. In some ways this was a good thing, but in others…….
Now an explanation
Before the introduction of color, we had films like Dracula, Frankenstein, and The Wolfman. Of course, these films had very limited “special effects”, makeup and the most rudimentary camera tricks. Yet, these films were quite Eerie. Even after the introduction of color into the genre, Horror gave us incredible films like The Fly, Psycho (Hitchcock opted for black and white) and my personal favorite Night of the Living Dead (“They’re coming for you, Barbara”) My oldest son is 10 and I would not dream of letting him watch any of these films. Nightmares would soon ensue. These films were based on an incredible story. I absolutely believe that they retain the “scare” factor despite the technical limitations of their age.
Then came an influx of color in horror films of the 70s and 80s. The Exorcist, The Omen, The Amityville Horror and Poltergeist were all terrifying, all great because the story was still the primary factor. Of course there were many flops, but there were enough that the genre was not in crisis. The effect capabilities were now better, but not a crutch rely upon to sell the film.
We even had films that eventually made fantastic use of color to enhance the story. In Se7en and Sleepy Hollow color was a tool for ambiance used very effectively.
Unfortunately these days the crutches are out. Color and effects are relied on too much. Color not relied upon to enhance, just shock. How much blood and gore can we put in here? The first Saw was very creative and macabre. Followed by SIX sequels. These were all about Shock Value and Gore. We now have FIVE Final Destinations. We don’t have enough 6th Sense. Hopefully some creativity will resurface, and I pray it is not in the home movie amateur footage style. Unfortunately, these days, if it’s decent, it’s probably a remake.
One of the nicest surprises at the Motion 11 conference was Erica Hu’s gorgeous thesis film Seasons. Hand painted textures, seamless transitions and unexpected landscapes make up a lush world of beauty that is easy to lose yourself in. Check it out here.
Have you ever thought about what you would grab from your house if it was on fire? Check out The Burning House Project done by Robert Holden. If you like the 1st one be sure to check out Part 2 as well. Enjoy!
“The Burning House project by Robert Holden is one of the most intriguing compilations that we’ve covered over the past few years. The series focuses on the precious items you would escape with if your house was suddenly engulfed in flames. The hypothetical situation makes us instantly realize just how important some objects really are to us.” – My Modern Met