Sorry I have not updated for a few days - I'm been decompressing from Cannes in Cotignac, France. I very small town 1.5 hours drive north east of Cannes. A friend is house sitting a villa so I jumped on the opportunity to join him for a few days. Ahhhh. I promise to update again soon.

Goodby, Silverstein & Partners Partner/CD Jamie Barrett and Biscuit Filmworks director Noam Murro did their seminar yesterday in Cannes. The seminar was based on their relationship and how the work together to make great advertising. They opened their seminar with this this hilarious film. These two have amazing creative chemistry and it was great to see them talk about a few of their greatest works.

I always look forward to attending the Saatchi & Saatchi New Director's Showcase in Cannes. They always line up a great collection of amazing work. Today's showcase featured 23 works from directors from all over the world. I had seen many of the spots before - like Dvein's Offf opening sequence, James Frost's House of Cards for Radiohead, Nick Hooker's Grace Jone's video (so creepy), Aaron Duffy's knitted short, Eran Creevy's SonnyJ video and Christopher Hutsul's Airforce One. I had never seen the amazing short by Roman Kaelin & Florian Wittmann - and you won't be able to see it as it's not allowed to be posted online at this time (WTF?). I also really enjoyed the fluidity of this spot by Oren Lavie/Yuval & Merav Nathan and this piece by Keith Loutit who, I'm told, creates works for architectural models (neat). Check out the showcase's YouTube Channel for more. On a side note, I was able to gage how less busy Cannes is this year by attendance at this screening. Normally you have to arrive at least a half hour early and wait in a big queue to get into this screening. That was not the case today. I arrived 15 minutes early to no line and there were empty seats. Thought I'd mention.

Psyop's workshop took place yesterday afternoon in Cannes. A great group of people from all over the world were there. My favourite moment was when the delegates were divided into groups, given a music track, posterboard, some markers and a range of interesting visuals and had ten minutes to come up with a concept or story inspired by the music. The song was "Thank You for Being a Friend" (which was also the theme song for TV's Golden Girls). The delegates came up with some amazing ideas - one team even using a camera to create a stop-motion piece. Some pics from the workshop are posted here. Thanks to everyone who came out.

Last night I met the creatives from Ogilvy Stockholm, and their Gold Lion, in the Gutter Bar. The won the lion in the outdoor category for for their campaign for UNA Sweden (United Nations) for fundraising to support the war victims of Georgia. View the campaign, and the other winners, on the Lions site here.

I arrived in Cannes yesterday morning to attend the 56th annual Cannes Lions. People have been saying it will be a very different Lions this year - due to the recession. As many people do not arrive in Cannes until today, I have yet to notice a difference. I'll be sure to post my thoughts & experiences as th eweek progresses.

As you may or may not know, Psyop's Justin Booth-Clibborn, Marie Hyon and Marco Spier are doing a Workshop in Cannes this week (Wednesday from 3-5pm at the Palais). They have just added a new interactive element to their workshop.

“Good design starts with a good concept,” Says Justin Booth-Clibborn, Managing Partner, Psyop. “Taking the germ of an idea and running with it. In that spirit, and to demonstrate the importance of play, spontaneity and creative exploration, delegates will be divided into groups, given a music track, posterboard, some markers and a range of interesting visuals and will be asked to come up with a concept or story inspired by the music. Work will be presented, prizes will be given, fun will be had.”

An example of this "play, spontaneity and creative exploration", is the picture I used for this post. It's a picture of Marie Hyon along with Santogold that Marie and Marco created to experiment with in the creative process of creating My Drive Thru for Converse. See the full size pics here.

Full seminar info is here. Hope to see you there.

As per the post below, I went to Scene Not Herd on Friday night as part of the Worldwide Short Film Festival. The following are a few videos that stuck out in my mind that I wanted to share. I loved the simplicity of Thurdeheist's Jerk It (it was the world premier on Friday night). As a fan of Keith Schofield I was happy to see Mins Move (If You Wanna). I loved the art direction and the narrative in The Buddy System's Horse Mountain. I loved the visual effects of the bees in Beast's Mr. Hurricane and I can see myself posting Slimy's geek chic Wake Up on my friend's Facebook walls on their birthday. A complete list of viedoes that were screened and their credits are here.

As part of the Worldwide Short Film Festival here in Toronto, I'm going to check out Scene Not Herd tonight at the ROM. Seen Not Herd is dedicated to music videos - 90 minutes of music videos. The screening features the world premier of Keith Schofield's MIMS: Move (If You Wanna) (love his Toe Jam video) and also features Crush's Hollow Man video for R.E.M. Crush's Gary Thomas and Stefan Woronko will be on hand for a Q&A at the event. And speaking of Crush, their idents for WFN (World Fishing Network) won a silver in art direction yesterday at Promax/BDA in NYC. Congrats Crush & see you tonight.

To continue on with the vagina theme, see below, here's the story of Zack Johnson who lost his boy parts for girl parts. It's the first in a series of films created for Tampax. You can follow Zack's progression at Zack16.com. Agency is Leo Burnett, Chicago. Found via AdRants.

Here's an interesting cinema experience for cervical cancer awareness and prevention out of Cossette, Vancouver. As Brentter put it, should make for some awkward first dates at a movie. View Eye of the Cervix here. It's directed by Steve Gordon. Full credits.

The third annual Twenty 120 launches today with a screening at the Promax|BDA Conference in New York City. The concept - 20 short films, each 120 seconds, created on a theme and free of any client constraints. This years films are created by a diverse group of directors and studios including Psyop, Royale and Digital Kitchen. I'm told that there will be screenings held in different cities (TBA). Info on tonight's screening is here (thanks Connor).

The Cannes Lions are rapidly approaching - I leave to go a week today. With the recession people say this will be a very different Cannes this year. I'm really looking forward to a different experience and I'll be spending a lot of my time in the Palais checking out the seminars and workshops. I handle PR for Biscuit Filmworks director Noam Murro and he's doing this seminar with Goodby, Silverstein & Partners CD/Partner Jamie Barrett. Check out these hilarious pics they took to promote the seminar.

The Creative Relationship Between Agency And Director
Friday, June 26. 16:15 - 17:00 at the Debussy Theatre

Noam Murro and Jamie Barrett first collaborated in 2002 as a director and writer duo on the Gold Lion-winning Saturn commercial 'Sheet Metal'. Since then they’ve gone on to create award-winning spots together like eBay 'Toyboat', HBO 'Watercooler', and most recently Comcast 'Rabbit' (view all their Lion-winning work here).

It was less than likely that the two of them would end up bonding professionally. Noam grew up in Israel while Jamie grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut. Noam spent time in the Israeli army while Jamie taught tennis at a country club. But inevitably their love of advertising brought them together.

Noam and Jamie do not profess to know all the secrets of a director/agency relationship. But they can certainly speak of their own experience. And dozens of collaborations into it, they’ve learned that there are a handful of things that make or break a creative partnership ... such as the ability to keep each other honest, the ability to keep each other inspired, the ability to give each other credit. And the ability to give each other grief. It doesn’t hurt to like the other guy either.

But in the end, there’s one factor that trumps all others: wanting the same thing. Not everyone sees advertising as an opportunity to achieve greatness. But when both parties do, it makes all the difference.

My friends at Psyop are doing a workshop in Cannes. Speakers are Justin Booth-Clibborn, Marie Hyon and Marco Spier. Here are details & I hope to see you there.

Wednesday 24th June at 15:00-17:00

Blurring the line between art and commerce in advertising. An exploration of the process.

This workshop will give the audience an insight into the process and thinking which Psyop goes through on a typical project, from conception, through script development, character design, stylistic explorations, animation tests and previz, editing, rounds and rounds of animation, compositing, creation of effects, and achieving the final look.

Through looking at a few specific projects at different stages, we will interactively involve you in the decisions we make on a day to day basis over the course of a project and how they might effect the final outcome, including looking at stylistic and character references, picking character designs, what to look for in a style frame, how to judge previz and animation, and how it always all comes together in the end!

Psyop has a proven track record of creating some of the most artistic and well designed messages for some of the biggest and most progressive brands in the World including the Cannes Silver Lion winning Happiness Factory series for Coke, the TV incarnation of the Cannes Gold Lion winning Beijing Olympics "Together" campaign for Adidas, Converse's 100 year anniversary "My Drive Thru" music video & TV campaign, and MTV's HD showcase "Crow", they are undoubted masters of putting the a-r-t into AdveRTising.

Yesterday when I logged on to my CMS to create a new post it took about 7 minutes for my site to load. I immediately called Mr. Glossy, who created the site, to blame him for whatever was wrong. He said he'd look into it, but then I decided to log on to google analytics to see if traffic was the issue. Yep. Civilization, the video installation by artist/director Marco Brambilla and Crush received over 60,000 hits in two days - more than enough to cause havoc on my server. So I quickly decided to point the page I was hosting the video on to Vimeo instead. Pretty crazy. Civilization is now the second most viewed spot in glossy history. The most viewed spot is this Utah Saints video which has had just over 101,000 views. In third place is Psyop's 2009 Super Bowl spot Coke Heist with 44,000 views.

The D&AD Awards were held yesterday in London and four coveted Black Pencils were awarded. Droga5 took home two - one in the integrated category for the Million project for the New York City Department of Education and the second in the viral category for The Great Schlep Obama campaign video feature Sarah Silverman. Another Black Pencil went to Art + Com in the Environmental Design/installations category for their Kinetic Sculpture for BMW (love). The fourth and final Black Pencil went to designer Matt Dent, in the graphic design category, for his reverse coin designs for the Royal Mint. 54 Yellow Pencils were also awarded to great work including Goodby's Hotel 626 for Doritos and their Comcast Rabbit spot directed by Noam Murro. And congrats also go out to my friend director James Frost for his Yellow Pencil for Radiohead's House of Cards. A full list of winners is here.

The Marketing Awards were held last night in Toronto (Marketing is Canadian ad trade mag published twice a month). The event's presenting sponsor was CineplexMedia and the awards were held at a Cineplex theatre. It was great to see the work projected on such a big screen. The Best of Show went to Leo Burnett Toronto for their The Share Our Billboard Campaign for James Ready. A new category this year was Excellence in Brand Creativity and that award went to Red Bull for the Red Bull Crashed Ice by Sid Lee Montreal. I had never heard of the event, which looks like it was a blast. Cossette Toronto picked up a bunch of awards including two gold, a silver and a bronze for their hilarious Junk Removal campaign (which I had never seen before). The full scoop on the awards is posted on Marketing. Special thanks to Didier at Apollo Studios for the great after party.

Partners Film director Aleysa Young (she's super talented & flexible too), just directed this quirky campaign for Fairy via Leo Burnett, Toronto. The spots are airing in the UK and enforce the notion that our parents will always see us as children (my mom calls twice a week to make sure I'm alive - I love you Mom). I think Rubber Ducky is my fav. Full credits are here.

Here's an interesting statistic - preventable injuries are the leading cause of death for British Columbians between the ages of one and 44, and claim the lives of more children in the province than all other causes combined. To raise awareness about preventable injuries and to challenge the belief that most people hold that serious injuries only happen to other people, Vancouver-based Wasserman+Partners has just launched an integrated campaign for The Community Against Preventable. Some of the elements in the 12 week campaign are three broadcast spots, some great outdoor ad placements (love the beach towels) and this blog-style site. A full press release is here.

This cute spot for Washington Lottery picked up Best of Show at the 2009 ADDY Awards. Congratulations to Sticks+Stones director Jerry Brown and Publicis in the West.

Readers of glossy will know that I've been a fan of Sid Lee since their Diesel days (their previous name) and as many of you know, Sid Lee recently opened up an architecture branch. Here is a great story in Marketing on one of their recent projects - Müvbox, a restaurant created out of a standard shipping container. Not only are the containers are affordable and the end product beautifully designed, but they are also environmentally friendly with solar panels providing 40% of their energy. Oh, and who doesn't love lobster (yum). Pics here.

Here's a nice print campaign for Dank!, a second hand furniture shop. Agency is DDB&Co Istanbul. Scooped from AdHunt.

This spot is kinda funny and kinda annoying, as are Aussie accents (sorry Aussies), but I LOVE the tag line. Found via Scary Ideas. Also, anyone else find it funny that World Blood Donor Day is same day as season two of True Blood starts? Perhaps funny only if you are a True Blood fan, which I am.

A few days ago (June 2) I wrote about the David Lynch Interview Project. Episode Two is now up featuring Tommie Holliday and his story that includes an axe, a machine gun and burring a body without a permit. If you have not checked out the site, you should. New films go up every three days.

Here's a fun little Friday time waster. A site for the Africa Exhibit at the Minnesota Zoo dedicated to poo. You get to match the animals to their poo, learn about their natural habitat and feed them. I have to admit, I love base humor and I actually laughed out loud when the ostrich farted. Created by Preston Kelly and Clear Interactive. Found via Rob Ford, from The FWA, on Facebook.

For months now, director/artist Marco Brambilla and Crush have been working on Civilization, a video installation for the new Standard Hotel in NYC. It was finally installed this week. Civilization, which has been installed in the elevators, takes passengers on a visual trip from Hell to Heaven, as they go up, or from Heaven to Hell, as they go down. The installation is composed of over 400 video clips. Pictures of the installation are here, along with full credits and a Q&A with Brambilla and Crush. View the complete video file here.

These Gillette ads have been making the rounds and getting a lot of views on YouTube. The first time I saw them, they reminded me a bit of these Canadian radio ads for Philips (Gardening Tips, Housekeeping Tips and Interior Decorating Tips) from two years ago (especially that tree reference). In not saying that the Gillette ones copy the Philips ads, just that there are similarities. Have a look/listen. Agency on the Philips is DDB Canada. Gilette is BBDO New York.

Hey there Glossy-ites. Fuzzy here. Just wanted to swing by and point you in the direction of this WTF infomercial that's just started making the blog rounds. The website behind the campaign is home to motivational tactician "Leroy Smith" (comedian Charlie Murphy - brother of Eddie), the man who once beat out Michael Jordan for a spot on the high school basketball team.  There's a host of out-there infomercials and a bunch of other content including an iPhone app. Rumours are circulating that Nike might be involved... Check out the skinny on the work on shots.

Posted by Fuzzy.

Dazed Digital has a great story on how this T-shirt, featuring a design by Bulgarian artist Antonia Neschev, is the top selling fashion item on Amazon.com. The best line is in the piece is, “That's a helluva lot of traffic, the sort marketers get hard ons over in presentations with clients at ad agencies.” Well, that and the comment about it being un-wearable. Be sure to also read the user review on Amazon that mentions a trailer park and Wal-Mart. Hilarious. Respect & kisses to SW.

In a feat of self-explanatory titling, David Lynch has just launched Interview Project. It is, as the filmmaker states in his video intro, "a road trip where people have been found and interviewed." Taking in 20,000 miles across the US, a new film will be up online every three days. The first film, Jess, is now online. Found on Creative Review's blog.

Here's a simple, clever, effective and entertaining idea from BooneOakley. Rather than making a traditional company website, their homepage links to this YouTube video. Very cool. Scooped from Cpluv.

This year's Shoot Directors Showcase was held last week in NYC. View all the featured directors here.