Hungry Man/Grey London has made this new commercial for Toshiba, employing 200 hidef cameras.

20.000 gigabyte of data. 2 1/2 million individually renamed frames. $4.7 million dollar.

Some background footage:

Some facts

• The TV ad was shot using 200 Toshiba Gigashot Cameras: the highest number of moving image cameras ever used in a film sequence
• This particular technique, viewing looping action in 360 degrees, has never been done before
• The rig was custom built weighing approximately half a tonne, including 200 cameras and electronics
• The rig measures 14m diameter circle and 1.8m high
• The 200 cameras were all triggered using a single remote control
• Once the rig was built, four focus pullers spent three days focusing and aligning all 200 cameras
• The time spent processing footage from 200 cameras was over four weeks – 24 hours a day seven days a week!
• New offline and online editing software had to be specifically built for the job
• In terms of data, this is one of the biggest jobs a post-production house has ever taken on – 20TB of data

Credits

Production Company: Hungry Man LTD
Director: Mitch Stratton
Editor and editing company: The Whitehouse / Christophe Williams
Post-production company: The Mill
Music: Crystal Castles – Air War
Voice-over: Kira Lauren

(from the Press Release)

What life is like for a fresh director on his first job on an ad shoot: (strong language)

And the truth about advertising (same concept).

Lovely ad from PepsiCo:

(via)

The first documentary I worked on was about a deaf actress. On one shooting day we were invited to a birthday party. It was so beautiful seeing all these faces and movings hands full of expression.

As part of prepping for that project, I read about deafness, and learned many interesting things. For one there are many different sign languages. Babies that are taught basic sign language can start interacting with their parents much earlier than speaking babies. Sign language is much better for expressing feelings than words are.

Recommended movie: Jenseits der Stille

Enjoy:

Edited by Merritt Duff. Hooked up by Arrow Kruse.

Peter Miser writes:

The long story is this, I got an iPhone about two weeks after they came out. I’m not the type to get all mushy about a piece of technology but it done changed my life. (If you don’t know, then you better borrow your cousin’s and check it out. I’m not gonna go on a whole tangent but messing around with an iPhone is like reaching into the future and hanging out with super attractive aliens at a hot party…or something.) About a month after I got it, I was asked to fly to L.A. to actually be in an iPhone commercial. You know, the ones with the “regular” person standing in front of the black background? Right! Well, I was getting all excited to go out there and this real stupid song popped into my head. As you may know, I’m a hip hop artist so of course I think, “why not record the thing?” about a day later it’s recorded. Then I think, “why not recut the iPhone guy lipsyncing my song?” That’s where Arrow and Merritt hooked me up. Arrow’s like the Wolf from Pulp Fiction. If George Bush knew Arrow, this whole Iraq business would be sewn up by now. Anyway, Arrow made some calls, tracked down Merritt and Merritt worked his delicate fingers to the bone crafting this exquisite piece of art. We’re pretty sure we have about two weeks before Apple threatens to break our kneecaps so enjoy it while it lasts.

Even though it is for the ‘wrong’ company, here is a lovely tv commercial.
(via Mason)