by Katie Carpenter

“The culture, religion and way of life of the Forest County Potawatomi Community are closely tied to their natural environment. The Tribe and its members are very concerned about the impacts that they and others can have on the environment.” (quoted from website)

The TV spots, conceived by the Howl Fire agency in Minneapolis, were created in an effort to guide people to a new website that will make people more aware of the greener choices they can make for their life and the Earth.

Visit the Potawatomi Community’s “End Global Warming” website here.

By combining archival stills from the Forest County Potawatomi archives and public domain nature footage, I created a montage that was then projected onto moving fabric at Cinequipt Studios. Director Barry Kimm did a wonderful job with the Potawatomi children who came to Minneapolis for the shoot. John Hermanson of Modern Music also created the perfect tracks for the spots using flutes from his Native American flute collection.

The Potawatomi’s significant conservation efforts will inspire old and young to join together to protect Wisconsin’s natural habitats and resources, create more green jobs and make this one Earth we have a beautiful place to live, and live off of for generations to come.

I am so happy to have been a part of the team that created this beautiful message.

“Stop and Listen” About Global Warming Edited by Katie Carpenter from Fischer Edit on Vimeo.

Forest County Potawatomi Spot Edited by Fischer Edit’s Katie Carpenter from Fischer Edit on Vimeo.

[Editor's Note: Katie Carpenter is an editor at Fischer Edit/FX in Minneapolis.]

]]> http://www.fischeredit.com/blog/216/protect-mother-earth/feed/ 0 http://www.fischeredit.com/blog/205/birds-also-takes-cannes-silver-lion/ http://www.fischeredit.com/blog/205/birds-also-takes-cannes-silver-lion/#comments Thu, 02 Jul 2009 20:01:41 +0000 Charlotte Peterson http://www.fischeredit.com/blog/?p=205 Washington Lottery’s “Birds” edited by Fischer Edit’s Lindy Wilson took a Cannes Silver Lion last week, cementing its moniker as the spot that keeps on giving. Over 3, 400 spots were entered in the 2009 Cannes Lions – Advertising Festival, among them only 18 spots were from US agencies. “Birds” which originated from Publicis of the West, also took the title of “Best Entertainment & Leisure” spot in the world. The spot’s director Jerry Brown of Sticks + Stones studios was one of thirteen US directors to be recognized.

The Cannes Silver Lion is a major coup for Editor Lindy Wilson whose awards credits also include a Golden Bear, Clio and Emmy among others. “On this spot, I used my vast resource of storytelling skills that go back to my days as an editor at the Sundance Institute Feature Film Lab. I couldn’t be happier that “Birds” has been recognized for this many awards, and those of such great value to editors, directors and the advertising industry.”

This win follows its awards for “Best in Show” from the ADDY awards and “Best of Minneapolis” at the AICE show this spring.

The awards show put on at the American Advertising Federation National Conference in Washington D.C, crowned all kinds of advertising both professional and student, including broadcast spots. Out of roughly 1600 entries judged in the national competition, “Birds” was chosen out of the 330 ADDY Awards presented.

This win trails on the spot’s win at the AICE in May, taking “Best of Minneapolis.” It’s been quite the year for this spot out of Publicis in the West, production company Sticks + Stones and director Jerry Brown.

Read what’s been said about this spot and its win:

“Best of Show ADDY Honor Is For The ‘Birds’” Shoot June 9, 2009

“News in Brief” Shots June 10, 2009

“Publicis In The West Takes 2009 ADDY Awards Best of Show” AAF June 9, 2009

“Those Birds Really Know How To Fly” Washington Lottery Press Room

“Publicis In The West Takes 2009 ADDY Awards Best of Show; Locally One Trick Pony Gets Gold and Silver” Philadelphia Ad Club June 10, 2009

Read Wilson’s explanation of her work here, as well as Parker’s involvement in helping the birds to fly.

Washington Lottery’s “Birds” edited by Fischer Edit from Fischer Edit on Vimeo.

Check out Shoot Magazine’s article on the 2009 winners here.

Check back as we will keep the Fischer Edit blog up to date with where we’re at in our transition.

And then I found this upstairs:

We sustained very minor smoke damage and a bit of a postponed timeline. Now much to our excitement things are truly coming together. Below, a peek at what things are looking like now that some paint and wall treatments have been applied.

Check back as we will update the site with our whereabouts as we transition into a new era for Fischer Edit/FX, Modern Music and Runner Runner.

And to see where we were a month ago, visit our previous post here.

Over coffee and wine at the Warehouse District’s cozy Corner Coffee, an intimate group of the Fischer Edit family and friends took some time to engage in open conversation about art, advertising, and creativity with mixed media artist and author Sabrina Ward Harrison.

Sabrina shared with us some stories about her life living in a one-room schoolhouse on the coast of California and read us some poetry that inspires her.  We learned about her own creative process in making her artwork in which she beautifully blends photography, paint, found objects and ink writing.  Sabrina’s work tells stories of her life in layers of found “bits” and honors the people of her past by using family photos and treasures.  Her art beautifully illustrates her life philosophy which is “Make what you most need to find.”

A free-writing experience challenged us to think deeper, let go of our day-to-day thinking process and happily embrace the messiness and “mistakes” that come out of doing that… showing us that the process of creating in and of itself can ultimately open up new possibilities of creativity and self-discovery.

Sabrina and I screened the short film that we collaborated on this summer for the Beacon Film Festival in New York called “The Story is Happening.”  The film was created from 8mm film footage shot in Italy, projection footage shot in NYC, as well as Sabrina’s photography, mixed-media pieces and her beautiful ink line art.  The film is essentially a moving collage celebrating her philosophy of making what you most need to find.  It was an honor to collaborate with Sabrina on such a special project.

It is the first film created for the True Living Project. Sabrina’s True Living Project inspires a generation of mindful pioneers through global collaboration and generational partnership.

You can view “The Story is Happening” film here:

“The Story Is Happening” edited by Fischer Edit’s Katie Carpenter from Fischer Edit on Vimeo.

A huge thank you to Sabrina for sharing so much of her story and for inspiring us.  And thank you to everyone who came for doing the same.  You made it very special!

-Katie

We’ll keep updating the space as it comes together in Minneapolis’ Warehouse District, check out our photos from April and May for updates.

Power-poppers Stingray Green started the music out, playing to a nicely-filled room. Splice Here audio guru Kent Militzer was particularly tone-o-riffic, while Kruskopf-Coontz Creative Director Robb Burnham dished up the boom and whap from behind the kit. Echo Boys Randy Anderson and Tom Lecher followed with the Pearl Brothers,cranking out a great list of classics, plus Lecher’s awesome hair. John Lydon eat your heart out!

The Phones, a long-time personal favorite, came up next. Back in Fargo/Moorhead, i used to bust ass to get done with my grocery store duties and run down the block to the Zodiac Lounge, hoping to catch their last set. Those were the 1980s, when one band would often play all night. Dan Winter was a fixture with The Phones, running sound and logging thousands of road miles with them during that decade. As always, a great set from them. I could almost feel the familiar itch of my 85% polyester Country Store Grocery uniform. Scratchy!

If you’ve never heard of The Hopefuls, that’s a bummer. They closed out the night with a typically stellar performance. Recent Modern Music additions Johnny Hermanson and Eric Fawcett make up half of this powerhouse, and it was a real pleasure to share the stage with them and all the other great musicians that night.

Upon last tally, more than $2000 was raised to help wife Laura and daughter Andrea, helping with expenses and starting an education fund. I urge you to visit danwinterfund.com in case you missed the event and would like to contribute. 

A heartfelt thanks to all of the participants and organizers, those who attended and contributed, the Fine Line for having us, and a huge raise of the glass to Big Dan Winter. We miss you.

jay holgate

fischer fx

Fischer Edit and Runner Runner’s Josh Thacker shot and edited this spot for El Tinklenberg’s campaign for Congress in Minnesota. Fischer FX’s Alicia Reece made the still images 3D and created the motion graphics. Music was created by Modern Music’s John Hermanson.

This is one spot of a series of ads edited by Fischer Edit’s Randy Kramer for St. Ives products for air outside the United States. They were shot on the Phantom camera for it’s high frame rate, producing the stunning images seen here.

Modern Music’s Joanna Jahn was the voice talent for the English series of spots and Fischer Edit’s Whitney Bembenek supplied her expertise with Spanish for the spot seen here.

Check out what Motion 504 had to say about their experience with ad agency Campbell Mithun, from pre-production to post.

This spot for The Longest Summer Tour presented by the Will Steger Foundation was edited by Fischer Edit’s Tim Taylor to generate excitement and information about Will Steger’s upcoming college tour.

Visual FX Supervisor – Fischer Edit/FX

(see the trailer here.)

In 2002 when I was working for Hi-Wire, Bill Slichter approached a group of us in the post industry in Minneapolis to discuss his ambitious plans to direct a short film to be named “Flourtown”.  Armed with his vision, and a short story he persuaded many of us to sign on for the adventure of producing an all-green-screen film on essentially no budget.  He managed to come up with the money to pay for needed gear Rentals, got Ice House to contribute use of their greenscreen space, and persuaded director Rich Michel  to shoot a couple of minutes of the story.  From this we produced a proof of concept clip, that then led to Bill being able to raise more money and win a small grant or two, that led to the monies necessary to complete the film.
At the outset, the decision was made to shoot on Sony’s Cine-Alta camera, a video camera capable of shooting filmic motion of 24 fps, with a color response much like a film camera.  Few companies at the time were attempting fx work with digital motion cameras, and the efficiency afforded by shooting on tape as opposed to film made it an attractive idea.

Cut to 6 years later… now it’s 2008 and “Flourtown” is finally making the Festival rounds.  It has been an official selection of the Florida Film Fesitival, the Palm Springs International Film Fesitval, and Dances with Films, and impressed one film critic enough to call it “ A dense, beautiful, hypnotic combination of live action and animation, not unlike some of the visions of Dali. Director Slichter incorporates both fantastical and anachronistic images in this animation tour-de-force”.

Although a Minneapolis premiere is in the works, there is not a date set yet or specific local festival it will screen in…

Next time I’ll discuss the production and post production processes and workflow that allowed the film to be made…

windpoweredpictures.com

But here’s what I would have written if he’d have let me:

Fischer Edit’s Assistant Editor Carlos Lamas edited this new video featuring Lazerbeak and Mike Mictlan of Minneapolis-based hip hop group-extraordinaire Doomtree. This video directed by Isaac Gale coincides with the release of their collaborative album “Hand Over Fist.”

To celebrate the duo will be holding their CD Release party Saturday, September 28th at the 7th St. Entry. For more info click here.

“Hand Over Fist” video from Fischer Edit on Vimeo.

“The Story is Happening” is a moving collage of work by artist Sabrina Ward Harrison in collaboration with editor Katie Carpenter. Original music for the film was composed by Modern Music’s John Hermanson. This film is an homage to the lifelong adventure of handmade “true living.” Harrison’s True Living Project inspires a generation of mindful pioneers through global collaboration and generational partnership. This is the first film created by the True Living Project.

The Beacon Art Salon & Fovea Exhibitions presents
The Beacon Film Flam
An arts-crafts-puppet village & outdoor film festival
Saturday, September 13, 2008, Noon – 10:00 pm
At the lot on Main Street’s West End at Cross Street
Arts Village: Noon – 6pm
Film Festival: 7pm (dusk) – 10 pm
Fine arts and crafts vendors will sell their wares throughout the day.
Music performances, puppet shows and film showings are free to the
public. Featured fine arts include photography, painting, art gifts,
ceramics and more. The film festival will include a video presentation
by Fovea Exhibitions, followed by a screening of selected short films.
Special World Premiere Screening – “The Story is Happening”
a moving collage of work by artist Sabrina Ward Harrison as part of the True Living Project.

Read more from Fischer Edit’s Katie Carpenter here.

That certainly was not the case with the Cox business spots I recently worked on for Periscope.  Terry Windell, the director had a very clear vision for what he wanted to accomplish and he designed some really great and elegant gags.  However, given the amount of work to be done with the relatively short shooting schedule the clarity of the vision as provided in script notes or director boards was somewhat… lacking.

Like most editors it’s important to me to have a few days to rough together the spots to get a sense of the feel and find what appeals to me in terms of performance, composition, pace, whatever.  So after I loaded and organized the dailies I started building spots.  At Terry’s suggestion I started with “Acrobat” since this was the most straight forward and had the least amount of compositing necessary to tell the story.  That said I still ended up with about fifteen layers in one of my first comps, but I digress.  ”Acrobat” came together pretty quickly and in fact the air version did not veer that far from my initial edit.  That was not the case with the other two.

The other two spots were huge collections of green screen elements and backgrounds.  Even after they were organized they presented a daunting array of possibilities.  Now don’t get me wrong, lots of options are what you want as an editor, but then there would be other pieces that were in the boards that just didn’t seem to be there.  After several days and WTF?!? moments I did have edits that were working (barely) but I kept feeling like I was missing something, which in fact I was.

Anyway, long story short…

As any good editor will tell you, working with a director can be a great or a miserable experience.  When Terry came in, it was like the lights came on.  He was all like, “See here I wanted you to take this guy from “Trapeze”, flop him and blow him up and then see he’ll match for that part of “Jumps” …”  The amount of stuff he had in his head was stunning.  We had a great time together and as his process became clear to me we could practically finish one another’s sentences.  So this was one of those cases where it really was collaborative, and the spots are better because of it.

By Tony Mills

Fischer FX Visual Effects Supervisor

Flame & Smoke artist

One of the most rewarding career experiences, is when a good first job with a client, leads to working on a second job with them, and it turns out to the next “big one” for your reel. Producer Judy Wittenberg gave us just such an opportunity when she let Fischer FX bid on an amazing set of boards for Cox Business Services, via agency Periscope.

In the boards business people in their everyday environment were doing amazing things demonstrating strength, agility and nimbleness, in a synchronous fashion becoming the perfect metaphor for the brands suite of business services. One spot used acrobats and Parkour artists, one would use trapeze artists and a third trampoline artists.

Bill Rogina (senior producer Fischer Edit/FX) was involved in the search for a director with producer Judy Wittenberg, art director Tim Moran and copywriter Greg Beaupre. After considering several FX-savvy directors, the choice was Terry Windell via Crusty Pup Pictures (and Bill’s friend) Jon Derovan, with whom Bill had worked at PDI/Dreamworks. Terry’s illustration background (he created the ectoplasm in Poltergeist and killed Darth Vader in the 3rd Star Wars movie) led to dynamic shooting boards that captured the essence of the creative brief right away. We also decided that Fischer FX would supervise the production due to the rigorous technical requirements.

Early on it was determined that location was paramount, as we needed to shoot background plates for three unique spots that each had different considerations and needs. The Nikken building in Irvine turned out to be a perfect choice. In addition to being used for many feature films, you can see this building in the new stop motion Lexus campaign. With its sweeping atrium and grand staircases, it provided all the angles necessary. This one day shoot took nearly 18 hours to get it all in the can. We took detailed measurements and coordinated with the production crew to determine exact angles and focal length for matching up green screen shooting in the studio.

The green screen cinematography took place over two full shoot days at Sunset Gower Studios in Hollywood with the biggest piece of green cloth I have ever seen (over 80 X 120). It’s not easy to rig trapezes and trampolines for green screen shooting, but the crew stepped up and setups were achieved quickly and efficiently. We overcranked all the green screen footage, shooting at speeds of up 120 fps which would give us the ability to control time in the post work and mix up frame rates for an aesthetically arresting look. This high frame rate would also give us a nuanced degree of control over motion blur, allowing us much more control over the look of the final composites.

Once the production was wrapped, Tim Taylor started editing as soon as dailies arrived and was joined by Terry Windell for several days. Jake Parker (flame artist/Visual Effects Supervisor) and I started pre-visualizing composites for Tim and Terry and determining the best post approach to the work. Discussions with Oscar Oboza, the colorist on the job, determined that each spot would have a signature palette. We had Oscar transfer the green screen materials as a flat pass which would give us the most flexibility in our integrating the live action background in our FX composites. For the finish, Jake and I ended up tag teaming on “Acrobats” and singularly helming “Jumps” and “Trapeze” respectively. Matt Collings also played a big part in all the necessary cleanup.

Each spot had various challenges, but noteworthy was the roto on 90-120 fps footage, the motion of the trampoline jumpers, and the wire extensions and enhancements to the trapeze footage. Two weeks of post led to the three spots completion, with music by Emoto and final mix by Modern Music. As was the goal, each spot had a signature style of movement, palette of color, and custom music that perfectly fit. The FX work was tough but rewarding and effective for the client. And for us, not one but three more for the reel!

Cox Business “Acrobats” spot from Fischer Edit on Vimeo.