Trooper

Director Christopher Martini's soon to be released movie, "Trooper", examines the cost of war on veterans and their families.  The film follows a soldier’s return from Iraq as he discovers that both he and his father, a Vietnam vet, face health problems resulting from their service.  A nicely made low budget feature with a great selection of high quality, lesser known actors.

Top Viral : Bicycling Band of Horses

Music by Band of Horses combined with some very cool tricks performed by the Bicycle team made this video break into the top 10 viral campaign list last week.  Nicely shot somewhere in Europe.  Good watching.

American Red Cross Measles Initiative: the Last Measle

Here's an extremely well made public service video produced for the American Red Cross and its Measles Initiative. Today the Red Cross will announce that measles deaths in the past 10 years are down 78% worldwide meaning 4.3 million children have been spared. 

What I find interesting is that Public Service Announcements/Productions like this one are getting increasingly sophisticated in order to compete with other web productions.  The bar is being raised.   The  red measles concept in this video is simple and helps drive home the success of the vaccine initiative while stressing the need for more financial support.  The red dots combined with the sweet young African boy's voice and the airy, thoughtful music make this video an all around winner.

Here's a link to the larger Measles Initiative Web site.

Give it a Ponder Campaign

Here's a strange one... a website that is meant to get kids to think twice about how they text and what they text.  Sounds rather obscure, but once you see the videos you get a feeling that it just might work.... maybe?  What do you think.  Here's one of the videos, and then below, the link to the web site with all the videos.  Stuck me as REALLY odd the first viewing, but after I sat on it for a while, I started to see how it might work... preventing kids from sexting, malicious texting, etc.

Here's a link to the Give it a Ponder web site.

Toshiba Space Chair - A One-of-a-Kind, High Altitude Chair Video?

Why film a chair disintegrating 98,000 feet above Nevada's Black Rock desert?   It has been called "the world's highest commercial," and was created by Grey Advertising in London with the production company called the Mill.  Why?  To show the durability and capability of Toshiba's new camera.

It was shot using two Toshiba Hi-Def IK-HR1S video cameras  hanging from a high altitude helium balloon with the chair attached. 

If you still want more - here's the making of the Space Chair spot.