Here are a couple new commercials for Brothers printers that blend stop-motion and time-lapse photography in pretty interesting ways with real people. We love how the technique makes the people look like claymation figures walking around in miniature sets. The foreground is done in stop-motion while time-lapse photography provided the scenes shown in the animated paper.
It would have been crazy if they had actually printed out each individual paper of the scene on the wall. Read more…
London filmmaker Temujin Doran created this great little video for Lego that doesn’t involve any flashy effects or fancy camera techniques — just a child-like imagination. It won a prize at the prestigious Cannes Lions advertising festival in 2010.
This concept would work great with other toys and small objects, and can obviously be done as a series of photos as well.
If you tried to visit the Nikon Rumors site this morning, you’ve probably gotten an error message. According to the Google information, 47 pages from the site were tested over the last three months, and one page resulted in malicious software downloaded and installed without user consent. It appears that the site was flagged for that content yesterday. Yikes.
Another camera-related site, Cinema5D was attacked last weekend. Sebastian Wöber of Cinema5D wrote that primarily users running older browsers, particularly PC users running IE6 or users who downloaded Java or PDF apps were at risk of malware.
It’s unclear why these photo-related sites were attacked, but it’s a good idea to run a virus check if you frequent either of the sites, especially if you are in the at-risk group. Sophos has more information about the attack, which is common to sites running OpenX ad servers, here.
If you’re a fan of the Polaroid SX-70, this promotional video from the 1970s should stir up warm fuzzy feelings. If you’ve never used one, watching this might give you a better idea of why so many are obsessed with it.
Even if you’re already a SX-70 fanatic, you might learn a thing or two from certain parts of this video that shed light on exactly how the system works.
Here’s a really neat video about the making of a Speedo ad campaign that is running all across Europe right now. The video traces the production from its conceptualization to its final post-processing and illustration. The actual shoot and filming took place at the Pinewood Studios Underwater Stage in the UK, where several major films were also shot, including many 007 and Harry Potter movies. It’s pretty remarkable to see so much equipment underwater.
It’s pretty amazing how much work goes in to commercial food photography, even if it’s a delivery pizza. Domino’s Pizza has a short video showing the behind-the-scenes action during a pizza photo shoot, complete with food stylists, a pizza screwed to the table, and a hand model. But Domino’s new ad movement is all about ditching the food embellishments and promising “natural” photos from now on — photos of pizzas made by employees and untouched by food artists during the photo shoot. (Though we noticed they didn’t promise to go easy on post-processing!)
To promote their new photo style, the pizza chain is also running a photo contest for customers to submit photos of their own Domino’s pizza to be featured in upcoming ads. Winners get $500 — that could buy a lot of pizzas!
Country-pop darling Taylor Swift has joined the growing list of camera-toting celebrity spokespersons. Swift’s partnership with Sony hit the limelight in January during CES2010, when Swift joined in the Sony press event to announce her use of Sony 3D technology during her current tour.
In a commercial released today, Swift demos the iSweep Panorama feature on the new Sony TX7 Cyber-shot. According to a Sony press release, the ads will air tonight on NBC, FOX and CW, likely targeting a younger, primarily female demographic — though as the commercial suggests, she’s got a pretty broad fan base.
The camera boasts a number of other noteworthy features including a Carl Zeiss lens, “Exmor R” CMOS censor, HD video, and a touch screen, but Sony says Taylor Swift fans can get extra excited over the limited edition version with the singer’s signature engraved onto the camera.
However, the camera comes at a steep price of $400, which is considerably pricey for point-and-shoots. That’s nearly the cost of six tickets to see Taylor Swift in concert.
This amazing video by Romain Pergeaux and Alex Profit shows a journey around the cities of the world in 80 seconds through stop-motion. It was shot with a Sony HX5V compact camera, and shows 640 different photographs at 8 photographs per second. A special rig was also used to show a physical globe with pins in every shot, and the photographs were taken over the course of only 3 weeks. From the official website for the video, it looks like a viral promotional video for Sony’s camera, but it’s a pretty awesome effort nonetheless.
You’ve probably seen in-video advertising, but how about ads placed in images? A company called Image Space Media wants to make sure you do.
Established in 2008, they’re the first and leading provider of in-image advertising on the web. This means relevant advertisements are placed in an overlay that appears over a portion of an image or photograph, just like the advertisements YouTube places at the bottom of most videos.
While you might hate this idea as an internet user or photographer, this may be a glimpse of what’s to come in terms of online advertising.
Now here’s a question: If Flickr started running these in-image ads for non-pro accounts, would you still use the service?
Burger King recently partnered up with marketing agency Ogilvy for a unique “Have It Your Way” campaign. In order to convey how personalized the orders are, they used a hidden camera and printer to slap a candid photograph of the customer’s face right on the burger wrapper. A separate hidden camera was used to document the reactions of the customers after seeing themselves on their food.
Some customers pulled out cameras to remember the unique wrapper, while others stated they would save the wrapper itself. I found it pretty funny how unflattering the candid portraits were.
If you tried to visit the 
Country-pop darling Taylor Swift has joined the growing list of camera-toting 
