London production company Itinerant Films has signed four new directors.
Managing director Fiona Campbell picked up American director Billy Kent from now-defunct BFCS. Kent's past credits include work for Tango, Ikea and Pepsi. Directing duo Track and Field come from a background of idents and title sequences. A recent commission was BBC's the Blue Planet titles. Short film director Mike Moloney has just directed a music video for Mower and has shot a test commercial, which the client then ran in cinemas. He was also commissioned by Channel Four to shoot one of the shorts in Stop for a Minute, the web entertainment project.
The company has also opened a music video division, headed by producer Jamie Leask. Sony and Beggars Banquet are fledgling record label clients.
Neue Sentimental Films Germany has signed Japanese-American director Karina Taira. As a stills photographer Taira has shot launch stills campaigns for Diesel perfume and continues to work predominantly in the beauty sector. Film clients include Remy Martin, Guerlain Shalimar, Cacharel Noah, Yves Rocher and La Foret Department Store in Tokyo. She is represented by Mission Entertainment in the US.
Australian production company Dragonslayer has signed directors François Merlet and Les Sharpe. Merlet joins from Film Business Melbourne, but also founded two production companies - Yarra Films and Acid Films, with offices in Melbourne and Sydney. Prior to that he worked as an art director in Paris. Sharpe joins from Film Graphics. He will direct freelance in Australia, but will be represented by Dragonslayer in Asian territories including Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong and China.
Nike has awarded Age its Brazilian advertising account. The agency replaces Giovanni/FCB, which held the account in the market for two years.
Markenfilm has hired a new managing director to run the Hamburg-headquartered production group. Gerhard Schoeps, who steps in at the beginning of next year, is a former CEO of Euro RSCG Central Europe. He has since been working as a consultant overseeing mergers and acquisitions.
Schoeps shrugs off market perceptions of his reputation as a cost-cutter, from his days working as a marketing manager for Lufthansa and Opel (Vauxhall). He told shots.net he was more interested in innovation at the company. He is being groomed alongside joint managing director Florian Beisert by co-owner Joerg Bittel (who is expected to step down towards the end of 2002.
Markenfilm's Hamburg office recently switched management: as Nadine Thoma left on maternity leave, Joerg Fudickar and Frank Siegl were made joint executive producers of the company.
Paul Ibbetson, who was running the biggest in-agency production company, Razor TV for George Patterson has left the company. A source reveals that "the circumstances [of his departure] are less than perfect".
London-based production company Lost In Space has signed Rob Rae, a motion graphics designer, and continues to represent creative director Christian Hogue. The company is hoping to link new talent from disciplines outside directing with experienced commercials producers by forming "designer hit squads", and will launch a "virtual digital studio" to foster this new talent.
The company argues that "technical advances have freed the designer/directors from the physical studio." Clients will be encouraged to set up self-contained studio "pods" for specific projects online. The company is also negotiating global representation. http://www.lostinspace.com
European Touch Productions, which offers production service in Prague, has opened an office in London to add to its Los Angeles headquarters. The office will be run by Emma Jane Sergeant. http://www.etpprague.com
The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising has published its third quarter results for the trends in TV report. It confirms that terrestrial TV is no longer the only place to find a mass audience. Mainstream terrestrial broadcaster ITV has continued to lose share and non-terrestrial channels now hold more than 20 per cent of viewers. There are now over 200 non-terrestrial channels in the UK.
Hermann Vaske, consummate German adman and author, is publishing a new book of interviews with the giants of creative advertising. Vaske's interviewees read like a roll call of the best of international advertising today: agency side there's Cliff Freeman, Dan Wieden, Dave Droga, Dave Trott, Ed McCabe, John Hegarty, John Webster, Keith Reinhard, Lee Clow, Marcello Serpa, Neil French, Oliviero Toscani, Paul Arden and Tim Delaney.
Directors covered are: Alan Parker, Dennis Hopper, Hugh Hudson, Joe Pytka, Joe Sedelmaier, Paul Weiland, Ridley Scott, Tarsem, Tony Kaye, Tony Scott and Wim Wenders.
Vaske asks Cliff Freeman whether self-irony is a good staple for advertising; Frank Lowe what he makes of David Ogilvy's utterance: "If the client moans and sighs, make the logo twice the size" and; "Awards. Which ones count and which ones are masturbation?".
He also asks Wieden whether he's an expert on the quality of toilet paper. "Yes," answers Wieden. "Basically the world can be divided into two kinds of people: folders and wadders. And wadders are best because they use a lot of toilet paper." It adds up to 377 pages of adland chewing the fat in paperback, Standing on the Shoulders of Giants is published by Die Gestalten Verlag at £19.99 ($29.99).
