I wanted to watch again some of the films I liked at the Saatchi &Saatchi Gutsy New Directors’ Showcase and I noticed the link on the official site wasn’t working anymore. So don’t click it. It won’t work, I tell you. Believe me. So I naturally looked for the reel on other websites and found this: Heresanidea.com. If you don’t mind the small (really small!) resolution, you can watch the clips there.
And since I saw them once more (and then a couple more times for some) I figured I should let you know what I thought about them. Well, the showcase deserves to be one of the most attended events at Cannes, because it promotes the Crème de la Crème of the young talent available in directing. Why is this important for advertising? you might ask. Wasn’t there a digital revolution going on? Wasn’t the 30-seconds ad dying in a ditch somewhere? Well, that depends. First of all, few people at the Festival decreed the death of TV advertising. Secondly, not all films are on TV. And here’s the part I liked:
I was surprised to see this clip in the showcase. Lev Yilmaz is a very popular “director” and all of his works (entitled Tales of mere existence) have considerable views online. I said used inverted commas when calling him director, because he is first of all an animator, although he might write the dialogs for his short-films. In any case, I recommend watching all his films. Why? Well, besides the fact that the films show viciously subtle humor, you can imagine how great it is for a YouTube user to be showcased at Cannes.
Also, here’s a clip for a very popular song at this year’s festival (Stefan knows). I’m not crazy about the song, but the effects used are remarkable.
This ad for Nike Air shows some touching footage (most of which sport fans remember) and has a very fine and well-know song by Johnny Cash as a soundtrack, but the idea of the ad itself (revealed in the last seconds) is pretty blunt and not at all well-delivered. That would explain why it won no awards in Cannes this year.There were other good films there. We’ll see what they’re about some other time.
