Radical Friend finished their latest spot for Adidas through Mutt Industries. It features Eric Berry of the KC Chiefs in an explosion of psychedelic laboratories, underwater test tanks, and anti-gravity chambers. His agility and strength was captured by shooting slow-motion scenes of him taking down un-expecting opponents, floating through the air to intercept a pass, and effortlessly evading anyone who tries to stop him. Contrasted with a barrage of quick cut-aways, the result is as amazing as the shoe itself.

Shots issue 131 contender

Client: Adidas
Agency: Mutt Industries
Creative Directors Mike McCommon & Steve Luker
Art Director: Allison Kerst
Copywriter: Mike Houston
Agency Producer: Chris Lawson
Account Director: David Beauvais
Music Supervision: Alex James
Production Co.: Spy Films
Director: Radical Friend
Executive Producer: Carlo Trulli
Line Producers: Brian Welsh & Jonathan Lia
Post Co: Lost Planet L.A.
Editor: Max Koepke

Cheer detergent is rolling out what it claims is an industry first: A clickable YouTube video that takes you to a non-YouTube site.

The music video, for “Climbing Walls” from Strange Talk, has colorful objects, which viewers can click to be entered to win them. Those prizes include socks, dresses and a Fender Stratocaster, among other items. Jason Wiedemann, brand manager for the Procter & Gamble detergent brand, says although other YouTube videos have included such Annotations before, those linked to another YouTube site. The Cheer video leads to a Facebook app for Cheer where you can register for the item you “dug.” A YouTube rep says she believes Cheer is “one of the first” to use Annotations this way.

The unique approach underscores the brandʼs attempt to woo a young, digitally savvy audience. The brandʼs marketing budget is now 100% digital, Wiedemann says, and the brand is being positioned to appeal to consumers who want to express their individuality. (source: mashable)

Since its conception in 2009, Motiongrapher’s F5 festival aimed to design a conference that not only inspires but creates an environment where people can experience a collision of the minds. Pushing to change perspectives and explore new horizons, F5 structures its self on two days of presentations and performances, with the intent to enlighten, entertain and stimulate the senses.

This year’s festival went further and bigger than ever before. Held in New York and adapting the theme of “Happy F5”, the festival celebrated its birthday and those precious moments when we uncover something truly unexpected.

Two of Spy’s directors were amongst the few invited to speak at the event, held this past weekend.
Evan Silver, one of Spy’s newest directors, graced the stage on Friday and spoke about his approach to directing and the importance of searching for the emotions inherent in the story.

“Without relating a story to the viewer in an emotional way, they can never really connect with the piece or care about any of the characters. The story becomes one dimensional or all technique and no heart.” – Evan Silver

F5 screened the MTV’s Skins promo spot, directed by Silver this past year. Silver then related the spot to the some of the emotions and themes used to relate to teens, such as “love and jealousy, anger and teen angst, feeling controlled, and breaking free to become your own person”.

On Saturday, the festival welcomed acclaimed interactive directing duo Radical Friend to speak. Radical Friend, comprised of Kirby McClure and Julia Grigorian, spoke to the festival attendees about creating a religious experience with technology, spending time communicating your idea through writing, and mythologizing moments, as exemplified in Ambling Alp’s video they directed for Yeasayer. They went on to present their interactive video installation and performance piece, “The Digital Flesh”. The project was developed as a study for their upcoming film “To The Sirens”.

Spy directors Arev Manoukian and Radical Friend are nominated at this years Vimeo Awards.

Arev Manoukian’s Nuit Blanche is a contender in the narrative category and Radical Friend’s Ambling Alp are amongst several other prominent talents in the music video category.

Goodluck to both!

Spy Films interactive duo Kirby McClure and Julia Grigorian a.k.a Radical Friend have just recently completed their first live installation piece at the Creators Project in New York.

The Creators Project Events series began this June in New York City with a series collection of curated artworks which will move across London, Sao Paulo, and Seoul, and culminates in Beijing with a huge 3-day Creators exposition in September.

View Radical Friend’s REEL HERE

Wired shows deep love for Spy Films’ directors.

“After being blown away by Nuit Blanche, a visually impressive short by director Arev Manoukian, Wired.com checked out some of the other work coming from Spy talent. Spy Films is a Canadian production house known for delivering eye-popping imagery.”

“We represent directors who have a strong eye for storytelling and a wizard-like approach to their work.”

See Wired Article HERE

Yes, I know… super wordy incoherent title.. but, it’s all BIG NEWS!

Neill Blomkamp’s District 9 has been nominated for a Golden Globe – Best Original Screenplay.

Spin Magazine hailed Radical Friends‘ Yeasayer video as one of ‘the TOP 20 Best Videos of 2009‘.

Ben Steiger Levine’s music video for Montreal-based band Beast, has been nominated for a Grammy.

CONGRATS TO ALL!!

Spy directing duo Radical Friend come together with indie-rock band, Yeasayer.

Shot over the course of five days in the Californian desert and LA film studios… Radical Friend directed a two-part music video. The first was an interactive teaser, produced here at Spy Digital. And the second, an epic psychedelic video co-produced with our friends at Daft Arts.

Radical Friend wanted the interactive and live action video to have an other-worldly experience. That said, the 360 teaser was brought to life as a portal into the Yeasayer universe. The interactive teaser was released several days earlier via http://www.amblingalp.com . The interactive piece gained viral momentum… from antville to other various music-related blogs. Speculation was made and questions were asked. The music community was buzzing.

The live-action piece was released on Nov. 20th. Shots magazine featured Radical Friend and had this to say: “A barren landscape, naked bodies and the volcanic crater suited the themes of psychedelic and experimental rock that correspond with the band. Already on the radar as web-friendly and innovative directors, the duo sparked attention with their rock-smashing website early last year. This is not the Los Angeles- based directors’ first adventure into the interactive world for a band: they created an interactive music video for Black Moth Super Rainbow’s single Dark Bubbles earlier this year.”

Since the release, the video has been widely acclaimed as ‘insanely awesome’. Top-notch music blog communities like stereogum and musicslut have been ranting and raving, calling the video ‘the most surreal music video of the year’.

View interactive teaser HERE

View live action vid HERE

View Radical Friend REEL HERE

The state of the music industry has changed dramatically over the past five years.

The digital world has paved a new road, a road that is no longer one way. With the rise of the Internet, artists have found alternative means to showcasing their works. New technologies have enabled new and exciting forms of experience.

The interactive music video first gained mass attention with Arcade Fire’s ‘beoNlineB’ project, directed by Spy’s own Vincent Morisset. In the most recent issue of Shots magazine; “Morisset can be reasonably described as the godfather of this burgeoning scene.”

Earlier this month in the Montreal Gazette, alongside Madonna and Michael Jackson, Vincent Morisset’s ‘beoNlineB‘ was noted as one of the top six milestone videos in the history of the twenty-five year-old medium.

Other innovative, web-friendly directors have also received the attention of the digital masses. Spy’s directing duo Radical Friend, hit the radar in early 2008 with their own interactive “rock-smashing” site.

Several months later Radical Friend garnered the attention of upcoming indie rock-band ‘Black Moth Super Rainbow’. Wired magazine attributed the success of the video in Radical Friends’ words: “It’s essentially the same technology used in video installations where insane programs like MAX/MSP Jitter are required. However, in these tests it was accomplished using just Flash and a webcam, so anyone with a newer Mac laptop could potentially be involved.”

Shots magazine also made mention of the young directing duo and had this to say: “The rawness of this technology means its not easy to master, but as RF says ‘It’s a living thing that’s different every time.’ You have to learn it.”

View Radical Friend’s Dark Bubbles HERE

Spy Films’ Radical Friend completes latest interactive video for Pittsburgh-based band, Black Moth Super Rainbow.

Radical Friend’s BMSR video has been featured in boards, shots, Wired & Urb Magazine, Stereogum, Pitchfork, Motionographer and surprisingly, Kanye West’s blog.

In an interview, RF had this to say:

What was the most difficult element of the project?

RF: A lot of the challenge in this video came in trying to find a balance between fully achieving the mood and look we wanted, while also making it possible for people to actually experience the video (in real-time) without totally freezing their computer. Many standards with visual effects and compositing had to be re-thought in order to achieve this balance, and I think we pulled off what we were going for, although quite a few compromises had to be made for functionality.

How receptive were the band to this idea? Had they ever done anything like this before?

RF: I think BMSR were pretty inspired by what we sent them, they hadn’t seen the Arcade Fire “Neon Bible” video so the idea of making a video you could interact with took them by surprise. The fact that you would be able to physically interact with their video made them very excited, because this kind of Technological Nature Magic goes hand in hand with their sound. When we first started discussing the idea it all seemed like this madman fantasy that wasn’t really possible, so I think they were interested to see if we could actually pull off what we said we could!

Technically how did you put it together?

RF: We had shot several days worth of time-lapse to get exactly what we wanted as far as transition between night and day and lighting shifts. Next our matte painter pain-stakingly expanded on each frame to get the specific foreground landscape and composition we wanted.  We then shot the live action elements in a way that would correspond to the lighting shifts. Then all of the 2D/3D animation elements were composited together in Flash (which is by no means meant for any kind of VFX!). Next I put together a very rough interactive skeleton that demonstrated how we wanted the interactivity to work, we then sent this to our Action Script programmer in Toronto which is when the really crazy back and forth insanity began. Eventually we reached a version that would perform correctly on enough computers to have people actually experience this the way we envisioned, and that’s when we sent it to the label.

How did you make sure the different elements – jumping man, landscape, lighting all interacted?

RF: Our cinematographer Kevin Phillips had some brilliant ideas as to how to light the jumper during the shoot that would make it possible to achieve the feel of directional lighting (of the sun) in post, and then also extend that to the viewer once it went interactive. We ended up making a lot of animation layers of just tiny shadows and light play that were programmed to move simultaneously with the time-lapse, so it gives you the feeling that the environment and jumper are changing along with the sun.

How did you arrive at the web cam idea?

RF: There were these crude tests from 2006 (using Flash) where you wave your hand in front of a web-cam and a red dot on the screen follows the movements of your hand. It’s essentially the same technology used in video installations where insane programs like MAX/MSP Jitter are required, but here you could do it with a standard web-cam at your house. Knowing that all the new Mac laptops have a web cam built-in, we realized we could reach a decently wide audience. We wanted to take that technology and create something that would feel mystically beautiful and cinematic, where the technology that made it work was hidden and you would feel like you were using your body in some way to alter the environment and video.

And what about the mystic/neo-pagan aesthetic – what was that inspired by?

RF: The last few BMSR albums have been very colorful sounding and almost folky in a very electronic way, while this new album sounds a little colder and in my opinion, slightly dark. Visually we had/have also been moving into the darker side of Psychedelia, and for this video we really wanted to create something that would capture that. I think maybe its our reaction to the neon drenched imagery that’s very big right now in art and videos (which is undeniably cool of course), but it was good to put something out there that feels fantastical in a different way and has a darker more mystical undertone.

View Radical Friend’s REEL HERE