Watching Aliens with a bunch of 11 year-old boys

Just read this great post on RogerEbert.com, by Matt Zoller Seitz, detailing how he decided to show Aliens to his 11 year old son and his group of friends. It's a great post, full of funny details about watching a film with a group of kids. I loved how he said he couldn't get them to stop predicting what was going to happen next, and that they are part of a 'generation of talkers'. 

"This movie has so many cliches in it," a boy said when Colonial Marines disembarked the drop ship and made their way through rainy darkness to enter the alien-infested colony. My son told him, "This movie was made in 1986. It invented all the cliches."

That concept of seeing something that either kick started a franchise or a style of filmmaking, after you've seen all the crap that followed, it something quite powerful. Often it's absolutely refreshing to bask in the quality and originality of what came first. It's like discovering a time capsule, looking at something that is untouched with what followed it. It's like it carries some sort of innocence around its own existence, and it doesn't know what you know. Quite a strange feeling. 

Of course, writing on a public blog and stating you showed a classic sci-fi/action/horror film to a group of kids, who are obviously under the recommended age to watch it, has led to quite a bit of blowback from commenters calling him irresponsible, a bad father etc. Which is understandable, although I feel that watching a film like that with a group of friends and your Dad, is a great way to overcome what could be far scarier if watching alone. There was a great comment serving, I'm sure, as a nice antidote to Matt feeling like he was a bad father.

One other theme this post covers nicely is that feeling of not experiencing something for the first time ever again, which is something that does excite me as a father watching all these great films with my own son.

And as we watched, I realized again that while unfortunately you can't see a great movie again for the first time, the next-best thing is to show it to people who've never seen it.

Via Coudal

SXSW 2015 Gaming Awards - Opening Sequence

Loved this animation from Imaginary Forces, to kick off the SXSW 2015 Gaming Awards. It's made especially great, not least for the gorgeous execution of image and sound, but because you can feel the way the creators fully understand and love the subject they are making this film about.

You are so entranced and excited to see the visual nods and hear all the games you've played through your life, you instantly know 'they get me', you know that what's going to come next will be super relevant to you as they've just created something that speaks to you in such an authentic and relevant way. Sounds so simple doesn't it, but you can count on one hand the amount of times something speaks to you like that in a week/month/year.

I also like how it had some visual similarities to the title sequence of Halt & Catch Fire, (which is a brilliant show, if you haven't seen it yet.)

So good.

UPDATE 27/03/2015

Cute little making of too, from Imaginary Forces

The Steve Jobs You Didn't Know

Fast Company published an adaption from the upcoming book Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart Into a Revolutionary Leader by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli. 

"Steve cared," Cook continues. "He cared deeply about things. Yes, he was very passionate about things, and he wanted things to be perfect. And that was what was great about him. A lot of people mistook that passion for arrogance. He wasn’t a saint. I’m not saying that. None of us are. But it’s emphatically untrue that he wasn’t a great human being, and that is totally not understood.

I can't wait to read this new book about Steve Jobs, it's just getting positive review after positive review. John Gruber at Daring Fireball gave a glowing review of the book after reading a pre-release copy.

The book is smart, accurate, informative, insightful, and at times, utterly heartbreaking. Schlender and Tetzeli paint a vivid picture of Jobs the man, and also clearly understand the industry in which he worked. They also got an astonishing amount of cooperation from the people who knew Jobs best: colleagues past and present from Apple and Pixar — particularly Tim Cook — and his widow, Laurene Powell Jobs.

It will certainly be refreshing to hear him portrayed as a three dimensional character and not just the ranting figurehead of Apple in the Isaacson book. 

Google Compare - Student becomes teacher

Creative Director - Robert Waddilove

A film we recently created with the Google Compare team , to kick off the launch of the product in the US, starting in California. We wanted to make an emotive film focusing on the benefits of the product, rather than a more prescriptive film listing the features. That's what the website is for, right? 

I love the relationship of the Grandfather and Granddaughter - such good performances, they feel so natural and real. The locations in LA gave a literal warmth to every shot and having an old Mustang (even if not a Bullitt era one) made for a film as much about Americana as it was about insurance. 

This was an approach I love to take with this type of branded content/ad, and there's been some great comments on the film on YouTube already, I hope it gets a bit of media spend behind it for a little more exposure.

Had a great time on the shoot - here's some Behind the Scenes shots I grabbed too

We also made a 45second shorter version, which focuses more on Grandpa's need to get insurance (over doing up the car).

The problem with action movies today

Fantastic video essay on the many problems with action movies today. You could really open up some of these points to all movies  in general (and even content & ads!).

So well argued by Chris Stuckmann, I was nodding the whole way through. I especially loved all the contrasting examples of brilliant action movies and why they work so well. No surprise it all boils down to character and story. Characters you believe in, that evoke an emotional response from the audience, whether you love or hate them, and a great story.

Via Kottke