i believe in harvey dent too

Check out this cool viral site for the upcoming Batman: Dark Knight movie which is still in production. Ok so it looks like an error page. Wrong! See if you can highlight the text. Ha ha! But that's not it either. Check this out. Copy and paste the whole lot into a text editor and then use the find and replace function (usually under the edit function) to replace all the "Ha"s with just a blank space. To make the secret code even more obvious. Find all the "spaces" and replace them with simply nothing and the coded message should be really easy to read.

Catch up lady has lots of news around other campaigns that have been witnessed in and around the LA area for the new Batman movie. How excited am I. I absolutely love this kind of marketing as it gives an edge over traditional advertising and it appeals to it's target audience. Can anyone say Annie's secret decoder ring? (watch Woody Allen's Radio Days if you have no idea what I'm going on about).

wwf

This is truely a remarkable and inspired billboard ad from the World Wildlife Fund. Using the sun and a specially designed screen, the shadow cast on the ad creates the illusion of the seas rising over the course of the day. This stop-motion video shows how the ad looks over time. This is genius and just shows how if you think a little laterally you can produce stuff of meaning for the real world. The link takes you to a Save Our Climate microsite.

ray (should be) ban(ned)

The 80's are back and so it would seem is Ray Ban here with this viral video. Watch it first and we'll discuss in a minute.

Ok so this went round the agency today and although it did get fairly widely slated it is clearly quite clever. I suppose there are people out there who won't realize that it is all done in After Effects or some such tool and to those it works as a good viral video, one you really do want to send round to all your mates. To the more savvy viewer they will realize that this is just a shameless promo piece for Ray Ban featuring two obnoxious guys. But it is still a good video with a good concept and one that everyone wants to look at even if just to see how it was done. And if you notice on the car window the words "Never Hide"... type this into google and the top hit is the Ray Ban website. Clever!

Between you and me

This movie was filmed in what is in my mind a new medium. Stop motion burst photography. So by using a digital camera's burst mode you can fire off a series of images one after the other. By piecing these images together you create a stop-motion effect. I think this achieves a rather unique look and would be great to use in a viral ad campaign.

Between you and me has won loads of awards including the SeNef Mobile Grand Prix at Seoul Film Festival, Best Experimental Film at the Tiburon International Film Festival, Best Cinematography at the Gotham City International Film Festival, Best Short Film at the Vilnius Independent Film & Video Festival and in the Experimental Film category at Big Apple Film Festival. It was written and directed by Patryk Rebisz.

body popping

So it starts with two kids on stage and it all looks very amateur and school talent show until this gangly geek comes onstage and starts off with a little dance that you might do at a school disco. And then his body dislocates and it seems like all his bones turn into rubber. This really does have to be seen to be believed. Brilliant.

free running

The art of free running or le parkour. If you get a chance check out the full 8 1/2 minutes of this viral. If you thought that Madonna's dancers were athletic you have seen nothing yet. These guys are like spider monkeys who can climb and scale Russian urbania with ease. Bounce off walls. Back flip down flights of stairs. It all looks incredibly dangerous and yet they are so effortless and graceful it seems easy. Just goes to show that the Russian gymnastic program really is second to none. Great French hip-hop track really sets the edgy feel of this short.

xmas light show

This has got to be one of the best stop-motion virals I have seen. An enormous amount of work has obviously gone into this little production. And epic it is with it's orchestral rock soundtrack. (Awesome dude). Judging by their site they build their light tracks on rigs that are set-up with controls so it is a 'simple' matter of using stop-motion techniques and firing off different lights in order to achieve this effect. I think what is most impressive about any stop-motion viral is the scale of the production and this one truly is monumental. Enjoy the video below.

post it motion

Check out this great video here It is stop motion trickery with LOTS of post its. Stop motion videos seem to be in vogue of late with bored twenty somethings who have a camcorder and a free weekend to hand. But this one really makes a good attempt at synching with the music and leaves you marveling at the time spent to create this movie. Inspires me to waste a weekend trying something like this myself. All I need is an extra pair of hands, a great story board. Oh and a free weekend of course :)