In the tradition of our past parties, we’re throwing a cocktail party on New Year’s Eve and will be serving up good music, lively discussion, and obscure cocktail recipes that date back as far as the 1600′s – as well as some recipes of our own.

Join us at at our studio in downtown Sacramento located at 1020 Tenth Street – the event will start around 9:00pm and continue until who knows when.

Hope to see you

Sometimes, when you see the kind of advertising and product design mishaps that make it out into the world, you can only stare in disbelief.

Context matters.

Blow in her face.

Probably paid for by some divorce attorneys’ lobby.

For all ages, not genders.

It’s all that.

People are smarter than the suits take them for.

I agree.

Steak & eggs, living in harmony.

I usually try not to nerd out too much on our website about the techbabble component of what we do, but I’m throwing caution to the wind today.

This is a still from some footage shot recently for our Sacramento Works campaign.  I’m obsessed with the background in this image – I love it.  It was shot with a 70mm anamorphic lens which, because of the way the anamorphic format works causes objects in the distance to go out of focus in a very interesting way.  It’s a subtle detail, but adds a kind of hyper-real feeling to film footage that I really connect with.

This format is kind of hard to work with for a few different reasons:

We have only 3 different lenses for this format – they’re hard to come by, quite expensive, and renting them in northern California is not likely to happen.

Maintaining good focus is trickier – depth of field is small and in a closeup, normal actor movement can potentially make the shot go soft.

Every shot shows a lot more background than the same shot with normal spherical lenses would. With a bigger viewable area you need to worry about lighting more space.

In shooting this format handheld (like this spot is), care has to be taken to keep the camera movement smooth and level or the background will go all distortowonky (that’s a technical term.)

But the end result is so worth it.  Yay for having cool clients that let me nerd out and play with fun stuff!

We do a lot of really cool stuff with our websites, like this one, using all kinds of fancy modern techniques. But I saw an awesome use of the blink style today, and it reminded me just how easy it is to trick out your site and make it

ToTaLlY aWeSoMe!!!one

I mean, just look how much fun that is to read!

Hey! Just a quick note to let our friends and clients know we’re having a New Year’s Eve party once again, and you’re all invited. We’ll be serving up the usual esoteric cocktails and all the associated fun that goes with them. Check back once in a while for more info, and if you’re on our spam list we’ll bother you there as well.

		So I’m in Safeway last night buying the stuff I needed to make my late night falafel dinner.  I’m just waiting at the checker minding my own beeswax and trying to avoid reading the tabloid headlines.  Apparently Angelina Jolie is a total fake, I dunno at what though.

All of a sudden the guy in front of me in line blurts out

“Are you just doing that just to make me look bad?”

Err.  I’m wondering what the hell he’s talking about but then he clues me in by gesturing to my pile of groceries:  pita bread, hummus, spinach, tomatoes, avocado, and some Irish cheese.  Uh.

I look at his groceries and intuitively make a quick comparison: chocolate cake, a jumbo bottle of Dr. Pepper, and 2 copies of  Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.  Yes, two (2) copies.

“One of them is for a friend.”

At this point I laugh.
He’s glaring at me.  He’s serious.
The checker tries to ignore us.

The guy behind me breaks the moment by slamming the thingie that divides people’s groceries onto the conveyor belt and says

“Only in California do people buy shit to make salads in the middle of the night.”

Jesus Christ they’re out to get me tonight…

I turn around to see who’s talking smack about my eating habits and see this hunched-over dirty guy wearing a baseball hat that said “Team Texas” on it.  I’m not making this up.

His groceries: some off-brand vodka, a half-gallon of ice cream, and a box of sugary breakfast cereal, I forget which brand.

I thought for a moment of a few witty things I could retaliate with… but in all honesty, these two guys (along with Safeway’s late night mise en scène) had already accomplished so much awesome randomness I just didn’t want to ruin it.

And that falafel tasted like victory.