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Rupert Maconick is adamant that advertising as we traditionally know it is dead, or at least is in a permanent state of atrophy. No one, he posits, watches adverts anymore, not if they can help it. Rather, he clarifies, no one watches traditional TV commercials anymore. “If it wasn’t your job,” he asks, “would you? If, at home, you have the ability to skip through them, do you? Of course you do.” Maconick, the founder of LA-based production company Saville Productions, has a habit of answering questions that he asks for you, but the thing is, those answers are generally right.

Maconick’s company actually defined as as an entertainment rather than a production company, was set up in 1996, a few years after this native Brit had crossed the Atlantic. Before moving to America, Maconick worked in a commercials production house in the UK. In the States, he completed a master’s in film business at the University of Southern California before reading scripts for a living at Paramount and William Morris. “But it can be demoralizing,” explains Maconick, “because most screenplays don’t get made. The good news about the advertising business is brands need to sell products every quarter and so they need to constantly market and produce promotional films.”

Continue reading on Shots.

The 10 Best Documentaries of 2016 That Are Trying to Change the World

While high-profile dramas continue to dominate the ongoing award season, let us not forget the many phenomenal documentaries that were bestowed upon us over the past twelve months. Covering an extensive range of subject matter, from notorious criminal cases and political scandals to American race relations and music concerts, the cream of this year’s non-fiction crop cast an incisive eye on compelling people and unforgettable events, in the process revealing underling truths about the way in which we view ourselves, the world, and those with whom we share it. Upsetting, enraging and exciting, they were—no matter the genre—as good as anything projected on a big screen in 2016.

5. Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World

There may be no documentarian more enthralled and terrified by the world’s vast, expansive wonders than Werner Herzog, whose non-fiction cinema consistently investigates the far reaches of the planet and the human spirit. For his latest gem, the director casts his gaze on a virtual space—the Internet—to provide an episodic study of the ways in which we benefit from, and may yet fall victim to, interconnectivity. Far from simply a “The Sky is Falling!” doomsday proclamation, however, Herzog’s film is amazed by the innovation that we now take for granted (such as the Internet itself, of which no sci-fi writer ever conceived). Nonetheless, there’s also dread here, spawned by the realization that our dawning digitized paradigm is reconfiguring (if not outright warping) our emotional, social, and moral standards. Caught between celebration and condemnation, it’s a thoughtful consideration of the implications of our new world order.

View the complete film list on Esquire.

The world looked on in horror this week as an attempt to evacuate civilians out of the war-torn city in eastern Aleppo was halted. The four-year conflict between the Syrian Army and rebels forces have seen thousands die, with many still trapped in the rubble-filled city.

The Syrian Civil Defense, also known as the White Helmets — a group of volunteer rescue workers that rush in after attacks to try and save people amid the ruins — have responded to the humanitarian crisis. And their efforts are the subject of the short documentary The White Helmets, which is one of the 10 short docs that have made the shortlist for Oscar consideration.

The film, currently available on Netflix, was directed by Orlando von Einsiedel and produced by Joanna Natasegara, who both were Oscar-nominated for their 2015 documentary feature Virunga. They originally expected their new film would also be a feature-length documentary, but then a sense of urgency took over and they opted to move forward more quickly with a short film.

The Hollywood Reporter talked to von Einsiedel and Natasegara about the risks in making the film, their experiences with the White Helmets (“these are people like us”) and the impact of repetitive news coverage (“You start to lose empathy for the situation”).

Continue reading on The Hollywood Reporter.

Congrats to Werner Herzog and Pereira & O’Dell New York for winning the Gold for Shots Branded Entertainment of the Year: One-Off Project. Produced by Saville Productions, Lo and Behold was commissioned by Netscout and features interviews from some of the most influential minds of the modern Internet era.

View the Shots Awards 2016 Winners.

Judd Ehrlich has just nominated for Best Sports Documentary on his film Keepers of the Game at the Critics’ Choice Awards’ inaugural Documentary Awards.

The documentary tells the story of the Salmon River Shamrocks, a Native American girls lacrosse team and their struggles in establishing their rightful place in the sport.

Watch the trailer.

Werner Herzog’s latest documentary, Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World, is a meditation on technology and humanity that includes interviews with everyone from developers of the early Internet to astrophysicists to Elon Musk.

It’s also a film with a strange genesis. Lo and Behold is the result of a collaboration with Netscout, a hardware company that was originally interested in Herzog making short films about what would happen if the Internet was disrupted.

“I immediately declined because I thought it was an attempt to hire me for a commercial,” Herzog tells Co.Create. “I have had an attitude in all my working life that I’ve never done commercials because I feel uncomfortable with the consumer civilization in which we are living. I feel uncomfortable and I would not like to somehow instigate and promote consumerism even further.”

“It turned out, no, it was much more like something I did for YouTube once about texting and driving. I was told it was something like that, and in fact I was completely left alone and could do whatever I wanted to do. [. . .] It was a very pleasant collaboration, and they loved the film when they were finished. We all watched it and they loved it. They were proud to be part of it.”

When you watch Lo and Behold, it feels like an installment of Carl Sagan or Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s Cosmos filtered through Herzog’s sensibility in the best possible way.

Continue reading on Fastcocreate.com.

It’s been almost four years since PJ Pereira unleashed “The Beauty Inside” on the world. The years since that groundbreaking work of branded content-which Pereira & O’Dell made for Intel and Toshiba-have been a time of experimentation, Pereira says, with agencies testing formats and boundaries in the one advertising genre that truly likes to pretend it isn’t advertising at all.

“I don’t think we’re at a point of evolution [in branded content] yet. We’re still testing the waters and seeing what can be done, or can’t,” Pereira told Adweek here in Bali this week, where he’s been chairing the Branded Content & Branded Entertainment jury for the Clio Awards—sifting through hundreds of entries and picking the 2016 winners.

Around the time of “The Beauty Inside,” which won gold Clios in Film and Branded Entertainment in 2013, there was lots of long-form content, even things over an hour long. “I didn’t see anything this year like that,” Pereira said of the work he and his jury evaluated here at the lavish Ritz-Carlton resort.

VR is coming into play,” he said. “Super long-form is slowing down, but I’m not sure it should be. It’s more difficult to do. And now, it doesn’t have the novelty. It becomes less inviting. And if you’re going to do a feature-length thing, it has to be really good because it’s competing against other movies out there.”

That’s a challenge that might well put off many agencies these days, but not Pereira. In fact, he’s preparing for the theatrical release on Aug. 19 of Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World-a 98-minute documentary, which Pereira & O’Dell produced and documentary master Werner Herzog directed, about the past, present and future of the internet.

Continue reading on Adweek.

Werner Herzog’s latest documentary “Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World” chronicles the virtual world from its unlikely origins to its outermost reaches, examining the modern, malleable digital landscape with a curious, keen eye. Aided by his indelible voiceover, Herzog speaks with such tech visionaries as Bob Kahn, Elon Musk, and Sebastian Thrun to explore how the virtual has completely changed the physical, and the ways in which our lives are forever altered by our connection to the Internet. Herzog probes the philosophical questions that lie not so far beneath the surface and takes a harsh look at the benefits and pitfalls of our new world. See some exclusive posters from the film below.

Continue reading at Indiewire.com.