Speaking of video, my animator/filmmaker friend Jonah Tobias is currently moving steadily up the ranks of a video-mercial contest. He and a handful of local photographer, under-employed actor, and writer friends threw this together in a mad caffeinated marathon of movie-making over a few days. He wanted Terri to be an extra in it, but she couldn’t take time away from a mad dash to a deadline of her own. (More of which, later.)
Jonah’s first break into the almost-big-time was doing all the animation for the independent documentary Supersize Me (link to trailer). The film won the Grand Jury prize at Sundance, and was nominated for an Academy Award.
He does the stage and A/V graphics for many of the TED events, and for several years has done all the concert animation graphics for Tim McGraw’s live shows.
These projects are the tropical islands between which he must swim, like all freelancers, through a barren ocean of no-work. Life jackets and bits of flotsam that keep you afloat take the form of commercial work, things you hang onto just to keep from going under. He has an impressive list of clients for everything from pharmaceutical info-graphics to environmental advocacy.
Anyway, this new adrenaline project is a crowd-sourced commercial contest for Doritos (interesting junk-food connection we’ll let slide). The top couple of winners get their commercial aired during the upcoming Super Bowl. Oh, and that’s Jonah in the commercial as the mad scientist:
If you are so inclined, give it a view and a rating. Send the link to friends. If he wins, he gets to go the big game. I don’t think he cares for football, so that will be an entertaining twist. Almost torture for him, entertaining for me.