28 Weeks Later

Watched this film again last night, and once again I really enjoyed just how visceral and pacy it is. I've been a fan of the franchise ever since I watched 28 Days Later a couple of years ago. I loved how fast-moving it was and just how ridiculously violent it was in some places. And strangely, I also really liked the complete sense of hopelessness that pervaded throughout the film. That sounds odd - how could you enjoy being depressed - but the way the film is shot and directed, you really feel for the characters and the situations they are put in.

I really like the long shots of deserted London - it's so surreal seeing London completely empty, like a ghost town - completely and totally un-natural, and really really eerie. Seeing Wembley stadium with grass a couple of feet high is just weird. The times that they chose to film these shots - often dusk and dawn, make them so much more powerful.

The film makers used circus performers and dancers to play the zombies, and the shaky, cross-cutting camera work really adds to the sense of reckless, horrible evil of the infected humans. Make-up was spot on too, with bleeding eyes, missing limbs etc. etc. And in the second film, Robert Carlyle looks scary as f*ck when he keeps appearing all over the place.

Another thing that struck me about the film was how good the music was. There's only really one major theme, but it's a great guitar-driven piece, full of slowly building momentum that gives me goosebumps everytime I hear it.

Lastly, the graphic design that went into the packaging and posters for the film creates a great presence. It's grungy, rough-edged design, with high contrast colours and desolate imagery.

All in all, this film franchise is an excellently packaged piece of work, a piece of work where all the important elements come together to create something bigger than the sum of its parts. Good stuff.

Tobacco - it's worse than you think

Found this advert the other day, and thought it was pretty good. It's by Portugal's Young & Rubicam. The theme is obviously anti-smoking. You look at it first and think "oh it's just a cigarette" and then realise what it's made up of. I love the way the copy is perfectly echoed by the image - it's clearly a cigarette made up of one part heroin, one part cocaine. Apologies for the bad shot.

Halo 3 Believe

http://halo3.com/believe/shell.html

This is an awesome promo site for the new Xbox game, Halo 3. The designers have gone beyond the usual approach of providing a couple of screenshots and a nice flash interface, and actually built a model of a battle, which is fully interactive. The story is that it is a monument to a great struggle, and you can walk around it. You can control the camera to look at whatever you want and click on points of interest which add depth to the story. These include videos and first-hand accounts of the battle. It's really very impressive as a piece of website design - once again, an attempt at immersion, at telling a story or a message by way of interactiion. It's well known that if you tell someone something they're far less likely to remember it than if you made them do it. The whole concept really helps to add to the story and atmosphere surrounding the game. The music is also very fitting; the sort of sad, wistful piano music that suits the sadness that the designers wanted to create here.

I spent about half an hour looking at everything; there's a lot to see. You can download wallpapers, watch videos, take screenshots etc. It's very interesting and very well done, very believable. It's great to see designers taking so much effort to blend story and visuals together for something as simple as promotional website.

Dave - 'the home of witty banter'

In an interesting move this week, TV channel UKTV has announced it is rebranding its G2 channel 'Dave'. The channel carries programs such as Top Gear and Never Mind The Buzzcocks. The reasoning behind this name change is that 'everyone knows someone called Dave'. Dave's boss, Steven North, added: "Changing the channel name to Dave enables us to create a strong and noisy personality for the channel that immediately aligns us with our core 16-34 male audience."

I quite like the promo material for this, as shown above. Clarendon is a good choice for a font, being pretty trendy at the moment...and then you've got the giraffe indoors...crazy! The slogan is good as well..."the home of witty banter" - exactly what the core market is interested in. I think it's a good idea; the only other male-oriented channel is probably Men & Motors, which has a pretty tame channel presence in comparison. It will be interesting to see what this develops into.

I also like being credited as the home of witty banter ;)

And now on Weetabix...

These TV adverts have been on for quite a while, and are a nice spin on the usual TV channel idents. The basic premise involves a shot of some Weetabix combined with a meal idea; for example Weetabix with fruit. The presentation is great; the Weetabix is shot against a blue background and there are some nice shots of the milk splashing over the 'bix, making them look a lot more appetising than just chunks of dry wheat. The background 'muzak' is exactly right as well; basically tuneless ambience just like most TV idents. I think my favourite ad is '6: Pudding' where the fruit comes out from underneath the Weetabix like the tools in a Swiss Army Knife. I just think its really clever.

The website continues the TV theme. The main navigation is contained within a television, a menu system similar to Sky's interactive controls. You can view all seven of the TV adverts, look at recipes, and enter a competition to win a stupidly large TV (presumably to watch while eating your Weetabix). The TV adverts are in the 'Commercial TV' section.

It's good to see Weetabix putting some effort into rejuvenating their brand. Especially when it's as well produced as this. Too many cereal companies rely on shooting mums and kids eating cereals at the breakfast table...which is dull frankly. The presentation of these new adverts encourages you to examine the possibilities in the humble 'bix. Instead of just treating them as the pappy wheat slabs they are. Setting them as TV idents catches your eye as well; to my knowledge no-one has tried this before. First time I saw one I wondered if ITV had been taken over by the evil cereal industry. But alas, thankfully not.

Good concept, clever methodology and good execution make this a winner.

HP Blackbird 002 Gaming PC

HP have just launched a new PC. And normally this would hardly be cause for notice, but this is not just any PC. This is the Blackbird 002. And it's pretty special. It's HP's first attempt at designing a PC to appeal to PC gamers and enthusiasts, and there's a pretty cool website behind it.

HP's design concept here seems to have been to make it look as like car advertising as possible. Everything's sleek. Everything looks really professional and stylish, with an industrial look that complements the case design. It's all rather good looking.

Maybe the website isn't particularly inventive, but it's nicely done. There are little touches, such as the "HP Labs 2007, Level 5 RAID/1.1KW Power, 10,000RPM Raptor Drive, 533MHz - 3000MHz" at the bottom right of the page. It's just like a car manufacturer boasting about their new sportscar.

I like the 'industrial-lite' theme that the site has - with the darker, subtler colours, stripes and stenciled sans serifs. The intro to the website is good as well; with the panning shots of the grilles and power buttons, you really think you're looking at something powerful and almost dangerous.

It's good to see PCs being marketed as more than just beige boxes.

http://h20435.www2.hp.com/

Javier Ferrer Vidal

Javier Ferrer Vidal is a Spanish photographer with a really excellent website. It's fashionably stylish without being cliched. I especially like the way your view of the grinning kid changes as you move the mouse, and the fact that your cursor is the menu button.

http://www.javierferrervidal.com/