Tool of North America is pleased to announce the recent signing of industry-leading Flash and 3D developer Carlos Ulloa to their digital practice. The London-based Ulloa’s signature works include the creation of the revolutionary open source application Papervision3D, the leading real-time Flash 3D engine. Since the library’s debut, Papervision3D has vaulted into the mainstream, its universal penetration allowing it to become central to prominent campaigns for Sony BRAVIA, Renault, Absolut, Red Bull, and Nike. Using Papervision3D and Unity, Ulloa builds interactive 3D experiences for the Web and iPhone applications.

“Ulloa is a creative visionary,” stated Tool Executive Producer Digital Dustin Callif. “What he’s done with Papervision3D has completely redefined the medium, and evolved what people can do with the web. As an interactive director, Carlos is poised to bring his unique background as a creative and technologist to create new forms of advertising.”

“We had our eye on Carlos for some time now, and when we found out he was interested in our new representation model, we were over the moon,” explained Tool Executive Producer Brian Latt. “Carlos is a special talent and we’re fortunate to have him onboard. We have some interesting projects in the queue and can’t wait to tie Carlos into a few of them.”

“Signing with Tool will allow me to focus on creativity,” noted Ulloa. “I like the way Tool portrays their people and the directors. The approach is really nice, they take care of their people.”

Ulloa’s groundbreaking work has earned countless recognitions, including a spot on Creativity Magazine’s 2009 Creativity 50 list and numerous awards for both his In An ABSOLUT World campaign and Sony BRAVIA, which were shortlisted for a Cannes Cyber Lion in 2008. Papervision3D has earned a slew of awards, including .net Magazine’s 2008 Innovation of the Year, winner in the 3D category at the 17th Flash Forward Film Festival, and a People’s Choice Award at the 2007 FITC Awards. He also speaks about his creative work in interactive 3D at many of the industry’s leading conferences, including CaT, TED, FITC and Adobe MAX.

Times are tough, but saving money doesn’t have to be. Coupons.com marks its first foray into television advertising with a hilarious series of spots directed by Tool of North America’s Jason Zada.

High on comedy, these skillfully directed scenarios find shoppers in a supermarket going to absurd lengths to save a buck or two.

Free Samples opens with a mother pushing her toddler in a shopping cart. When she stops at a sample station, she helps herself to a free hors d’oeuvre. Soon, she’s sneakily stuffing her face until the tray is empty, her baby watching curiously.

Shampoo finds a man in the hair care isle with a bottle of water. When he’s sure no one is looking, he applies some shampoo, lathers up and rinses off before another shopper catches the stunned sudser trying to dry himself off with a mop.

In Shaving, a woman in the produce isle is inspecting a head of cabbage. Once the coast is clear, she reaches into her basket for shaving cream and a disposable razor. As she starts to shave her leg, she notices a store security camera pointed in her direction. Flustered, she abandons her basket and her attempt to shave her legs and ducks out of the store.

Zada’s clever handling of these novel comic scenarios help make the campaign instantly memorable. The message is clear: there’s an easier way to stretch your dollar. With Coupons.com, all you need to do is click, print and save.

Entertainment Weekly’s “Must Clicks” selects the Cold War Kids interactive music video “I’ve Seen Enough” as one of their Best Entertainment Websites for this summer’s surfing.

SANTA MONICA, Calif., June 05, 2009, — In the latest in a series of signings designed to diversify its offerings to include top creative talent from the interactive space, production house Tool of North America has brought seasoned video game designer and developer Jason Rohrer aboard its roster.

The move comes on the heels of the Santa Monica-based Tool hiring Dustin Callif as its head of digital content (SHOOT, 3/27), as well as Grant Skinner, a noted creative interactive technologist.

Rohrer’s credits include the two-player game Between, which won the Innovation Award at this year’s Independent Games Festival.

“The video game industry has produced some of the best interactive storytellers in the world,” said Callif. “Jason is a prime example of this. He will be able to apply his understanding of game mechanics and engagement to interactive advertising, going well beyond creating advergames.”

Meanwhile Skinner has been a leader in the field of rich interactive experiences. He has spoken at over 50 major interactive and gaming conferences on experimental interaction, development processes, Flash design, and user experience/usability. Skinner’s Flash development and consulting company, gskinner.com, has worked with clients including AOL, BBC, Salesforce, Nissan, Adobe, GE, Atlantic Records, Comcast, EA, CNN, and DIRECTV. Skinner has earned SIGGRAPH’s Best of the Web, multiple FlashForward awards and FITC’s Best Canadian Developer honor.

Tool’s digital expertise is rounded out by Jason Zada and Anders Hallberg, two established live-action directors of interactive content.

Zada joined Tool’s directorial lineup in January. He formerly served as executive creative director at noted digital interactive marketing/ad agency EVB, which he co-founded in San Francisco. During his EVB tenure, he diversified successfully into the director’s chair.

Tool’s first major digital project has already been wrapped: an interactive music video directed by Sam Jones for the Cold War Kids track “I’ve Seen Enough” (www.mtvmusic.com/artist/coldwarkids.jhtml), created specifically for interactivity and released solely on the web. The original footage for the Cold War Kids video, shot in a recording studio and meant to look like a documentary, is presented in parallel parts so it can be remixed by fans; all changes made by the user, even changes made mid-play, happen in real time, thanks to innovative streaming and compression techniques.

“Like the Cold War Kids project, all of our digital work will bring interactive together with live action to create something entirely new,” said Brian Latt, executive producer for Tool. “…This new offering, compounded with our roster of live action talent allows Tool to handle any digital campaign from start to finish, push creativity to new places, and bring interactive and live action together seamlessly.”

Tool of North America Director Jason Zada beautifully captures the chaos and confusion of a drunken night out in a big-city club with a new music video for up-and-coming act Wallpaper. The camera tags along with front man Ricky Reed – a flamboyant re-mixer who has used Auto-Tune to redo songs from Jay Z (among others) into online hits – as he struts through a multistoried San Francisco nightclub, decked out in a fedora, sunglasses, and oversized gold chain, chugging champagne and dancing with multiple women. The video ends with Reed collapsing, drunk, on the dance floor.

I’m So Wasted is a technological and production achievement on many levels. First, the video was completed in one continuous eight-minute shot by a steady cam operator leading a RED camera at 120 frames per second. The footage was neither cut nor edited from its original roll. Second, the song itself played at speeds ranging from a moseying 25 percent of normal to a speedy 200 percent, and the live action footage had to be synched to this shuffling velocity. Finally, Zada coordinated the entire cast – a dancing throng meant to simulate the scene in a bustling nightclub – to slow down when Reed moved quickly, and to speed up when he slowed down – an intentional juxtaposition meant to simulate the disorienting experience of being out on the town with one too many drinks in the system.

“I’ve been waiting a long time to do a music video such as this, and when Reed and I began talking about the concept, I knew this was something we could pull off,” said Zada. “This was a true collaboration with the lead singer, and we worked side by side on it the whole way through. Being a true fan of the late-80s and early-90s music videos by guys like Spike Jones and Michel Gondry, I knew I wanted to capture as much in-camera as I could. Nowadays, it seems as though videos are injected with too much stop motion and other FX, and Wallpaper shared my vision of just having fun with this.”

The video, which debuted on the rotation at MTVU in the last week of August, is now playing on numerous websites, including spike.com. Wallpaper has been featured in Spin Magazine, San Francisco Weekly, and several music industry trades recently.

Check out some recent write-ups for Cold War Kids “I’ve Seen Enough”:

Fast Company,

Esquire,

and

Creativity

Tool of North America is excited to announce the signing of Grant Skinner, an internationally recognized leader in the field of rich interactive experiences. He joins Tool’s Digital practice as a creative technologist that will work with advertising agencies in the following capacities: to concept and develop creative technical solutions for brands and to collaborate with Tool’s directors as their technologist by blending live-action content with cutting-edge technology. Skinner’s signing gives Tool enhanced capability to push out more innovative work of the sort such as the recent Cold War Kids I’ve Seen Enough video helmed by Tool director Sam Jones.

Skinner brings international renown to Tool. He has spoken at over 50 major interactive and gaming conferences on experimental interaction, development processes, Flash design, and user experience/usability.

“Grant’s skill set brings a whole new dimension to Tool,” noted Callif. What’s unique about Grant is that he’s a technologist who takes a creative approach to delivering interactive experiences. We want to push the boundaries of interactive technologies and Grant will help lead Tool and our agency clients towards producing never been done before advertising campaigns.”

Skinner’s Flash development and consulting company, gskinner.com, has worked with clients including AOL, BBC, Salesforce, Nissan, Adobe, GE, Atlantic Records, Comcast, EA, CNN, and DIRECTV. For his innovation and expertise, Skinner earned SIGGRAPH’s Best of the Web, multiple FlashForward awards and FITC’s Best Canadian Developer.

“I’ve been looking to have an outlet for more creative opportunities” stated Skinner. “Tool provides the perfect setup to take on these types of projects while continuing to manage my interactive production company. They have a wonderful roster of directors and I’m excited to see what I can do with this talented team. I’m looking forward to pushing the boundaries of what can be done with live action and interactive content.”

May 27, 2009 at 10:19AM by Richard Dorment

To be older than 25 is to remember a time when music videos mattered. “Thriller.” “November Rain.” That a-ha song where the comic-book character busts through the brick wall: cultural touchstones, the lot of them. Your friends watched them, you watched them, and that girl you met at the mall watched them, which meant you two had something to talk about. Who the hell talks about the paint-by-numbers stuff that passes for videos today?

But then there is director Sam Jones’s Internet-only video for the Cold War Kids’s “I’ve Seen Enough.” Jones, a longtime Esquire photographer and the director of the excellent Wilco documentary I Am Trying to Break Your Heart, shot each of the band’s four members separately as they performed four different versions of the track. Then, with his production company, Tool of North America, Jones found a way to stream four different versions of the song simultaneously on the same screen at the same time. And then he figured out how to make it interactive. Addictively so.

Click on the screen, and you can mix and match the different versions at will. Mute and unmute instruments as the song plays; pair the vocals of one version with the guitar of another and the piano of still another; watch as the bandmates take a break when they’re not playing, or (cooler still) pause for a moment before entering the song hard on the downbeat. It’s necessary viewing, if for no other reason than to remind you that music videos once had the ability to inspire and entertain. And that, if more directors and musicians took their cues from Sam Jones and the Cold War Kids, they might once again.

Tool of North America is pleased to announce the signing of acclaimed computer programmer and musician Jason Rohrer, an unsurpassed creative talent best known for his efforts to reinvent the video game as an artistic medium. His focus at Tool will be to apply his understanding of interactive storytelling to brand campaigns (i.e., beyond games).

His roster of emotionally impactful video games, which focus on genre-changing themes like consciousness, isolation, mania, conflict and compromise, include Primrose, Gravitation, Passage, Cultivation, Transcend, and the 2009 Innovation Award-winning Between. His monthly Game Design Sketchbook, commissioned by video-game website The Escapist, features titles such as Immortality, asking the player to choose between eternal life and mortality.

“I see video games not as addicting time-wasters, but instead as powerful tools for communication and expression through their unique channel, which is interactivity,” noted Rohrer. “Deep interactivity is missing from most digital brand campaigns, and I’m hoping to change that. Tool shares my vision, and I’m fortunate to be working with them.”

“Jason brings a totally unique skill set to Tool,” stated Tool Head of Digital Content Dustin Callif. “Not only does he have an array of talents, but he approaches his subjects in totally unique ways, video games being just one example. We welcome his innovative spirit to our roster of creative talent. We’re excited to be representing innovators from the video game industry to the advertising world.”

In addition to designing video games, Rohrer runs Arthouse games, an artgame journalism website featuring news, reviews and interviews. He has also created an extensive list of independent software research projects; is the author of several fiction and nonfiction works, including journal publications; coauthored a children’s book; and is an occasional public speaker, musician, and blogger. He was named to Esquire’s Best and Brightest 2008 list as one of many young geniuses whose ideas could change the world.

In a video created specifically for interactivity and released solely for the Web, Tool’s Sam Jones gives fans endless remix control over the Cold War Kids video for I’ve Seen Enough (www.mtvmusic.com/artist/coldwarkids.jhtml), including the power to switch up individual performers mid-song and never miss a beat.

The Content:
The original footage for the video, shot in a recording studio, was designed specifically to be presented in parallel parts online and then remixed by fans, even mid-play. The band laid down four distinctly different versions of the song. Each of the four band members was filmed on a darkly lit stage, playing their parts on vibraphone, guitar, bass, keyboard, standup bass, and more. These versions were recorded so the parts can be mixed together or played on their own.

The footage itself, from director Sam Jones (who made his name with the Wilco film, I Am Trying to Break Your Heart), feels like a documentary – if a band member isn’t playing, he’s relaxing against his instrument or just standing loosely, awaiting his cue while “listening” to the track unfold the way the fan designed it to.

“The idea was that fans would be able to create an interesting new variation of the track every time, a new listening experience,” says director Sam Jones, of Tool. “Plus, it’s just fun to play with – there are so many ways to mix the instruments and vocals, and so many chances to get creative.”

The Site:
The interactive video demanded a high level of technical creativity, but the idea is simple: “At its core, it’s all about the music,” said Dustin Callif, Head of Digital Content at Tool. “As a music fan, I’ve visited websites that allow fans to control the camera angles or change the background, but I’ve always felt there was a missed opportunity to focus on the music.”

Tool reached out to its vast resources in the digital space and put together the best team to deliver on this vision. Together, they developed an innovative technical solution: the site streams four different videos at the same time, and advanced compression and streaming techniques allow for on-demand interactivity.

As a result, the experience is seamless. Every change the fan makes happens in real time, including every stop, start, or mid-stream instrument change. Without skipping a beat, a fan can silence everything but the vocals and bring in the drums, or start with the full band, pull the keyboard and add the xylophone, or sweep away the standup bass at the last minute and cue the bass guitar for the song’s closing notes. The remix possibilities are endless.

“As web creators, sometimes we get carried away with our tools, and we complicate things with Flash animation and long page loads,” Callif said. “For this experience, our singular goal was to allow people to change the music in real-time and feel as if they were in the recording studio with the band. We’re thrilled to be able to work with the band and Sam to put the music first, and to allow fans to experience the band dynamic firsthand.”
The Best Part for Tool and Sam Jones:

Sam was able to dream up something unique and the Tool team was able to deliver on his vision. Tool took on responsibilities from pre-production through the delivery of the final site. “We knew we wanted to break new ground with this site, giving fans not just the ability to easily mix sound and video in real time, but to create something entirely new, and to do it in a way that makes them feel even more connected with the band,” Callif said. “It’s so important to us to put together just the right team for every project, and this is a great example of why that is – we were able to blend a high level of creativity, endless ambition, and a deep understanding of what’s important to the fans. That’s how it worked.”

Tool of North America’s Geordie Stephens in collaboration with CP+B recently developed a series of hilarious web films starring Burger King Corp.’s most famous spokesman, the King, to tie-in with the launch of the JJ Abrams directed Star Trek prequel. Keeping with the constant drive to push the creative process, these web films position the royal mascot in an entirely new context. The sequence of shorts, each dubbed as a new chapter in the Kingon Defense Academy, features the King torturing a revolving cast of characters with degrading physical punishments – arm twisting, nipple pinching, and wedgie giving, among others.

A voiceover – played against a backdrop of understated oriental music meant to evoke the master/student relationships of kitschy old-time action movies – provides improbable but amusing tips for how one can evade or defend against the King’s trickery, followed by a demonstration of one wise student foiling his majesty’s plot. The V.O. suggests, for example, in Wedgie, that the best way to avoid the britches-snagging nuisance is to go without underwear at all times.

The collection of seven spots is featured www.whenkingonsattack.com.

Director Erich Joiner of Tool of North America and agency Deutsch LA take on Chicago Cubs manager Lou Piniella and an unmotivated team of soccer tykes for DIRECTV.

In Soccer, a lackadaisical coach lets his team of soccer toddlers lollygag their way through a tournament. When Piniella steps up to berate the coach for wasting time and missing an important Cubs game that afternoon, the coach reminds Piniella that with DIRECTV his DVR can be set from any cell phone or computer, no matter where he is, so he’ll never miss a game again.

Director Erich Joiner’s dexterous comic skills are showcased in a pair of new Miller Genuine Draft spots via Tool of North America.

Have you ever wondered what you can order at the bar these days that tastes great and has only 64 calories? In White Wine 64 we find a handsome couple at a bar waiting for their low calorie drinks to arrive. When the waitress places their beverages on the table it becomes painfully obvious that the man, who chose the tall cool bottle MGD 64, made the more satisfying choice. His date isn’t so lucky. Her 64-calorie choice gets her an oddly whittled down glass of chardonnay.

Beer Stein 64 finds a group of buddies at a pool party looking for low calorie refreshment. One of the guys opts for a rival light beer, thinking it has the same calorie content as an MGD 64. Instead of sipping a refreshing bottle of MGD 64, he’s presented with a butchered beer stein that hardly has any beer in it. When it comes to total refreshment, you get more for less with Miller Genuine Draft 64.

Tool’s Harry Cocciolo helms an imaginative new spot for Amtrak in collaboration with Arnold that brings to life the wonder and convenience of riding by rail.

If kids repeat what they see, then traveling by Amtrak makes the greatest impression. In this enchanting :30 spot, Cocciolo takes us back to a time when playing with toy cars, airplanes and locomotives was just as fun as being in them.

As a young boy drives his toy car around pretend city streets, he is soon snared by multiple traffic jams. Even in his imagination, another child and his toy airplanes are caught in the grip of flight delays. But it’s the child with the train set to be admired who’s really having fun. As his Amtrak train glides though the countryside, past cities where buses and cars are caught in gridlock, it becomes clear that one of the most efficient, safe and relaxing ways to travel is by rail. Enjoy the Journey.