“Imagine if a company paid the government to mine for gold or drill for oil in your backyard—but didn’t ask for your permission, pay you, or give you important information about the project. Right now, oil, gas, and mining companies are doing this all around the world, often in the poorest countries.” – from Oxfam’s Right to Know, Right to Decide campaign.

To help raise awareness of the negative effect of extractive industries on various western Afrikan nations, leftchannel collaborated with Talking Eyes Media on an immersive video/animation for the international relief and development organization Oxfam.

The animation was created with a combination of various types of media: footage (shot with the Canon 5D MarkII), 2D and 3D motion graphics, and animated photo plates from Ed Kashi Photography (sister company to Talking Eyes Media). Check it:

FOLLOW THE MONEY

Please visit Oxfam’s site to see our Follow the Money animation as well as other information on this particular project.

Continue reading for a couple of looks into our production process.

When Swiss filmmaker Reto Caduff asked us to create the opening titles for his upcoming documentary on Herbert Matter – the legendary Swiss designer – we answered! The title creation was an amazing collaboration with Reto as we created unique elements for the titles as well as integrating much of Herbert’s massive library of diverse work.

Rather than write our own description, we’ll just borrow the logline from the film’s website. “THE VISUAL LANGUAGE OF HERBERT MATTER is a revealing look at the fascinating life story of the highly influential mid-century modern design master. Known as a quintessential designer’s designer, Swiss born Herbert Matter is largely credited with expanding the use of photography as a design tool and bringing the semantics of fine art into the realm of applied arts.”

In other news, Reto is in negotiation with an Academy Award winning actress as the narrator. We can’t reveal her name just yet, but it will be well in-hand by the time the film is released this summer.

Even cooler news? For the second time in 3 years we’ve had one of our projects accepted at the South by Southwest Film Festival. Last week these titles were nominated, as one of 18ish finalists, by SXSW’s inaugural film titles competition – Art of the Title Sequence. The competition is judged next week – March 16 – so we’ll let you know how we do!

Oh yes we did! We created a sweet video for the swingmasters over at Nike. The stellar folks at Summit Projects approached us to collaborate on an anchor video for their redesign of the NIKEGOLF website. The SQ MACHSPEED Driver is one of the featured clubs in NIKEGOLF’s new arsenal of tour weapons. Summit and Nike wanted to show-off the aerodynamic aspects of the driver head… and nothing is more show-offy than a wind tunnel smoke test! Our video puts the sexy back in techy.. check it:

First of all, the gang over at Summit Projects is great. Jeanne, Eddie, and Chris gave us lots of freedom combined with a healthy dose of direction. Starting with a rough model of the driver, we cleaned-up some issues, textured it, and then rendered the bejesus out of it in Cinema 4D. The sweet simulated smoke generator for wind tunnel testing comes from 3ds Max. Adding some killer animated infographics and pseudo-telemetry, we composited our animation over footage of Justin Leonard shot at the Nike research facility in Fort Worth, Texas. The coup de grace of final touches is the sound design mixed by the fine peoples over at Circa Music.

Here are some behind the scenes:

Click here to see motion tests