New studio coming mid-June!

The team installs the new media cabinet

April 3rd, 2010. On the eve of the launch of the iPad, Adobe launched this spirited celebration of Flash software. Having worked with people at Adobe for a very long time, I feel like this video expresses something very special about the culture of Adobe: curious, passionate, authentic and proud of the work that people all over the world create using their tools. It’s hard to fathom the power of so much expressiveness released upon the world. I’ve had the extreme pleasure of meeting both John and Chuck, founders of Adobe, and I secretly hope they get a chance to see some of these little marketing videos sometime. Our clients at Adobe, H. B. Mok and Jena Yankovich picked the song, and clearance was secured by Brooke Wentz at Rights Workshop. As we were mastering the video today, a woman from Hawaii named Elizabeth Lindsey dropped by the studio to record Hawaiian phrases for our Mightyverse project. Coincidentally she knew Israel and is friends with his wife. It was really fun to show her the video, and kind of surreal at the same time. Some of our projects are such a reflection of the time we live in. I’ll be fascinated to look back at this video in 20 years and see what it feels like from that distance.

Music:
Israel Kamakawiwo`ole
“Wonderful World”
Glen Janssens, director
Mark Woloschuk, art director, chief creative
Jena Yankovich, Adobe Producer
H.B. Mok, Adobe content creative
Steve Ogden, animator
Ikuko Kobayashi, title design, animator
Tomas Tucker, DP
Paul Lundahl, sideline heckler

The Wall pre-calendar

Goodbye old wall!

Iku creates the perfect wall calendar

Final touches!

I’ll be adding new and improved posts about keeping the studio organized, especially as we begin the next season ahead. Stay tuned!

Our dear friend Patsy Northcutt was an early collaborator at the studio. Once in awhile when nothing else was going on, she’d pick up our spankin’ new betacam camcorder and pop off some time capsule shots for posterity. These usually get lost in the archives never to be seen again, but in March of 2009 we found the tape and decided to digitize it and post it unedited. The date(s) of shooting are a bit unclear, I would guess around 1996 or ‘97, just after we moved to the new space on Liberty Ship in Sausalito, where eMotion still is today. From this tape, I can’t discern a bit of money making activity going on. I guess that I may be seen making client calls on the phone once in awhile, but still it’s a bit hard to figure out how it all worked.

It’s good to look back once in awhile and appreciate the history. As crazy as it was back then, it was quite inspiring too. And as it is now, it was the people who made it so amazing.

Highlights
1:10 the bird guy who wandered by almost daily
2:42 some reason dav rauch decided to give Auguste Rafael a haircut
3:24 Angie Buama, no, not our office manager, she preferred to be called The Volcano Goddess. Her Volcano Goddess in-box is clearly visible
5:09 Glen, hard at work adjusting photos of Montana, his new baby (note him saving the file to a diskette)
6:11 Padma Holland, our bookkeeper doing what she is still doing today, somehow paying the bills and making payroll with the motley assortment of payables we drag through the door
7:11 Eric Henry, Angie’s cousin, having just built the risers and cabinetry of eMo (inspired by Japanese terraced rice fields), and having painted all of the walls, took time off to repair one of our Canon Hi-8 camcorders
8:15 Fourteen, count ‘em fourteen, four gig ultra scsi FWB harddrives, for a total of 56 gigs of Media 100 storage. And our first DLT drive!
8:38 Patsy Northcutt herself
8:55 Dear friend (and current client), producer/director/editor Eric Ladenburg showing off his belly on his birthday before eating cake
10:13 Rob Tsuyuki showing off his signature unicycling in a desk chair, big wheel move
11:30 Keith Zentner, the only suit wearing person in the whole tape. A client and good friend.
11:50 The amazing artist, Craig Hannah, hard at work on a cathode ray tube
15:35 Pat Knopf, programmer and freaky smart person, showing off his child prodigy talent for solving a Rubick’s cube in a minute and twelve seconds. As a childhood Rubick’s cube solving star, he could do it in 45 seconds, with the last 20 moves performed behind his head!

eMo wildlife

This is a photo from our last night in Wasilla, Alaska where we shot footage for 4 documentaries about Sarah Palin. We met amazing people in Wasilla and had a great time. We even saw 2 moose and went to the big Wasilla vs. Palmer high school football game!

Want to see the final videos?

They are all available here in HD. Or here in the YouTube formats on the internets….