Some of our friends had mentioned on Facebook that they had received random calls from ‘Microsoft’ claiming to know that the call recipient was using pirated copies of Windows.  Obviously they had a ’solution’ to the situation which involved money.  Then even one of our own relatives received such a call on their landline with the same message.  When asked how they knew this, the persona could not give a direct response.

Finally, Paula here received a call actually on her mobile phone.  The conversation went pretty much like this:

Phone rings…
P: “Hello?”
Lady’s voice: “Hello, I’m calling from Microsoft Corporation.”
P: “Oh yes, I have been waiting for your phonecall!”
Lady: “Ok….” (somewhat shocked at the anticipation) ”We have reason to believe you have been using an unregistered, illegal copy of Windows Vista.”
(‘hmm’ we thought – we don’t even have VISTA!)
P: “Bear with me one moment…. ”
Lady: “Ok”
(pause, and Paula made clicking-like noises, like she has a recorder and other equipment)
P: “Hello again. Ok well to inform you for the record I am actually Microsoft Corporation official, and we have been following this scam for some time. Please note that this phonecall is now being traced to your location and recorded so anything you say, can and will be used against you in a court of law.”
Lady: “er… erm….” (Phone goes dead)

So, if you get a suspicious call, our advice is reverse the trick on them.

It centres around the story of Fatima (Portugal), where in 1917 a modern miracle is believed to have occurred.  Three children there saw the Virgin Mary who spoke to them, along with some other sights that only they could see.  For a long time they were mocked, as nobody believed them.

Since the project began, it grew from its short film roots, into a full feature length piece -- being Directed by Dom & Ian Higgins and Produced by Natasha Howes.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPmat50pU-M

The film has become somewhat of an international phenomenon in the religious circles.

Our team were asked to come on board, with a brief that followed the pattern of the film itself.  It started small, and grew into something much more huge!

Initially, we were doing some basic encoding and DVD duplication of a copy of the film for the cast and crew.  But later, we actually got involved with authoring the full feature DVD with menus (in 8 languages), subtitles, disc design, cover design, 24 page booklet design, and DVD replication!  Not only this, but we also needed to author the disc twice -- once for the PAL (mainly European) market, and again in NTSC format (covering mainly the USA).

But -- we didn’t stop at that.

At the same time, we were also responsible for designing the film’s promotional poster (in 2 sizes); two mug designs; two T-shirt designs; taking care of blowing up small images into large-scale print sizes (see the shop front window -- the black & white images of the three children are blown up from genuine archive photos of the real children); and around 30 designs and layout for large-scale monolith prints (again with 8 languages) for the exhibition in Fatima itself.  It was great fun working on all this, but even better to see photos of the full-size prints!

To top it off, we had to get everything to Fatima so that The 13th Day team could set up their shop, exhibition and everything else in time for the beginning of the festival there (starting on May 13th), especially as the Pope himself would be there during the first week, and driving right past their location!

So, we got 55,000 retail-ready PAL DVDs replicated and shipped there, 5,000 NTSC versions; 500 A2 and 500 A4 posters delivered; 250,000 full colour folded leaflets printed and delivered there; 5,000 prints of 13 different postcard designs each; 2,500 branded envelopes for the postcards; and digital files over to local printers there to take care of the merchandise and monolith printing.

It was great!

Apparently when everything got there and the guys were setting things up, the weather became pretty freezing…. Well, you can’t have everything right…!

[View with PicLens]

For further info or to buy a DVD, please visit www.the13thday.com

After some discussions and a lot of planning with our team at Brace, we helped him create his new online empire, as an online magazine where the articles are delivered as video.  The videos consist of training techniques, parts of classes, interviews with World Champions (for their insight too) and heaps more to grow the training community.

There are various levels of content, including paid-for exclusive content which makes up what the magazine is.  This is controlled by a membership system which automatically handles client payments, memberships and content delivery.

We’re pretty much as excited as Steve is about the new Gymrat Heroes site, and we can’t wait to watch and help it grow.

The school, as is their yearly practise now, had been working on their latest film project for their actor graduates. Rather than just pack the graduates off with a nice slip of paper, BSA choose to back up their qualifications by getting their acting graduates to act, in front of a camera! Having been professionally filmed, these scenes are distributed on DVD to various acting agencies and such like.

The now-regualar, BAFTA award winning director, Michael B. Clifford, was responsible to choosing the films, casting and directing the scenes. This year, they shot the films on a Canon 5D digital SLR camera in HD. 

Once we had the footage in our mitts, we worked out how to once again bend the specifications of a DVD, to allow for the amount of content and navigation required to show all 36 actors individually and together in scenes.

Taking designs provided by Make Brand Studiofor the DVD packaging and accompanying booklet, we reworked this in 2D for the menu design to make for some nicely dynamic graphics and transitions.  Due to the very tight timeline for this project this year, we were unable to create 3D menus as we had done last year.  Oh well…

Once the complex DVD authoring was complete, we next had to replicate and print the complete DVD packages in time for the very tight delviery schedule – that is covering both the discs, cases, inlays and 24 page booklet.

We hope that the graduates like the resulting product as much as the Birmingham School of Acting staff.

So they’re in there!  A pretty funked up sequence with an electronic tablet display, and another with a robotic floating security camera in a scene with many electronic lights.

Blink and you’ll miss them!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPFJqcFpygY

“Music video for Rock My Hologram from Jerusalaam Come, one of iTunes hip hop albums of the year, a Record of the Week in The Independent.

A Mythological journey through time & space.

Directed & Produced by Ben Lister

Art director -- David Curtis-Ring
Set designer and costume maker -- David Curtis-Ring
Set design assistant -- Aaron Tilley

Assistant producer -- Jon Randle

Director of Photography -- Andrew Johnson

Editor and effects -- Ben Lister
2D designer and stop motion animator -- David Curtis-Ring
3D -- Paul Berner

Camera assistant -- Chris Rhodes
Gaffer -- Stuart Colburn
Production Assistant -- Joel Wilson
Art department assistant-Katerina Pushkin
Runners -- Syliva Chan & Kisha Agnew

Stills photographer -- Andy Borg
Studio -- David Moore Boxxed

Big Thanks to TAK!, Prime Objective, Joel & Apple”

The contest is an MMA fight event taking place on Saturday 19th June.  With new fighters coming in, it’s being billed as The Next Generation, with matches showcasing fighters both from the last event and some new.

There will be several bouts – and we can only say fair play and good luck to the contestants.  It takes a lot of guts to get in a ring with another fighter!

Led by M3’s art director, the project was planned and shot. During the planning stages, our team were involved in checking over 3D requirements for the armour plating for the rhinos – the park’s newest attractions.

While the commercial was being edited, we were busy creating and animation the armour, tweaking the materials to give the metal the right look. We then provided the final images that were produced back to Sound and Picture House, ready for them to drop into to place over the live action sequences of the rhinos.

This all worked out to be a smooth process, and the project finished up looking rather nice and shiny.

The commercial has been on air on ITV1 since Good Friday, and so far as we know, has been getting a great response.

We look forward to working with Sound and Picture House again soon!

We had to create a CD-ROM to work on both Mac and PC, delivering a music video, newly released single, free cooking recipes as PDFs, a cooking video tutorial with instructions to print among other things.  We were also responsible for creating the artwork designs for the printed card wallet that the discs go inside.

The job went super-smoothly, and the limited run of discs are being replicated and distributed as we speak.

They were printing and putting together some education packs for Welsh schools – well, more like boxes really – with a boatload of printed material inside, along with a number of discs consisting of CD-ROMs, DVD-ROMs and DVD-Video discs.

There were various quatities of these various discs, yet they all had to be created to the same retail-grade standard, with retail-grade full colour litho print, and delivered on time so that they could be packed into these education boxes.

In total, we took care of about 39,000 CDs and DVDs.  Great stuff.

Not only did the artwork need to be nice high resolution, but we had to create a manga drawing of the class instructor, to fit in with the other [fictional] characters.

The posters have gone done a storm, interestingly with the instructor himself particularly pleased with his painted character!

We look forward to the next promo material we’re asked to take care of.