Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence • Fall '10 - Brief #1

Once again we're going highlighting work here on Chocolate Microscope by awarding the bi-weekly Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence. This semester we'll be focused on smart and innovative thinking.

Due to our expanded Account Team, we won't actually be making one select per brief as done previously. Instead it will 2-3 pieces that rise to top of all the work presented.

We saw some great work presented against our first round of briefs, but the two pieces highlighted below really stuck out. Congratulations to this weeks winners.

Portfolio Night Round-Up

Portfolio Night 8 is history and by all accounts it was a great event. I had a chance to chat with a number of attending Creative Directors and the feeling was unanimous: the work is remarkably better this year. Now, call me biased, but I honestly think that is a reflection of what's happening down at the Lakeshore Campus and here's why: there was a far stronger showing by Humber than any other school. Sure there was representation by Seneca, George Brown, Georgian, Miami Ad School and Creative Circus - but Humber outweighed everyone else by almost 2 to 1. I think we're onto something here.

As you've probably noticed, I'm a big fan of collectively learning from each other's experiences. So with that in mind I've asked those who attended to reflect back and offer up some advice for next year's participants.

What I found interesting, is what some of you may find frustrating: there's conflicting advice. So what worked for some people, didn't in fact work for others. The biggest battle seems to be what format to show your book. Digital or printed.

Laura Kitching

• When selecting the ads to put in your book, make sure that all of them are your absolute best work. Anything less than your best will stand out and bring your book down a notch.

• Last year (PN7) I showed my book on my laptop and this year (PN8) I showed a hard copy book. I think the physical book was better, people were less hesitant to touch it, flip back and forth through the pages and compare various pieces. I found that people only really looked through my digital book once or maybe twice - there is something nice about holding a physical book... or so I've been told.

• I stayed long after my session and managed to see a few more CDs and meet new people. I think it's beneficial to hang around afterwords because you never know who you'll end up talking to and where that may take you. It's actually interesting, the people I was least excited to talk to, proved to be the most insightful, helpful and beneficial in the long run - and if I hadn't stayed I would never have learned that.

The movies just got more interactive

Have you ever been in a theater while someone was yelling at the movie? "Hey moron, don't go upstairs!" and you're thinking, "Hey moron, she can't hear you!"

Well, now she can. So don't you feel silly? 

Last Call is the first interactive horror movie in the world where the audience is able to communicate with the protagonist. A film controlled by a member of the audience, thus blurring the boundaries between game and film. Language recognition software transforms the participant's answers via mobile phone into specific instructions. 

This link comes to use from third year Chocolate Microscoper Jenn Keenan. As she put it, this has pretty huge implications about how we're going to be able to interact with our audience in the future. 



So I guess now, we're supposed to leave our phone on during the movie?