The Film Strip Blog
Film releases, awards, news and comment from Rubberductions - get it here first
IVCA Win
Posted 05/04/08
Rubberductions picked up a Silver award at the IVCA's last night for our Sony Playstation 2 promo. The award was in the "Sales of Products and Services" category and we attended with our production partners on the job from Between The Eyes & Prime Focus. Thanks to all who worked on the film!
Microsoft Windows Vista films live
Posted 04/04/08
The films we shot for Bristol digital agency Mason Zimbler for the new Microsoft Windows Vista site are now live. They require Silverlight to view on the site. We'll post quicktimes on the site here very soon.
Comedy Series passes 3 million views
Posted 04/04/08
The Kensington Report films we made for Heavy.com have recently passed 3 million views, which is great! Watch The Kensingston Report here.
Microsoft Web Films
Posted 24/01/08
Rubberductions are in the midst of post production on a large Microsoft web promo, featuring Windows Vista and Windows Live, for Bristol-based digital agency Mason Zimbler. The project was shot on a variety of High Def cameras during a four day shoot just before the Christmas break. The result will be a music driven, multiple character storyline based website - in Microsoft's new Silverlight web video software - with Ferrari driving action. The website will be live in early March.
Video feeds for blogs
Posted 07/01/08
Time and again we get asked this question: why would bloggers want to show videos from viral marketing campaigns to their users? The explosion in use of video feeds for blogs, and the ease with which it can be done, has shown that there is an enormous appetite for this online content as it represents a free and entertaining way of showing relevant content to readers and using films created specifically for viral marketing campaigns is an extension of this. Often the content is of a high quality, and is designed to engage and entertain people. Additionally, in this world of Web 2.0, lots of viral content is designed to integrate into your site design seamlessly and work in partnership with the main social network sites. With such good content available so readily, the question is: why wouldn't bloggers want to use viral marketing films to engage their readers?
Short Film in final of Eurostar Film Festival
Posted 06/12/07
Oedipus - the BBC award winning short film by directing collective RONG - co-produced by Rubberductions - has reached the final ten of the Eurostar Film Festival. The finalists are all top short films that we've seen on the circuit previously as winners of numerous other festivals - so we're pleased to be a part of such a stellar line up. The winner will be announced at a ceremony in Paris tonight which one of our production team is attending.
Triumph Rocket III film broadcast
Posted 21/11/07
The Rocket III film the good people at E3 Media commissioned us to make for Triumph Motorbikes is being broadcast on Nuts TV tonight at 10:30 - Freeview Channel 42. So OK, its not BBC1, but its cool that the bloke orientated channel have chosen to broadcast the viral advert as entertainment content - you normally have to pay for 3 minutes of advertising time. Anyway, check it out tonight, or watch the Triumph Rocket III film online.
2 Million views and counting
Posted 15/11/07
Our commissioned work for Heavy.com has cleared 2 million views on their site, which is good news. The site has a huge amount of traffic so we can't claim all the credit, but we're glad that their international audience is responding so well to our very British humour. The Kensingston Report and our latest series for T-Mobile are now online.
Rubberductions get charitable
Posted 08/11/07
Director Matt Golding is a keen cyclist, having started out mountain biking, and now getting converted to the dubious ways of long distance cycling on his brand new On-One Inbred 853. So when Sustrans approached us to help them in their bid to win £50 million for their Connect2 project in an ITV based lottery vote show thingy in December, we were happy to be involved. Visit www.thepeoples50million.org.uk to find out more, see the films (not the one with Lorraine Kelly, bless her - but that wasn't us) and vote for the project.
T-Mobile series in production
Posted 08/11/07
Rubberductions are currently out and about filming material for a new T-Mobile project. The project comprises 4 mini shows on texting for the mobile giant to act as content on huge US web TV channel Heavy.com, and an innovative "text-chain" user generated project. The first episode is up live now, with more to come over the next few weeks.
MTV spot clears 400,000
Posted 08/11/07
It was pointed out to us that our MTV Joy Of Non Sex spot has cleared 440,000 hits on video sharing site Daily Motion. A nice little surprise to see this TV spot getting a life of its own online - and a vindication of sorts of our passion to make our work entertaining.
Happy Bristol Day!
Posted 26/10/07
Posted by Andy.
I am working today (who takes their own advice?), but most of our staff have the day off for our 'not-quite-statutory', self-declared unofficial bank-holiday, Bristol Day.
Britain has not enough official holidays in our view. We can't change that across the country (Gordon Brown could, if he chose to), but we can give Team Rubber people one extra 'statutory' holiday. So we did, and our staff looked frankly gleeful as they left the studio last night. They've got a range of things planned: pleasingly, quite a few are taking a long weekend to see friends and family (which is what we hoped as that's supposed to be a GENERALLY GOOD THING), but really we don't mind what they do, that's their business.
Our business of course is running Team Rubber (Rubberductions' parent company): our income comes from billable time, so the cost to us is around £6000 in lost billings, but we think it's worth it. One way to look at it is that £6k is less than the typical recruitment fee for a graduate, so if we can attract (or retain) just one person through this kind of thinking about our employment culture, that's a winner. Or we can look at the health and productivity benefits of giving our staff a break between August and Christmas, just when those dark days come in and everyone gets a bit under the weather. And if that doesn't convince, then it's still a great story that's got us good PR and is a nice thing to talk about.
Why is it Bristol Day? Because we thought it up in Bristol - the city that brought you an extra day off. We're not the only ones doing this either, thanks to the magic of Pledge Bank, Bristol Day has been adopted by a bunch of other businesses who are imaginative about their employment culture. We'll be doing it again next year, same time (October), same place (Pledge Bank).
So happy Bristol Day. Will you join us?
WHAD: 1st October 2007
Posted 26/09/07
For World Hepatitis Awareness Day, have a look at this brilliant little animation about Dennis and his efforts to catch Hepatitis C.
UPDATE!!: Our WHAD animation has been featured on the Ads of the Weird website.