Ciclope Festival 05

After an intense couple of days of talks and demo's at Ciclope Festival in Berlin we have had the weekend to reflect. Justine's muscles have recovered after testing out Unit9's Pretender Motion, our eyes have uncrossed from all the VR demo's and our brains have digested and pondered on the themes that were running through the festival.

Amongst the waves of enthusiasm for new technology, data and speed at which the world seems to travel, there seemed to be a main theme running through many of the talks we saw. Whether you are a director, creative, vfx artist, producer or advertiser, the point many seemed to be making was: if you're not engaging with your audience through good story telling with and understanding of their humanity they will basically just switch off or look away.

Fura Johannesdottir, Group Executive Creative Director from agency R/GA, talked about this topic in her talk The Story of Data with an in depth study into the conversion of data (for example in the form of Google searches) into meaningful narratives that tell us something about ourselves.

We loved Pete Favats (North American CCO, Deutsch Inc) talk You Need An Enemy , a great speaker and he got to the point quickly and effectively just like a good commercial should do. This man understands what works and what doesn't-we bet he wouldn't be afraid to tell a client no one cares what you have to say in fact he put it up on a massive slide! The importance of the protagonist is one of the most essential tools in storytelling to create tension, brands and advertisers should take note if they want the consumer to care and take notice to their messages.

One of the other highlights for us was seeing Massive Music bring onstage the opera singer Wiebe-Pier Cnossen who recorded the vocals for the famous EA Games Fifa FIFARO spot which went viral last month, what a treat to watch a commercial on a big screen with a live operatic accompaniament! For those of us in post production, we are well aware of the many versions of music tracks that come in to sound-lay towards the end of a project, this is often coupled with a producer with their head in hands seated on the sofa at the back of the room hoping the client will go for it and they can clear the track. They gave us a really good insight into their creative process and desire to get this track spot on.

There was of course a strong presence of VR companies at the festival and Friday's panel discussion highlighted the common themes facing the early adopters of the technology and whilst there is much enthusiasm by them all and those who have tried it out it's clear the potential tidal wave of this becoming a mass market tool is still quite far on the horizon.

Lets hope that Investment = Pay Off!

LINK:	http://www.finish.tv/news/view/ciclope-festival-2015...
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