Exopolis: iPod Nano

Check out the new iPod Nano spot co-directed by Exopolis and Mark Romanek.

ipod1.jpg

The spot speaks for itself. It’s gorgeous, consistent with the iPod campaign and slickly edited. Enough said.

What may be less obvious, if you haven’t been following their work, is the range of ability this spot displays for Exopolis. Exopolis has long been one of my favorite studios for this very reason. They’re hard to pigeonhole, and their work is consistently top notch. My kinda place.

About the author

Justin Cone

/ justincone.com
Together with Carlos El Asmar, Justin co-founded Motionographer, F5 and The Motion Awards. He currently lives in Austin, Texas with is wife, son and fluffball of a dog. Before taking on Motionographer full-time, Justin worked in various capacities at Psyop, NBC-Universal, Apple, Adobe and SCAD.

16 Comments

PiratedTVPro

Agreed on all counts. The spot shows a sophistication and restraint that lets a product shine through the ad, a natural progression in the product advertising line and does so with immense style, all while still showing amazing technical know-how. Thumbs up for everyone over at Exopolis.

Sir Monkey

YES, beautiful spot and technically very well done. But, after watching it a number of times, the editing and pacing is way off but, that could be from the crap song they used. It’s an awful song for Apple. But, that has nothing to do with Exopolis, I’m sure the agency picked the song.

Exopolis has proved them selves many times over, amazing work on a consistent level, that is integrity. They have an amazing designer over there, I think his name is Bryan or something???

david

His name is Brien Holman. You are not worthy to misspell his name.

justin

Actually, Brien Holman and Jayson Whitmore worked on this spot together. I should have more details about the spot and credits sometime next week, but suffice it to say that Brien and Jayson make a fantastic duo.

Sir Monkey

oops! LOL, however you spell his name, he’s been kickin out the GOLD collection for Exopolis.

lubalin

pfft gold.. that ish is going PLATINUM

justin

Just to clarify what I said above: Brien Holman and Jayson Whitmore worked on this spot together as co-directors, but of course it was a team effort. Exopolis makes it very clear that when they work on things, they work as a group and thus everyone involved deserves credit. As I said above, I’ll be making a follow up post soon.

metaoptic

good job exo!!!! the summer internship was fun times!!!

sidewalksurfing

so someone tell me why Romanek is attached to this spot? dance choreography? seems kinda lame he’ll be walking around with this on his reel when he didn’t have anything to do with the animation/design

monovich

Really nice spot. Just saw it on TV. I was wondering where they would go next with the iPod stuff because that last round was a pretty poor rehash. Congratso to exo for some great work.

-sf

THA_DON

wow, that is revolutionary. reminds me of the VW jetta spot Logan did where the brake light leave trails, but this is like a gazzilion times cooler and original. I mean glowy light trails from the object of focus, simply briliant and ahead of its time…
execution is flawless, ‘ol jason whitmore, oops, i mean everyone who worked on it did a great job!!
I am however most impressed by the fact that not only has this not been done or thought of, it is stopping all people in the industry for just a moment away from work to watch it and say “wow this is cool”
Apple yet again delivers marvelous marvels.
now, i need to figure out how to use a butterfly and brid in a design, that hasent been done in a while…

Sir Monkey

Yes, I am laughing out loud after the last response! Very funny THA_DON!

bret_leon

Does somebody know where i can find behind the scenes on this spot, or is a well kept secret over at Exopolis??

THA_DON

ill tell you what the behind the scenes is….

1. ok, you get this big room, and you light it up somehow, big lights are always good.
2. then either have the room painted a bright green, or hang big frames that have green fabric on them.

3. hire talent, and pay then to run aorund like they are on crack, or just tell them to dance like they are possesed by deamons.

4. Make sure you capture this on some media, either using a film or digital camera. Be sure to shoot HD so the footage is dope.

5. somehow get it into a computer and do an edit in Apple’s Final Cut software.

6. Once the edit is done, bring an outputted QT into Adobe’s after effects. Be careful, it may be at 23 frames a second!!!!

7. Spend a few day developing a techniuqe to have the eyepods glow using a series of plug-ins and duplicated layers with various blending modes.

8. Run levels

9. You might need to use MAYA’s paint effects if AE does not look cool enough.

10. Call client and let them know you will be a 2 days late.

11. spend the last day pulling an all nighter.

12. Lay off and deliver a Digi-beta tape.

13. have a beer.

14. watch for the 10th million time and lean back into your chair, job done!

15. Be sure to turn your moniter off for the weekend.

16. be a nerd and spend your weekend watching QT’s on motoinographer.

17. Try to see your spot on TV but never get the time.

the end.

monovich

THA_DON. Gotta disgree with you a bit. Yeah, this isn’t something nobody has ever seen before, but sometimes that doesn’t really matter.
It’s easy to come to a site where everybody else’s work has been collected nicely for you so you can poke at it from the peanut gallery. It’s also easy to yawn and say you’ve seen it all before and then blast ’em for not being 100% revolutionary and coming up with something nobodyhaseverseenbefore. In that sense I agree with you; yeah, it’s nothing new.
But I think the flip side of that is that most of the time, if you want to feed yourself and pay rent/house/car/whatever, mograph is a profession and a trade. Art may nor may not have anything to do it. The big challenge to me is trying to make something cool (art) in the context of what the client wants. I think Exo did that well with this spot. They did something that the average viewer is going to notice, and hopefully hypes the new iPods to the point that people check ’em out further. While doing that they managed to make something that looks cool. The same goes for that Gap spot posted a while back that was in my mind both nothing new and very cool at the same time.

Sometimes cynycism is a cop out for giving people props on a job well done.

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