Wednesday, July 17, 2013

New Portfolio

I've been working on building a new website to display my portfolio. I decided to use Wix.com as the platform for this website. It's still a work in progress, but here is the link to my home page. Check it out, let me know what you think.

http://brandondor9.wix.com/brandondorn


Thursday, May 16, 2013

The Future of Iron Man


I recently went to the movie theater with some friends to see the continuing story of Iron Man and Tony Stark. Iron Man 3 has reached $700 million in the worldwide box office in the first two weeks of its release. This film has already broken a couple records, it has had the biggest international opening of all time, and had the second biggest domestic opening. The Avengers is the only film to top Iron Man 3 in that category. All of the Iron Man movies have been very successful in the box office, as well as the other Marvel movies. Disney and Marvel Studios have released a flurry of movies featuring other super heroes, such as, Thor, Captain America and the Incredible Hulk. After the release of The Avengers last summer, everyone expects the Marvel super hero story to continue. The Studios have had a difficult time figuring out how to keep Robert Downey Jr., who plays Tony Stark/Iron Man. Marvel Studios has gained a reputation for singing on their cast at a low-pay rates and keeping them that way. Many of their super hero actors started out as lesser known, low paid actors who were turned into super stars after one of Marvel’s super hero blockbusters. Robert Downing Jr. was one of the few actors who was able to avoid this. He was able to renegotiate his deal with the studios after Iron Man and was able to get somewhere between $50 - $80 million from The Avengers. Downing ended up being paid several dozen times more than his co-stars. In the first two weeks of the release of Iron Man 3, Downing has made over $35 million already. I wonder what it will take to get Downing to appear in The Avengers 2. Iron Man has become the de-facto leader of the Avengers and Downing has been the face of that character. Who knows what the studios will do next, will they pay Downing a lot more to keep him? Or will they replace him with another actor? 

 http://screenrant.com/robert-downey-jr-avengers-2-3-contract/


Thursday, March 21, 2013

Pepsi's Latest PR Stunt


Pepsi has released a new commercial that features one of their many products, Pepsi Max. In this commercial professional NASCAR driver Jeff Gordon changes his appearance by having facial hair, wrinkles and makeup applied to him. He is made to look older and nothing like he normally does. Gordon arrives at a car dealership with a hidden camera crew. The crew places hidden cameras on the car, in a fake soda can, and in Gordon’s glasses. Gordon meets a car salesman who suggest that they take a test drive in a Chevrolet Camaro. The two men get into the Camaro, Gordon places the Pepsi Max can in a cup holder and faces the hidden camera toward the car salesman. The salesman still had no idea that anything out of the ordinary is happening.

Gordon starts up the car and floors it, speeding out of the parking lot. The two men fly around corners and speed through different obstacles. The salesman starts freaking out and telling Gordon that he needs to slow down and stop driving crazy. He still doesn’t know what is really going on. Gordon takes the Camaro back to the dealership and parks. Both men get out of the car and Gordon reveals who he is and shows the salesman the hidden cameras in the glasses, the Pepsi can and the hidden camera crews. The car salesman is relieved to know the truth. The end line of the commercial is “Pepsi Max – a zero calorie cola in disguise.”

The full length commercial on YouTube has already reached over 28 million views. This PR stunt has been much more than a normal commercial, it has raised all sorts of hype and been shared in all sorts of social media. Even though the stunt was staged and Jeff Gordon didn’t really take an unsuspecting car salesman on a crazy test drive and use hidden cameras to record the event, this has been a great was to spread the word of Pepsi Max.




Thursday, March 7, 2013

"Disney Wars"

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 In October of 2012, The Walt Disney Company announced that it was purchasing Lucasfilm and the rights to ‘Star Wars’ for 4.05 billion dollars. This huge deal would consist of Disney paying Lucas half the amount in cash, and the other half in Disney stock. Lucas ended up owning nearly 40 million shares in Disney stock. These shares would give him about a 2.2 percent stake in the 1.83 billion shares of Disney stock that are in circulation. Disney is now in the process of making a new Star Wars trilogy. They will be releasing the seventh episode in 2015 and Episodes 8 and 9 will be released every two to three years after the previous one. This new trilogy will continue to follow the story of Luke Skywalker, Han Solo and Princess Leia.




In an article by Bloomberg Businessweek, George Lucas said that Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, and Harrison Ford are all in the final stages of negotiation to be in Star Wars, Episode 7. Disney has brought J.J. Abrams on this project to direct Episode 7. Abrams has directed and produced blockbuster films and series such as; Lost, Alias, Super 8, Star Trek and Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol.

The original Star Wars was released back in 1977 and this film made George Lucas into a visionary in the film industry. Lucas created two more Star Wars films shortly after that. It wasn’t until the past decade when Lucas made another Star Wars trilogy which received mixed reviews by his fans. Many of the hard-core Star Wars fans had become convinced that Lucas had become a commercial sell-out with the release of Episodes 1, 2, and 3. These fans complained about many issues in the newest trilogy including the addition of a character, Jar Jar Binks. Only time will tell how Star Wars fans will react to the new trilogy that will be released two years from now. 





Friday, March 1, 2013

House of Cards


Netflix has paid $100 million for two seasons of the new series, “House of Cards.” This series is a political drama that stars Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright. Netflix has announced that “House of Cards” is their most streamed show. The show was released on February 1st, where Netflix made the 13-episode show available for streaming. Most viewers of the show ended up watching more than one episode. Chief content officer Ted Sarandos spoke at the Dive Into Media conference, he said “We’re thrilled, Netflix got more bang fro its buck out of “House of Cards” than it would have using the same amount of money to license more traditional TV content.”

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said that he sees the business as a long-term business opportunity. People who subscribe to Netflix don’t sign up for their original content or for specific TV shows, they sign up for the overall experience. “House of Cards” is just the beginning of Netflix’s original content. Reed Hastings said, “You want to think of “House of Cards” as a down payment on the potential to build real franchises.”

I believe that this is a great new way for Netflix to increase their content on their website. Creating and producing their own television series is ambitious and thinking outside of the box. I have not seen “House of Cards” as of yet, but I intend to watch the pilot episode and see for myself how it stands up to other drama series. I have had a subscription to Netflix for nearly three years now where I stream movies and television shows all the time. Netflix offers a large variety of content for a very reasonable price. They are much cheaper than having some sort of cable or satellite subscription. Releasing new, quality content on a regular basis is important in keeping their customers happy. 





"Life of Pi" and Rhythm & Hues


I recently went to the movie theater and saw the “Life of Pi.” This movie is about a boy named Pi, who starts a journey with his family to the other side of the world. His father owns a large variety of wild animals and brings them along on their trip to Canada. During their long sea voyage, they encounter a storm that disables the ship and sinks it. Pi is fortunate enough to get aboard a small wooden lifeboat before the ship sinks. Pi’s family and everyone else go down with the ship. Pi has to become resourceful enough to survive on the open ocean for a long time with a wild tiger that shares the same boat.

The “Life of Pi” is made up of a large quantity of CG, including the ocean and the animals. Without these effects, the movie would be made up of a boy on a boat in front of a blue screen. Rhythm & Hues is the visual effects company that is responsible for creating the tiger in this movie. Unfortunately, Rhythm & Hues has recently filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. There are more and more visual effects companies who are competing for work in feature films. This is causing the price of these services to go down and make it very difficult for these companies to maintain a decent profit margin.

The director of the “Life of Pi,” Ang Lee, commented on Rhythm & Hues’ bankruptcy. Lee said, “I would like it to be cheaper and not a tough business fro VFX vendors. It’s easy for me to say, but it’s very tough. It’s very hard for them to make money. The research and development is so expensive; that is a big burden for every house. They all have good times and hard times, and in the tough times, some may not survive.” It is sad to see a company like Rhythm & Hues, that can produce such beautiful and stunning work, struggle like this and have to file bankruptcy. 





Monday, January 14, 2013

Copyright Infringement: It’s Everywhere


Copyright infringement can happen in all forms of media, including film. The movie, The Hangover Part II has been subject to claims of copyright infringement. In this movie, Ed Helms plays a character who has a tribal tattoo around his left eye. This tattoo is the exact same design as the one on the boxing champion, Mike Tyson. Tyson’s tattoo artist S. Victor Whitmill had obtained a copyright for the “artwork on 3-D”. Whitmill filled a lawsuit against Warner Bros Entertainment just weeks before the movie was released in theaters. He said that Warner Bros had committed copyright infringement by using his design in their movie and in advertisements without his consent. Before there was any sort of ruling on this matter, both parties came to an agreement out of court that resolved this problem.

Images are not the only things that can be protected by copyright law. In 1985, Lucasfilm filed a lawsuit against High Frontier and the Committee for a Strong, Peaceful America. In the middle of the 1980’s politicians nicknamed the Reagan administration’s Strategic Defensive Initiative, the “Star Wars” program. George Lucas didn’t want his film to be, in any way, associated with this government program. This program wanted to put anti-missile weapons in space. Lucasfilm had a trademark for “Star Wars” but they were not successful in winning the court’s decision. The court decided that these interest groups could use the term as long as they didn’t use it to sell any product or service.

Adidas has been using the three-stripe marking on their shoes and other products since 1952. Adidas filed a lawsuit against Payless Shoesource, claiming that they had broken the law by trademark infringement. Payless was selling shoes with similar logos of two and four stripes that looked like the Adidas logo. Adidas got a jury trial that took seven years to reach a verdict. During this time, 268 of Payless shoes were reviewed because of similar, Adidas style logos. Adidas won the case and was awarded $305,000,000. Its fairly easy to see that copyright infringement  can be very costly and never a good idea to try and steal someone else’s intellectual property. 

Sources