Movie made for $70 wows Cannes

Cannes: Amidst all the glitz at the Cannes Film Festival, a British Film Colin made on a shoestring budget of £45 ($70), is set to become a surprise hit amongst the heavyweights in the French Festival.Director Marc Price, shot the zombie movie on a camcorder in Swansea and London over 18 months. He persuaded all the actors and make-up artists to donate their service for free. 

  It was by advertising for volunteer zombies on social networking sites, borrowing make-up from Hollywood movies and teaching himself how to produce special effects that helped Price make the film for less than the price of a zombie DVD box set.Price shot and edited the feature—which ingeniously spins the zombie genre on it’s head by telling the story entirely from the zombie’s perspective—over a period of 18 months while working nights and part-time as a booker for a taxi company.In keeping with Price’s beg and borrow approach, most of the zombie make-up in the makeup artists’ cases was inherited from other movies. “One of our make-up people came off X-Men 3, so we were having the same latex that was put on Wolverine,” he said. The 97-minute film had its first Cannes screening on Saturday and has already caught the eye of film distributors. Two Japanese film companies have made a bid to distribute the movie and the Price is hoping that more offers will start coming in.

Source: AGENCIES and TOI

All IPL teams are making profits

If the IPL has stood all you thought you knew about cricket on its head, it’s done the same with finances too. In a year when franchisees were complaining about how shifting to South Africa would make a mess of their budgets, each one of them will end up with a profit. 

If that’s not strange enough for your taste, try this: The two finalists, Royal Challengers and Team Hyderabad, would make a fraction of the profits that bottom-of-table Knight Riders will even if you take prize money into account.The main reason behind the healthier bottomlines is a huge jump in the share of revenues from broadcasting. Last year, each franchisee got Rs 25 crore from IPL as its share of the central broadcasting revenue pool. This year, that has more than doubled to Rs 67.50 crore each. 

Franchisees won’t be the only ones partying. BCCI’s profit too, according to one estimate, jumped substantially to Rs 477 crore from Rs 350 crore last year. For good measure, broadcaster Sony Max is also likely to be in the black this year. 

Had the matches been organised in India, it’s likely the teams’ profits would have been even higher because of higher receipts from ticket and merchandise sale, which have averaged Rs 8 crore and Rs 50 lakh respectively in South Africa. In 2008, teams like Knight Riders, Mumbai Indians and Team Delhi earned around Rs 20 crore from ticket sales alone as the capacity of their home stadiums was large enough to accommodate over 70,000 and the crowds just poured in. Team Jaipur tops profit table 

According to a report by equity research firm IIFL, Team Jaipur will make the highest profit of Rs 35.1 crore in the group matches of the second edition of the tournament. Jaipur had also made the second highest profit of Rs 14.50 crore in 2008, including the Rs 4.50 crore ($1 million) prize money. 

Knight Riders, which finished lowest in the league table during the qualifying round in South Africa, will nevertheless end up with the third highest profit of Rs 2.8 crore in the second edition of IPL. Team Mohali, which also did not make it to the semis, will just beat Kolkata to second spot with a profit of Rs 26.1 crore, according to the IFL report. 

In fact, the only semi-finalist which also stands to make over Rs 20 crore in profits is Delhi. 

This is despite the fact that prize money in the IPL is a sizeable amount, with Rs 4.8 crore for winner, Rs 2.4 crore for the runners-up and 1.2 crore each for the losing semifinalists.For those who didn’t get past the league stage, the sums are correspondingly smaller — Rs 80 lakh for the team that finished fifth (Mohali), Rs 70 lakh for the sixth placed (Jaipur),Rs 50 lakh for the seventh (Mumbai Indians) and Rs 40 lakh for the lowest one. 

The healthy bottomlines are a happy change from last year when besides Knight Riders and Jaipur, Team Chennai just scraped into the black due to its Rs 2.25-crore prize money for the runners-up position, according to a highly placed IPL source.

Source: Prabhakar Sinha | TNN and TOI 

Evolution of Logos

Well, while i was trying out different logos and generating ideas for gagagiftz and I found this interesting piece of series called Evolution of Logos. Check out the history of logos for some of the well known brands.

So..... this means gaga can also evolve down the road... :)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

MasterCard logo

VW logo

Shell logo

Boeing logo

GE logo

Saab logo

Yamaha logo

Nike Logo

Mazda logo

BBC logo

Mercedes-Benz logo

Kodak logo

Nokia logo

Reuters logo

IBM logo

Starbucks logo

Mitsubishi logo

Intel logo

Adobe Systems logo

Pepsi logo

Playboy logo

Audi logo

Motorola logo

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) logo

Fiat logo

Nestle logo

Apple Inc. logo

Ford logo

Xerox logo

Canon logo

LEGO logo

BMW logo

Google logo

LG Electronics logo

Microsoft logo

Renault logo

Siemens logo

Palm logo

WWF logo

Nortel logo

Source: Best Ad Blog

For Website Archive: Checkout this cool website www.archive.org

Nice Chennai Super Kings Poster

Hi

Checkout this Nice Gladiator Chennai Super King Poster.

Click on the Image to enlarge

The inevitable ugliness of the IPL trophy

All right. It's time to talk about the IPL trophy. I've been resisting for a while, but we're inching closer to the semi-finals, everyone's hedging bets on their top four, and come May 24 one team is going to be holding aloft what might possibly be the ugliest trophy in the world, and newspapers everywhere are going to immortalise it in all its gaudy glory. Before this happens I think it's necessary to address not just the ugliness of the IPL trophy but the inevitability of its ugliness. 

Whenever I haven't seen it in a while, I think to myself, "Is it really that bad?" But then the camera pans across the shimmering surface of it, or a commentator says something about the imaginative artistry of this masterpiece, and boom, the beast is back. What exactly is imaginative about it anyway? I mean, how long do you suppose it took someone to sit down and say, right: IPL, ergo India; cricket, ergo man with bat; sponsors, ergo DLF. Clunk it all on a wooden frame, chuck an obscene amount of diamonds and sapphires all over it, and then for the sake of being symbolic, throw in eight rubies for good measure to represent the franchises. Oh, I bet they were patting themselves on the back for thinking of that. Really? Is this Incredible India? Is this the best we could come up with? 

On one hand I sympathise. It's not as if sporting trophies are the most inventive things. There isn't anything as iconic as the little gold man of the Oscars in the world of sport. We've got the Ashes, which are kind of like an enshrined stupa for the Australians and the English. Instead of an ossified Buddha's tooth you've got a burnt-up piece of bail. Great. We've got the green Masters jacket in golf, which is pretty different and comes with a wad of cash. That's nice. But by and large most sport trophies involve a ball of some sort, a man with bat/club/ball, or are plain old-fashioned jug-ears. So I can understand the need for departure, to do something special when the opportunity presents itself. Why have a boring old trophy when you see yourself as the purveyor of great change? Surely it would be an antithesis to radically alter the format of the game and to not have a suitably radical prize at the end of it? A trophy is a chance to say something big. I get that. But what exactly is the IPL trophy saying about India? 

The problem is, this trophy stands for everything typical of a particular elite echelon of modern India. It is ostentatious, crass, bereft of any redeeming aesthetic qualities, and unashamed of all the above. To me it screams of insecurity. "Look!" it's trying to say, "I'm going to show you who's the boss now!" Count up those diamonds baby. 

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for breaking off the shackles of colonisation and proving to the world that the money and ideas are where we're at. But I think it's pointless doing it without any sense of style. Especially when we come from a tradition where the very concept of beauty, or saundarya, has been codified and explored for centuries. I mean, this is a country where every context of beauty is covered, from the simple Kutchi village woman embroidering in her skirts, to a lovesick king depleting the state treasury to build a marble mausoleum for his dead wife. Beauty in India was in the day-to-day. It was not something artistic or out of reach, it was utilitarian. People surrounded themselves with ordinary objects of beauty because it was more pleasing to live that way. 

All this has changed with modernity in India. We have been assaulted by a massive attack of ugliness. We have not only whole-heartedly taken to plastic and mass-production, we also seem to have lost all sense of proportion and design and relegated all our concepts of rasa and shringar to dusty textbooks. Walk around any Indian city now and you'll see how it suffers from this malaise of ugliness. It's in the glass high-rises directly copied from a street in New York; it's in the billboards, the dearth of trees, the lack of civic consciousness, and worse, in the innate belief that beauty is something to be bought or borrowed. 

The IPL, which could have been a great platform for modern India to assert herself in an utterly unique way, has already chosen to take the path of commercial success over aesthetic glory. Fine. I understand that advertisers pay the bills. I'm willing to oversee those garish uniforms. I can tolerate any number of DLF maximums and Citi moments of success. But would it really have hurt anyone if, at the end of it all, there was a trophy worth its weight in gold to lift? To silence everyone just for a moment in a way that only something truly beautiful can?

Article By Tishani Doshi © Cricinfo

Zoozoos : New Vodafone Mascots

The popularity of zoozoos, the white, ghost-like creatures promoting Vodafone’s value-added services, are indicative of the fact that mascots are definitely here to stay. Advertisers are banking heavily on visuals, colours, mnemonics, sounds and symbols to connect with the target consumers. The advantage of a mascot over celebrity endorsement is that it is cost-effective. Also a celebrity endorses multiple products, creating confusion in the minds of the consumers, unlike the mascot that is unique to each brand.

Not only do the mascots create instant recognition for the brand, it also helps advertisers cut through the clutter. In a diverse market like India where mass brands have not less than 16 language translations for their ads, mascots are a very powerful means to create a stronger connect with the consumers. It also helps minimising surfing out of the channel during commercial breaks.

It appeals not only to the educated mass, but even an illiterate consumer, who instantly identifies the brand with help of the mascot.

The Hutch pug not only attracted customers, but even set the business soaring for the telecom major — it led to an increase in its subscriber base by 20 per cent.

Chintamani was another appealing mascot people identified with. The other unforgettable mascots include the Amul girl and Lalitaji who endorsed Surf.

On the flipside though, Indian consumers have a tendency to associate animated brand mascots with products aimed at children. However, sometimes mascots overshadow the brand itself in the consumer mindspace.

The cool, yuppy Fido Dido mascot grew bigger than the Seven Up brand, so much that one recalled the mascot but did not associate it with the brand.

Mascots need not be animated. Zoozoos indicate that fresh execution of ads with mascots always work.

Zoozoos have indeed revolutionised way mascots are projected in Indian ads. In case you have not been able to figure out what these zoozoos are, they aren’t animated characters. They are human beings who were made to wear body suits. Kudos to Ogilvy.

Watch Ads : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGqndA5F3i8

Source: AM

Delhi beggars learn languages before Common Wealth Games

Beggars cannot be choosers, but beggars are quick to spot an opportunity, especially when there is a buzz in the city about 'thousands of tourists' flocking here for the Commonwealth Games next year.

And beggars are gearing up for it by learning not just English but languages like French and Spanish as well, not knowing that only English is spoken in all the Commonwealth countries.

'There will be thousands of foreign tourists when the games are going on. That is why some beggar families are teaching younger child beggars to beg in foreign languages,' said Savitri, a street performer from Prem Nagar, west Delhi.

Savitri's extended family of 25 people, including 15 children, belongs to the Nat jati (tribe) of Chhattisgarh that performs acrobatics and tight rope tricks on the capital's streets to earn money, especially from foreigners.

'We say: Please sir! Give me ten rupees! Anything...,' demonstrated her daughter Kusum, a 10-year-old child acrobat.

Vijay Babli, who claimed to be the leader of over 1,200 mendicant families living in Lal Quarter in Rohini, northwest Delhi, was recently quoted as saying that 'classes' had begun to prepare the young alms-seekers to target the large number of tourists expected for the Games in October 2010.

'Even if one beggar earns 150-200 rupees per day ($3-4), you can understand the turnover for us,' he said.

The community has even set up an informal academy in the area.

Many beggar children who have never been to school could speak English, French and Spanish, all thanks to the classes, Babli said.

The trend to ask foreigners for alms in their own languages adds a 'personal touch', said a beggar at the Jantar Mantar observatory that draws a lot of tourists.

The beggars were also imparted training in distinguishing foreign currency notes - to recognize value, said a resident of Kathputli colony, who did not wish to give his name.

Beggars posted at famous tourist spots like India Gate, Jama Masjid, the Bahai Mandir area and other shopping hubs like Connought Place often learn just a few sentences in foreign languages.

Nikolina, a Croatian national studying here, was surprised when a beggar asked her in English where she was from.

'I was shocked when a man dressed in rags approached me and asked me in English if I was German, or French, and started saying please give me money in various languages,' she said incredulously.

Source: Indo-Asian News Service 

Pappu don't Vote Sala....Nice Ad

Hi

Checkout this video. Nice animation, trendy, and targeting to the youth. 

Post Booking Scenario of Tata Nano

Tata Motors Monday said it has received 203,000 bookings with a total booking amount of Rs.2,500 crore ($502 million) for its small car Nano.

'The Tata Nano website recorded an unprecedented 30 million hits from the date of launch of the car (March 23) to the closure of the booking period which was April 25, nearly 1 million hits a day', the company said in a statement.

A total of 610,000 forms were purchased from the booking centres. About 70 percent of the 203,000 bookings received were financed, while 30 percent of the applicants booked in cash by paying fully, the statement said.

Nearly, 4,000 cash bookings were made through the company's website.

Among the three variants of the car, 20 percent bookings are for the Nano Standard, 30 percent for the Nano CX and the remaining 50 percent for the top-end Nano LX, the statement added.

Source: Tata Nano Website and Indo Asian News Service