According to Andrew Lester of Johannesburg-based creative production studio Spaghetti.TV, they have worked on a number of interesting projects over the past year.
“They were interesting, not because they were the largest or because they allowed us creative freedom, but because they are indicative of moves within our industry,’ explains Lester.
He notes that they have seen a move towards animated info-graphics. “This is fascinating, because it can be fun work to do, but mainly because it seems to be counter cyclical. It is a second wave of mechanisation if you will: the industrialisation of the arts. The latest version of Powerpoint (or at least the Mac version) actually has some half decent templates and the Internet is full of reasonably well designed templates for purchase.
“As the standard of what’s available to the every man has improved (by way of templates, iMovie, etc) the need to produce significantly better, bespoke offerings has increased.’
According to Lester, the second project of interest is a series of work by Spaghetti.TV for Hollard via agency Openco. Lester explains: “Direct response is in many ways immune to the threat of on-line broadcast and broadcast democratisation. For the most part outputs in this arena are measured on a cost-per-lead basis. I find it exciting that we have had opportunity to receive feedback on the effectiveness of what we create, not in a fuzzy focus group sense, but by way of a very functional metric.
“If media communications are ultimately going to be measured by efficacy and not peer review, then this has been a really interesting exercise for Spaghetti.TV.’
Lester adds that, while they love working in animation and lean heavily towards 3D executions, they are a hybrid shop.
“The democratisation of acquisition has made the hybrid shop significantly more competitive over the last couple of years. Add to this the immediacy of the feedback regarding the efficacy of our artistic outputs, and the result is a sum total of highly responsive production techniques that provide meaningful services to the advertising market. I am excited to see where the next 12 months take us.’
By Linda Loubser
screen africa magazine – september 2012
