The Big Idea

 
Friday Fun Stuff: X-Men in Theaters, no thanks to us
How we created some amazing integrated promotion work that didn't help Hugh Jackman get rich.

X-Men Origins Wolverine comes out in theaters today. Right now. Go. This time pay for it, though, OK.

At the beginning of the year, we worked with MTV to help them launch "See You Sunday" with a series of effects, animation, and music-driven pieces including a block open and packaging, promos, and bumpers. The idea behind the bumpers was to combine really great live-action footage, with overlaid graphics, and music/sound design to tie it together. It was a lot of fun, and once launched, they wanted to do a series of special bumps around the X-Men Origins film launch. We had about 5 in progress for Wolverine, Deadpool, Gambit, and Sabretooth when someone decided that it would be a great idea to leak a 90% finished copy of the film. The studio hubbub resulted in us having to kill the project, but they are still a lot of fun. In the spirit of still promoting the film despite the work not hitting the air, posted below the original is our "Gambit" bumper. For those of you who aren't nerds and didn't whittle your childhood away indoors one day hoping you could actually be a super hero or make out with Jean Grey, Gambit is a river-boat gambler who can transfer kinetic energy into objects- namely cards. Makes complete sense, right?

The audio for Gambit was done by our friends over at Black Board 3. It is Jack Bradley's new company and the sound designer is Harry Frost. They hooked us up with some killer audio despite the dead project. You can check them out here.

The Original "See You Sunday" bumper


X-Men Origins Wolverine "Gambit" bumper


Just so you know, some of our work actually does make air, though. If you are on MTV this week you will see some of our integrated trailer interruptions for Star Trek. The trailers blast on screen and interrupt MTV promos to surprise the viewer. This one is the "Transporter" transition.

Talk to you next week.