Firefox Flicks Backstage

The default sort for clips thus far has been Most Popular, which means that the most popular (most played) videos appear first. We realize this is something of a self-fulfilling prophesy: visitors with limited time are more likely to watch the first few videos they see, making the popular videos even more popular. Hundreds of thousands of people, however, view the clips on other sites such as Revver and YouTube or are linked directly to the best videos by their friends, which is how even recently added clips like Give Me the Soap and Xraalthraal and John have made their way up to the first page. We also continue to highlight newly posted videos directly on the front page.

Even so, we are instituting a change to make newly posted videos more visible on the clips page: half of all visitors will see clips sorted by popularity, and the other half will see clips sorted by recency. This is a temporary change until we can implement a new sort option, “Random,” and make that the default. We realize this may be slightly confusing, since you may see different ordering when you return to the page, but the same would occur with a randomized sort order anyway.

We are also increasing the number of videos per page from 10 to 12 and adding a navigation bar to the top of the clips page, and we will soon increase the number of videos featured on the front page from 3 to 6.

And finally, allow us to emphasize again that clip popularity does not affect the outcome of the contest, which is judged entirely by our esteemed panel.

We would love to hear your feedback on how else we can better highlight newly posted videos. Thanks all!

This Thursday, at the Kabuki Theater in San Francisco, we’ll be screening top ads, discussing community generated content and video on the web, announcing the three winning entries along with two honorable mentions. We’ll be putting as much of that on the web as possible, both on Thursday and on Friday.

If you’re in the area and would like to attend the Firefox Flicks Awards Celebration, please email our event coordinator, Debbie Litle and we’ll get you added to the list. We have limited seating so if you think you can attend this Thursday, mid-day, please email Debbie quickly and she’ll send you the formal invite.

I guess an introduction would be best, before we start this thing off. My name is Andrew Robb, I am a third year graphic design/ advertising student and RGD member, currently completing my third and last year at Algonquin College. My specialty is Multimedia, Motion Graphics and Video. I made the switch to Firefox about three years ago; back when OSX was released and Safari and Internet Explorer couldn’t download my e-mail attachments. I’m sure Mac users know what I’m talking about. A good friend of mine (Ricky Miller) sent me the link to the Firefox Flicks site over MSN one night and I was instantly throwing around ideas—the question was if I had enough time to jump full throttle into another production.

I figured that the only way I could pull this thing off was to try and turn the ad submission into an assignment for my course. The way I was picturing it would take time and I didn’t want to sell my concept short (it ended up taking over a month). After a few meetings with the dean of the program (Chris Jones), I got approval to convert a multimedia project already assigned into the Firefox ad.

The first thing I wanted to do was establish a style, brand and identity for this commercial (since Firefox really isn’t mainstream yet). I decided that the best way to do this would be through an animation, since I could control more aspects and give it a very unique feel.

THE CONCEPT
A robot gets pulled into his computer and gets engulfed, overwhelmed and lost in a jungle (the internet)—eventually sinking to the bottom of the ocean (information). The idea stemmed from, like I mentioned above, when my other browsers would start sending me to sign in pages, help topics, etc when I would try and download attachments from my e-mail. Also, it can really just represent the Internet in general—you are bombarded with so much that it’s easy to get lost in it. That’s how I wanted to sell the browser: more as an experience enhancer (that sounds dirty), rather than a tool (since there are already so many of them out there).

PRODUCTION
Everything in this commercial was hand drawn and colored. I wanted it to give it a distinguished look and texture—like a kids book from the 70’s, only with a vibrant, modern feel. From there the drawings were scanned in and edited in Adobe Photoshop CS2 to separate layers and transparencies, curves, color balancing and general tweaking. By this time, I got one of my best friends and co-owner of Pink Vice Productions, Jan Kozlowski to compose a score for the commercial. We agreed that the music should feel really retro (we went midi) and have a robotic feel to it. I think he did it up in Fruity Loops, but I have no idea which version he’s running now… six maybe? Anyway, while he was doing that, I was jumping into Apple Motion and bringing the commercial to life. For those of you who don’t know what Motion is, it’s basically a smaller version of Adobe After Effects (without the 3D plug-ins and motion tracking). There was video used in this, shot on my Panasonic PVGS250, for things like time lapses on clouds, etc. The narration was done in Adobe Audition.

Overall, I am very pleased with the end result I submitted and feel it will really hold up in the competition. I took a different approach than most (refusing to use a stereotypical fox in my ad), I challenged myself and I cranked out a really solid portfolio piece.

Thanks to everyone, including Cheryl and Asa.

Good luck with your submissions!

-Andrew Robb

I took a few photos as people started arriving for the pre-screening last night. You can see the Flickr photo set here. I didn’t get a lot of photos since I was trying to get the videos all set up for the screening but some others at the event did and I expect more photos will be showing up soon.

Late last night I posted another handful of videos. Check ‘em out!