Sprinkle Blog

• Sprinkle Lab welcomes director Ismail Acar!

  October 28, 2014

  We’re excited to announce the addition of director Ismail ‘Izzy’ Acar to the Sprinkle Lab roster. Acar was born and raised in Germany and began his filmmaking career as a supervising digital artist at Industrial Light & Magic. His incredible work and creativity has been honored with numerous film and advertising awards.

  With this addition, Sprinkle Lab continues to expand it’s ability to offer exceptional commercial production based in the San Francisco Bay.

  

  (Above) Izzy on-set bright and early with Sprinkle Lab for Subaru.

  To kick-off the announcement, we figured we’d ask Izzy a bunch of personal questions and publish his answers on the internet…

  What drives you? Do you have any kind of philosophical point behind how you work?

  I absolutely love the art of moving pictures. When I do a project, I plan and rehearse everything as thoroughly as possible. But art is messy and unpredictable. When these two ideas meet during production, plus all the jitter from the usual obstructions, very interesting things happen. The goal is always excellence. I want a film that feels effortless but looks amazing- a piece of film you want to see over and over again.

  Who is your creative role model?

  I admire the work of Kubrick, Jonathan Glazer and Paul Greengrass. They can say so much without actually saying it. I can find profound truths in all of their work.

  What attracted you to digital art as your filmmaking medium?

  It provides such a liberating set of tools and completely democratizes the artistic process. It’s amazing what you can do today just on a laptop, for instance. But I think you have to know the basics to be able to appreciate it. You had to have experienced the painful persistence in creating analog art.

  What is your favorite kind of donut?

  House made nutella filled brioche doughnut from Bouchon Bakery in Yountville. Delicious!

• When Tech Meets Advertising

  September 22, 2014

  Matt, our Director of Business Development, recently was elected to the Board of Directors for the local non-profit advertising group AD2SF as Co-Director of Tech Relations.

  Together with his Co-Director, Tutram Nguyen (Applift) and Molly Wismer (Propane Studio), Matt helped put together When Tech Meets Advertising a networking event with a great panel and discussion at Propane Studio in SF last Thursday, September 11th.

  The panel was comprised of advertising and tech professionals from throughout the Bay Area. The panel was fantastic and those gathered had plenty of questions as they discussed how advertisers are currently using technology to make their campaigns more efficient, and even forecasted some interesting ideas for where we might be headed.

  Special thanks to Michael Weston Director of Strategy, Propane Studio for moderating the event, and well as panelists: Neil Chaudhari Founding Partner, CEO Propane Studio Zac Hays Director of Product, Spongecell Konstantin Dieterle Managing Director, AppLift Michael Sprague Head of Marketing & Partnerships, Kiip and Gabriel DeWitt VP Monetization, Curse, Inc.

• Peaking lights: color grade

  September 10, 2014

  Sprinkle Lab collaborated with director Eugene Kotlyarenko and Peaking Lights to color grade the band’s new music video ‘Breakdown’, starring a gigantic iPhone.

  Expanding on the themes of the song, the video tells the story of a lady who lives with a gigantic anthropomorphic smartphone that keeps wrecking her life.

  The honorable Mr. Kotlyarenko made the trip from L.A. to The Bay to spend the weekend basking in the cold rays of a giant LCD monitor here in our studio. We added punch & saturation overall, while also tone balancing all the footage, which was shot on different cameras over multiple days.

  We had a blast working on the project with the Supreme Leader, Bright Sun of Juche, Mr. Kotlyarenko. Check out the feature on Pitchfork and the before/after GIFs below!

• split in 1/2

  August 18, 2014

  

  Sprinkle Lab director Brandon Tauszik was recently selected to appear in a split zine with photographer Nathan Pearce and is out this week on Same Coin Press.

  Pearce’s stark black & whites from small-town, heartland Illinois are paired off with Tauszik’s gritty, full color snaps from Oakland, SF, LA, and other urban locales across California.

  

  Check out the kind write-up from Wine & Bowties and then grab one of the 50 remaining copies here.

  

• Nomiku blasts through kickstarter

  We had the pleasure of working with the passionate team at Nomiku this spring for their web commercial. It was a ton of fun to produce, so when they came to us for their latest Kickstarter campaign, we said “hell yes!”.

  

  And what do you know? The campaign blasted through it’s lofty $200,000 goal in less than one day! It’s currently at double that and still going strong. We’re so proud of them.

  Our video was featured on various outlets during the initial blast, including Yahoo News and Slash Gear.

  We can’t wait to see how much backing it gets by the end of the campaign, support the development of Sous Vide here!

  

  

• A glass donut

  August 1, 2014

  The Sprinkle Lab studio is tucked away in a quiet corner of Oakland, housed inside an old art deco warehouse that once contained a bustling steel mill.

  We have some incredibly talented artists for neighbors here, from painters to jewelry makers, even stained glass fabricators. This month we decided to take advantage of our proximity and hence commissioned the talented artisans at Nzilani Glass to craft and install a custom glass donut in our studio.

  Their process is meticulous and entirely handcrafted. Check out the GIFs below for an insight into their methods.

  

  

  

  

  

  

• RL GRIME: BEHIND THE SCENES

  July 29, 2014

  Earlier this year, Sprinkle Lab produced a music video for
  RL Grime‘s track “Heard Me”, the single off his “High Beams” EP.

  Director Brandon Tauszik wrote a treatment revolving around his real life father, who is a ventriloquist, magician, and juggler in Florida. The video reveals a mind battle taking place in a foreign land between ventriloquist & doll. Pandemonium ensues.

  The footage was captured in Sprinkle Lab’s Oakland studio at 480fps slow motion using two Sony FS700 cameras. A lot of bright lighting was required to expose for that fast of a shutter speed, which the Perez Bros aptly provided.

  

  After the edit was locked, the footage was sent to Sprinkle Lab’s animation partners The Great Nordic Sword Fights. They applied a thick layer of analog special sauce to the video, so we figured we’d dig into the process a little …

  SL: What work have you done in the past that falls along this vain?
  TGNSF: Our early days of video experimentation involved video manipulation and compositing, so from the start we have been finding ways to break down video into its basic form, pixels and keyframes, and rebuilding it in a very imperfect way.

  At what point did you come onto this project?
  In post production. After seeing puppets, we were in.

  What was your rough step-by-step, from import to export?
  Once we got the picture-locked edit from Brandon, we did some color-keying, then rebuilding the scenes with custom backgrounds. Then lighting, coloring, and probably a ton of photoshopping keyframes – literally detailing single frames to make sure it all looked interesting, even if you had to paused it for a second. Then came our main tools; a modular video synthesizer and VHS tape deck. You can get some really cool feedback imagery when running footage back into itself. The deterioration of the original is so exciting to watch.

  Did you create all the background assets?
  Yes, the background assets were a series of stills and video clips shot on a Leica at the Pasadena Huntington Library. The entire garden represents every terrain, from desert to tropical to your classic english rose gardens. However the succulents garden is other-worldly, really kooky and aggressive-looking plant life that seemed perfect for the vibe this video/song combination was going for – vaguely dark but still pleasing, like the ventriloquism doll Joey!

  Why do you enjoy analog process with video?
  It’s much more hands on. The computer is a great tool, but the experience is not very tactile. With analog, you are turning knobs, flipping switches, wiring this and that and getting messy. There is something really nice about knowing that your work can exist in a physical form, even if its just for a brief moment on a tape deck … until you shove it back through the computer and into the black hole of the internet.

• Live Work Oakland

  July 24, 2014

  

  We’re incredibly honored to be featured on Live Work Oakland! Check out the article here to learn a bit about what we’re up to.

• SFIFF!

  July 8, 2014

  
  It has been a busy year over here at Sprinkle Lab, and we wanted to take a moment to share one of our recent highlights outside of all the great client work and day to day shenanigans … the San Francisco International Film Festival! We set out to make the most of Sprinkle Lab’s first ‘fest’ experience, so we attended as many films and events as possible to take in all the glory. It’s a full time job to watch 2-4 movies per day, attend events at night, drink heavily … we were thrilled to jump in and fill our minds and hearts with the possibilities of the moving image!

  
  There were many standouts definitely worth watching. The beautifully shot Icelandic film Of Horses and Men juxtaposed the stories of a small rural community’s animals as if they were people, and its people sometimes acting like animals … darkly hilarious.

  
  The documentary The Overnighters, starts with a kind hearted pastor giving refuge to prospecting migrants hoping for work in a midwest fracking boomtown. With uncanny access to the subject, the filmmaker captures it all as the church and community slowly turn on their leader’s idealistic humanity, bringing to light a man of complex and struggling character. Some polarized responses were stirred when the pastor himself showed up for the post-screening q&a session!

  
  With Return To Homs, a small hand-held camera documents citizen protest in a Syrian city. It follows the transformation of a local 19 year old soccer star with charisma and energy to spare, who becomes a de-facto leader of the resistance when the conflict devolves into civil war. The violence that has continued in Syria for years is brought into sharp focus in this documentary, winning it the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance.

  But our favorites ended up being docs that stepped beyond the standard form. Stop The Pounding Heart, Manakamana, 20,000 Days On Earth, Coast of Death, Happiness, and Soul Food Stories all offered striking portraits of people and places, while being told in bold new ways.

  
  All in all, we met exciting new filmmakers, brushed shoulders with legends, and drank free martinis. Kudos to all the fine folks at the San Francisco Film Society for locking down great free booze sponsors, and for putting on a great event for Bay Area filmmakers and fans to connect and enjoy beautiful new films!

  ~ Bradley & Crew

• New Work: True Emporium

  May 19, 2014

  A few months ago TRUE Emporium, an interior design & build firm, was looking to approach a video production company to craft a commercial for their custom furniture line: the In A Box series.

  In A Box currently includes a Living Room and Dining Room with Bedroom and Office boxes coming to market in the next year. TRUE products represent a solution for high-quality, masterfully-built furniture for the millennial generation who move regularly.

  

  After working with the team at TRUE Emporium and realizing their exceptional talent, our team at Sprinkle Lab engaged with TRUE to re-imagine Sprinkle Lab’s Oakland production studio.

  

  Using found materials, abandoned woods and fibers, the craftsmen at TRUE built out the studio for our multi-purpose needs.

  
  
  

  We could not be more thrilled about their transformation of our studio. The space now better reflects our company values and creative process, allowing us to work better and smarter.