Despite the incredibly miserable weather in London today nothing can dampen the mood at Great Guns HQ. Since our last blog post we've won some awards, our directors have shot some awesome new stuff, we've screened a #greatgunsshort in Toronto, and celebrated Halloween in true New York style.
It's full on awards season in the industry at the moment and we've been having fun submitting and screening our spots. Shortly after the team flew back from Vegas for the LIA's we found out that Neft Vodka - Bad Motherfucker took home GOLD for Best Music Video!
UK Gunner Kelly flew over to Berlin earlier in the week and teamed up with German Gunner Robert Leisewitz to attend the Ciclope Festival
It was a jam packed few days full of talks, screenings and parties topped off with the awards ceremony tonight.
we were thrilled to find out that Neft Vodka - Bad Motherfucker has been awarded GOLD at this years festival for Branded Content and we will definitely tweet a picture of our shiny little ciclopse after tonight!
Here's Gunner Robert Leisewitz with Diane Jackson from DDB Chicago at Ciclope Festival
We're also very happy to say that Olly Blackburn's spot for Erbitux has just taken home GOLD at the RX Health Awards.
Neft Vodka - Bad Motherfucker, Nike and Subaru have all been shortlisted for Shots Awards on November 28th - watch this space and cross your fingers for a win or 2!
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We're steaming ahead with #greatgunsshorts as Turn continues to do the festival rounds. This week saw us screen at the Toronto International Short Film Festival which is both Bafta and Oscar recognised.
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Mikko at Sauna International repped by Great Guns has just shot a powerful new spot titled Baby Love (#babylove). The team being 2011's chilling 'Monsters' spot for Fragile Childhood were enlisted by The Cancer Society of Finland to drum up some conversation around the topic of smoking while pregnant.
This hard hitting spot racked up over 30'000 views in its first 24 hours online. You can watch it here and read the interview from Mikko and creative director Marko Vuorensola here.
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GG director Jonty Toosey has just come back from Kazakhstan where he teamed up with Hollywood actor Antonio Banderas and Kaspi Bank to shoot a spot for the banks new PR campaign. The idea was simple: to get an A-list Hollywood star to be officially employed at the bank for 2 days.
It was a simple enough execution for Jonty - he wanted to get as many people together and unleash them onto Antonio. They cast 100 people to feature in the advert and then added a dozen real customers into the mix. The result is hilarious. 'Everyone was over excited to meet him so the job was to orchestrate everything so that I got what I needed out of the meetings whilst letting the action unfold naturally. Banderas was a dream to work with. We had 5 hours to film the spot and he gave me everything I needed, including a toilet pit stop I asked him to do. We had a lot of fun.'
The spot hasn't been released yet but watch this space for a link very soon!
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GG director Jenny Ash has once again teamed up with More4 to mark Remembrance Sunday by shooting a trio of award-winning actors: Noel Clarke, Christopher Eccleston and Vicky McClure to read a collection of war poetry from Seamus Heaney, John Agard, Carol Ann Duffy and Dunya Mikhail. The poems are each read as a stand-alone short film and will be broadcast between programmes throughout the weekend.
The films will be showing alongside poems from World War One which Jenny shot last year, starring Gemma Arterton, Sean Bean, Stephen Graham and Sohpie Okonedo.
You can watch the films here and read more about them.
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We like to round up all our busy weeks with a bit of fun and thats exactly what Laura got up to for Halloween. She hosted a dinner party at Sen NYC. Here she is with 'fanged' co-owner of Sen Tora Matsuoka
Her top tip for Sen is not to leave without trying the 'Demon Woman' Hot Chili Sake!
On that note go out and enjoy the weekend and check back soon for more Gunners News.
