Five Questions with... creative director Chris Gliebe

Chris Gliebe, creative director of Lightborne, steps up to answer Five Questions.

1. What are you working on today?
I'm attempting to finalize about three-to-four different treatments for various advertising campaigns. Basically, I'm getting ready to drink from the fire hose.

2. What have you found is the best tool or innovation that has come out in the last year?
Adobe Illustrator CS2: The live paint and live trace tools are what I've been asking the design gods to deliver for the past 10 years.

3. The project (film, television, commercial or music video) that most impressed you in the last year? Why?
Adidas “Adicolor – PINK,” a short film by Charlie White. This thing is creepy... the good kind of creepy. The kind of creepy I wish I had come up with. Not only is it aesthetically and technically interesting, it conceptually blows my mind. Plus, anytime you animate stuffed animals you earn bonus points in my book.

4. The best or favorite project that you worked on in the past year? And why?
The Atmosphere “Say Hey There” music video. This project was sort of my baby from start to finish. I have wanted to direct something with this look and subject matter for a few years now, and finally the right project came along. The artist and the label were super easy to work with and were open to our ideas and vision. It's great when you finish a project and you know that both you and your client are happy with the end result. Everybody wins.

5. Name the top 4 artists on your iPod?
Ghost Face Killah
The Rub DJs
Boom Bip
TV On The Radio

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Recent Project

Lightborne Creates Magical Graphics For MTV TRL & Fanta Summer Promotion

Motion design collective Lightborne recently contributed animation and graphics to an ambitious 2:30 feature spot for MTV Total Request Live (TRL) and FANTA. The two have teamed up for a summer promotion, "Flavor of the Week," which highlights the fruity soft drink manufacturer, as well as "flavorful" items - such as newly released DVDs, CDs, electronic gadgets, and trendy clothing — that are being featured as this summer's must-haves.

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In the 2:30 piece, written and directed by MTV Director Soo-Hyun Chung, a young girl comes home from school, but something is seriously amiss. Everything in her world is a boring, bland white from her clothing to the house and its furnishings to the food. The girl and her family even speak in controlled monotone voices and lead boring "white" lives. Upon retiring to her bedroom to do homework, she notices a bright orange FANTA bottle perched on her windowsill. As she grabs it, magic begins to happen. Beautiful, bright-colored bubbles and fruit emanate from the bottle and swirl about the room. Suddenly the Fantanas, a group of four singing women who represent the Fanta flavors of orange, grape, strawberry and pineapple, drop into the scene as if created by the bubbles. After teaching the young girl to say "Fevah!" the Fantanas unleash another barrage of bubbles and fruit and transform her room, outfit and family's clothing into vibrant color. The spot concludes with the teen directing viewers to the "Flavor of the Week" contest on TRL and fanta.mtv.com.

"The overall feel of the spot is humorous, quirky and off kilter," says Chris Gliebe, Lightborne Creative Director. "A nice departure from a majority of teen marketing programs, which try a little too hard to be hip."

Due to the spot's length and complexity Lightborne worked with Director Soo-Hyun Chung to create the boards and design the look and movement of the animated bubbles and fruit. The studio acted as on-set VFX supervisors and handled the edit, compositing, animation, and color correction, as well as the "Flavor of the Week" logotype design and end-tag animations used in all of the spots.

"This was a very difficult job to pull off because of the length of the spot, and the timeline in which it needed to be completed," concludes Gliebe. "We spent four days in New York collaborating with Soo-Hyun on the set and in an edit session to make this elaborate project into something unique and special. Soo-Hyun was very open to our ideas both on the set and in post, which helped make the job flow seamlessly. The end product was great because everybody was on the same wavelength from the start."

Lightborne also created :30 cut-down versions of the spot to run throughout the season and :10 "billboards" that run during the TRL show.

www.light-borne.com