The design and digital production company, Thornberg & Forester, (T&F) announced the opening of its new Los Angeles studio, and detailed its contributions to a new global campaign for Bisquit Cognac via Paris-based creative agency VERSUS.
T&F’s new L.A. studio is located in the Culver City-area offices of Moxie Pictures. T&F art director/designer Kyle Hurley, moved in March 1. He has played a key role on projects for Toth + Company, Dansko Footwear, DDB Chicago, Ronald McDonald House Charities and others through the company’s L.A. outpost he established last year.
Agency VERSUS is a new shop led by president Emmanuel Bideault with co-founder/art directors Guillaume Alix, Maxime Boizel and Ambroise Louart, and digital consultants Gregory Guedj and Bertrand Serrano. Since last year, VERSUS has been engaged by Distell Group Limited to relaunch the Bisquit brand with a new web presence and an international media marketing campaign. Key campaign artwork, including a :30 brand film which is launching across selected social media channels for the brand, was created by T&F.
“The film is an immersive introduction to experience the brand, to plunge into the Bisquit universe and discover through a cutting-edge website, the story, savoir faire and products of Bisquit,” Bideault explained.
“To create a cinematic introduction to the historic Bisquit brand, we focused on quality and craftsmanship,” said T&F co-founder, principal and creative director Justin Meredith. “This project was an incredible partnership involving our great friend Guillame Alix, who worked with us for many years at T&F. VERSUS gave us very clear direction, and with their encouragement, we stayed true to the original design ideas and used our talents in animation, editing and cinematic storytelling to make the experience the best it could be.”
T&F’s round-the-clock workflow fed creative input from VERSUS in Paris to Hurley in L.A. through Meredith and others in Manhattan, including head of production Javier Gonzalez, 3D animator Scott Cannon and editor Nathan Scholtens. “We worked on three coasts to use the short deadline to our advantage,” Meredith confirmed. “We talked with Paris in the morning, animating here in NYC and passing the files to L.A. to continue work. By posting from L.A., Paris had animatics first thing for their morning, and each morning in N.Y. we had notes waiting for us.”
T&F’s film ad begins on the dark field from Bisquit’s new signature color palette, using the gray numerals visitors encounter when they access the website and enter their birth dates. Racing from that point through digits that randomly appear, a beam of light traces the shape of a circle. The light becomes an intricate, mechanical clock with all the numbers now arranged in perfect order. Copy appears: “Time is a source of pleasure when you are able to master it. Time is what you make it.”
For its production artistry, the studio’s team used Adobe Illustrator, After Effects and Maxon Cinema 4D. After calling out Hurley for “making the project sing,” Meredith also ended by praising Gonzalez.
“Once again, Javier was the mastermind of production who allowed the project to run smoothly by coordinating efforts from three time zones,” Meredith added.
Bisquit Cognac: Time is what you make it from Thornberg & Forester on Vimeo.
