The first project that Automaton Creative ever pitched and produced from beginning to end was a short video series meant to promote the Worst Case Scenarios brand.  It’s a very popular non-fiction book series that, among selling millions of copies, taught our creative director Rene Amador to feel secure in his capacity to jump off a bridge into a river below (“tightening” yourself is the key .  So when we got the opportunity to pitch Chronicle Books and the authors on our idea, we had a lot of fun creating the concept and style that eventually got selected and produced.

Brainpickings.com yesterday listed our “Worst Case Scenarios: Breakups” book trailer among the top 7 Brilliant Book Trailers ever made.  Some info on Brain Pickings:

“[We're] about curating interestingness — picking culture’s collective brain for tidbits of stuff that inspires, revolutionizes, or simply makes us think. It’s about innovation and authenticity and all those other things that have become fluff phrases but don’t have to be.”

By complete coincidence, it also happens to be a great publication that we read every day (and no, the article writers didn’t know that).  We’re honored to be among the other excellent book trailers listed on the site, many of which are excellent works of art and accomplishment themselves, especially since this was the first video ad we ever pitched and created. For the sake of posterity, and your viewing pleasure, here’s the trailer, “Worst Case Scenario Survival Video Series: BREAKUPS.”

CLICK TO PLAY: Worst Case Scenarios: Breakups

Credits: Directed, Edited, Designed, Written, and Sound by RENE AMADOR, Produced by JOCELYN HSU, Narration by GATO SCATENA, Music by SIDDHARTHA BARNHOORN.  We should also give special thanks to the video team at Valve Software, their work for the games Team Fortress 2 and Portal were great inspirations for this piece, and they make great games too.

CLICK TO PLAY | Click here to see more of our work.

VIDEO FREEDOM. Our love of the video experience, our dedication to cinematic potency, and our proven workflow combine to create great budget-conscious content that gives clients the freedom to take novel risks in pursuit of a Branded Experience. If only for a minute, a video ad invites a viewer to see the world through the lens of the brand, expanding their experience and giving meaning to further brand interaction. Video is a first impression, make sure it’s not the last. CONTACT US to talk about how to begin a conversation with video.

AUTOMATON CREATIVE is a commercial production company in Los Angeles, founded by Rene Amador and Jocelyn Hsu, 10 year collaborators in filmmaking of every sort.

THE SPOTLIGHT ON COMMERCIAL DIRECTOR RENE AMADOR

Great news! John Wallace, VP of Production at StudioNow, singled out our creative director Rene Amador in a company wide newsletter to AOL/StudioNow:

“We are thankful for all the great filmmakers in our network who consistently deliver high quality content and want to take a moment to highlight Rene Amador in Los Angeles, CA: check out this pre-roll spot he created with us for Verizon: http://aol.it/dE7CfL.”

You can also read the full newsletter here.  We recently completed a three spot campaign for Verizon’s launch of their 4G LTE service, which has been so well-received by the client that there may be more on the horizon.  To view those ads visit our work page.

BLACKBERRY and SPINNER/AOL MUSIC HEAD NORTH

Another recent project was prompted by Blackberry and Spinner/AOL Music put on a pop-up concert series in the US, attracting huge name talent at offbeat venues like Grand Central Station, bringing music to the masses. Now the Spinner Summer of Concerts, Powered by BlackBerry, may soon be coming to Canada. Here’s the promo we made to get people pumped up about it and get the ball rolling on this multi-million dollar event:

Click the thumbnail to play the video or see all our work

UPDATE: The New York Times just covered the story and linked to daqri’s landing page where our video is featured!

When Demeter Interactive, the awesome ad agency run by our good friends Jesse Bouman and Gaia Dempsey, told us their new client needed a video for its beta launch, we got the strong impression this was going to be something big.  Then when they told us what the company’s vision was, we realized we were becoming involved in something that could change the world.  The resulting video was easy, and today, the world can see what we saw and decide for themselves.

It’s called daqri, they presented at the Launch Conference in San Francisco today, where they introduced the product to industry insiders and investors. The reception was really amazing, and even though daqri was one of many companies that presented, the discussion afterwards was dominated by the potential that people saw in daqri.  While many other companies today are interested in basically creating a better mousetrap or creating a system for managing those mousetraps, daqri is creating a completely new media platform that allows expression, information, creativity, entertainment, etc.

The beta is open now, if you’re a creative, if you’re interested in something that could conceivably replace the web browser as the delivery point for content, then definitely sign up.

As our 2010 campaigns die down, we’ve had an opportunity to throw online a good showing of our recent work on our SEE OUR WORK page. We’ve done over 150 commercials/promos by now, and it was fun going through and selecting pieces to represent that wide variety of content. As pieces become available and we complete new work, more pieces will go up!

In addition, our list of clients has been updated. In the near future, we’ll provide links from those logos to the best work that we’ve produced for that particular client. Our hope is to make it easy for prospective clients and fans to see our videos, so please contact us if you have any technical issues with the site or videos.

Thanks and enjoy!

Rene Amador and Jocelyn Hsu

Since opening its doors in 2006, the services division of Food for the Moon Productions LLC has had continual growth and been honored to create for some of the largest brands in the world.  In 2010, Rene Amador and  Jocelyn Hsu unveiled Automaton Creative, a commercial production company focused on bringing cinematic potency to cost-effective ads that enable clients of any size to prosper.

And since then we’ve had amazing growth.  By the end of 2010 we were creating a national campaigns for some of the largest advertisers in the US, and reaching out internationally to bring content to clients across North America and Europe.  On our new site, visitors will be able to see what we’ve done and discover how we can give a voice to brands, businesses, and orgs across the world.