AKQA: Interactive Innovators
The film footage was scanned to digital and edited in Final Cut Studio. The AKQA effects team added motion graphics to further expound upon Bryant’s moves, and the agency development team brought it all together in Flash for the web. “Speed was key for us,” says Robinson. “The day we came back, we did our editing in Final Cut and then made a working prototype in Flash. Final Cut is incredibly intuitive for us, and the workflow is incredibly fast. Maintaining creative momentum is massively important in these types of projects, and Final Cut comes through.”
Gearing Up
Nike is known for creating radical gear, from their well-known Nike Max Air shoes to space-age outerwear. And like any company with innovative products, they like to show off the latest and greatest. So AKQA stepped in to create a video-rich website called NikeLab.com, which features in-depth interviews of Nike engineers, footage of athletes in action, and live news feeds. Again, AKQA shot the footage and cut it using Final Cut Studio.
“We worked with Superfad to shoot video of the various shoes in order to highlight the new Flywire technology and its performance benefits,” says Robinson. “The site is accessible to 23 different locales, which means a lot of translation. We also had to update the main site on a regular basis.”
Managing all that data would be tedious without some sort of automation. The AKQA development team employed Apple’s Automator software to handle the repetitive tasks. The application, which is included in Mac OS X, gives developers a simple visual interface for building scripts.
“We were dealing with a lot of XML flies for the different translations,” says Creative Development Manager Ronnie Liew. “We used an Automator script to rename the files and copy them to the right place on the web server, rather than having to do it manually. Any one of us could run the tool and have it done in a matter of minutes, and the information would be available for the site right away. It saved us a lot of time.”
The San Francisco team also connected an Xserve and Xserve RAID via fiber channel to accelerate the editing process. Editors were able to work on remotely stored files or swap data over the network without hang-ups. “We haven’t had any problems with the Xserve,” says Robert Burns, IT Director at the AKQA San Francisco office. “The system is being used constantly, more than five days a week. I sometimes come in on the weekend, and there’s usually someone working on it. The fact that we haven’t had any issues is a real testament to the quality of the hardware.”
Preparing for Battle
Football—the sport we call soccer in the states—is the most popular game in the world. Its top players are international superstars, achieving the kind of fame that few on earth ever experience. To give fans an inside look at their world, and a taste of what it’s like to train for one of the most intense sports ever conceived, Nike teamed with AKQA to create Nike Bootcamp. The site features more than 40 interviews with world-famous players around the world, providing training drills, tips, and motivation.
A crew from the AKQA London office shot with the Red One high-definition digital camera, dumping QuickTime proxy files into Final Cut Studio to craft rough cuts on location. “Our camera operator used a 17-inch MacBook Pro to download the Red One flash cards and hard drives during the shoot,” says Director Alex Wills from the AKQA London office. “He also loaded the QuickTime proxy files directly into Final Cut to check shots and create rough assemblies. The ability to check exposures and create assemblies on the fly whilst shooting was jaw-dropping. It’s a staggering new tool for a director.”
The London team employed two Final Cut Studio suites wired together through an eight-terabyte Xserve RAID using a fiber-channel connection and Xsan. “For post production and delivery, we decided the only way we would be able to complete such a mammoth, complex task was to tackle it in-house, utilizing the Final Cut suites and the Xsan, and employing two full-time Final Cut editors and a colorist,” says Wills.
Nike Bootcamp is just one example of how AKQA blurs the lines between advertising and content. “This type of work points toward a broader trend of interactive agencies creating deep video content, work that goes beyond what you would traditionally think of as advertising.”
AKQA hopes that the shift in perspective will sweep the advertising world, giving consumers more than mere ads to look at. “It’s a big shift for the industry, and content creation is becoming a huge part of what we do. Tools like Final Cut Studio and the Mac really allow us to explore that type of content and push ourselves to the absolute limit. There’s really no other option for us.”
