Purchase Brothers

As a fan of video games, I especially like when short form and advertising mingle with the world of gaming. I recently came across this short spec piece by the Purchase Brothers. It's similar in concept to Neill Blomkamp's Arms Race series set in the HALO universe - the faceless grunts that fight alongside you in the game have some adventures of their own, live action, lots of fancy post work. Their youtube channel says they're tied up with some movie work at the moment so it's unclear when the next installment will be available, but the effects work in this piece is really nicely integrated with the live action, and the look is very close to the actual game.

Nash Edgerton

Nash Edgerton is a versatile fellow who continues to work in front of the camera as an actor and stuntman while building a career behind the camera as a director.  While his commercial work is relatively limited his reel features some short film work that really showcases his style: grungy, bruised and punchy.  His best short film stuff carefully sets up a well delivered punchline, but he's also shown himself capable of carrying a sustained concept in his commercial and music video work.

Nash is repped by The Director's Bureau, where his reel is hosted. 

For one of his great short films, check out "Spider" below.

Three Legged Legs

Kicking off with one of my favorite reels: Three Legged Legs.

Three Legged Legs are Greg Gunn, Casey Hunt and Reza Rasoli.  Watching their work as a whole you immediately see the breadth of visual styles they are capable of, with the common thread being an immersive and layered world contained within each piece.  You feel like you could fall headlong into each little world, which only enhances the storytelling possibilities.  From the first frame you feel like just about anything could appear around the corner and it never gets boring.

See their repertoire here.

And here's one of my favorites to get you started (I wanted to post the Zune spot, but the audio has been stripped from the Youtube postings of it, so be sure to check out the link and watch that one):