Global Award for Picrow's 'Innovation Cycle'

Now in its 18th year, The Global Awards(R), for the "World's Best Healthcare Advertising(TM)," announced its 2012 award winners on Thursday, Dec. 6, at Global Awards ceremonies in New York City and Sydney, Australia. At the New York festivities, executives from the Intellectual Property (IP) & Science business of Thomson Reuters and the award-winning, full-service Hollywood production studio Pictures In A Row (PICROW, www.picrow.com) were present to receive their Global Award for "The Innovation Lifecycle" (www.youtu.be/ibfrzjb_fB0). Created by PICROW in direct collaboration with Thomson Reuters executives and recently also awarded a CLIO Healthcare Award, this unique brand film presents a story of a series of professionals guiding viewers through the complicated process of transforming a scientific discovery into a life-saving drug using Thomson Reuters products and services.

 

"We developed this video to illustrate the contributions of scientists, R&D and IP professionals throughout the development of groundbreaking innovations and the critical role Thomson Reuters solutions play throughout the innovation lifecycle," said Michael Thompson, vice president of global marketing services, Thomson Reuters IP & Science. To shine more light on the project's development, PICROW executives, including founder and director Peter Lang, have produced a behind-the-scenes presentation illuminating their work on this award-winning production. 

 

Working in close collaboration with Mike Thompson and Kevin Mercer, creative services director, Thomson Reuters IP & Science, Lang and PICROW associate producer Sarah Tucker quickly honed in on the project's storytelling approach.

 

"The challenge was to take this really complicated process and make it personal," Tucker began. "We started with this very long list of different jobs and different functions within the whole process and had to simplify it into a few main characters whom we felt were really crucial."

 

"There is this wonderful trope, because we start with the patient and end with the patient," said Lang. "There was an energy involved in the action of walking forward and pushing back. The idea of finding the ideal fantasy space was first and foremost in our minds. We had this idea of doing a 3D track in the tunnel and placing these emblems of the products in a sort of gallery."

 

Many members of PICROW's full-service staff of production and post-production talent contributed to this project, which was shot in a single day in Corona, California, using an ARRI Alexa camera system mounted on a Steadicam. "The chorography of the actual shooting was really tricky," Lang confirmed. "We had a Steadicam and the lighting dolly, and we had our boom man. It was quite a scene watching us all go down, backpedaling, making sure we didn't all trip over each other. Meanwhile, the actors had to be not distracted by all that, and they had to just keep on pushing the camera back."

 

Alongside Lang, the team from PICROW was led by executive producer Roger Hunt and also consisted of line producer Sharon Groh, production supervisor Moria Michiels, editorial, graphics and compositing artists Lisa Rucker and Adam Sakellarides, VFX supervisor Gregory Nussbaum and graphics and compositing artist Zachary Nussbaum. Key tools in post were Apple Final Cut Pro, Adobe Creative Suite and Adobe After Effects.

 

"For a project this big with so many graphics and a lot of rotoscoping that's all in one take, we knew it was going to take a lot of time," explained Rucker. Accordingly, the editors and artists began their work well before production began.

 

"The whole process really led us to a final product that we thought was very strong," Lang concluded. "Everyone who worked on it thought it was really something special. In the end, we really like it."