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POSTINGS www.postmagazine.com 46 POST DECEMBER 2015 PRAYER AND TALES NEW YORK — Saints & Strangers, which premiered last month on National Geographic Channel (NatGeo), tells the story of the Pilgrims' landing in New Plymouth in 1620 after a long trip across the Atlantic on the Mayflower. NatGeo's movie event also included a promotional campaign that fea- tured a series of epic broadcast spots produced and edited by Variable (WeAreVariable.com) and directed by Salomon Ligthelm. The spots them- selves — Prayer and Tales — capture the challenges faced by the new arrivals. Both spots make use dramatic close-ups, intercut with foreboding action scenes. They were edited in Adobe Premiere Pro CC to a Native American chant composed specifically for the campaign. The series was shot on location in South Africa, and to accommodate its accelerated production schedule, the Variable team shot the promo spots using Red Epic Dragons and a Phantom Flex 4K over a three-day period during actual production of the show itself. Baselight was used for grading, while graphics were created in After Effects CC 2014. AE was also used for shot stabilization, camera tracking and the final compositing. The text and logos were generated using Video Copilot's Element 3D plug-in with AE. GIVE THE GIFT OF HOME NEW YORK — Air Wick recently launched its "Give the Gift of Home" cam- paign, led by ad agency Droga5 NY, to celebrate the role of scent and memo- ries through the brand's new Life Scents holiday collection. At the heart of the campaign is a short film, directed by Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Zachary Heinzerling and edited by Cut+Run's (www.cutandrun.com) Akiko Iwakawa, that's aimed at those missing home most during the holiday season — seniors and their families who are beginning new chapters in their new homes. The heartwarming short was shot on Arri Alexas and helps capture the meaningful connection between scent and memories. Iwakawa edited the short on an Avid Media Composer. Roma VFX's Vincent Roma handled visual effects using Autodesk Flame. The audio mix was completed by Sonic Union's Rob McIver. HEART LIKE A HAND GRENADE CHICAGO — Heart Like a Hand Grenade, the new documentary chronicling the making of Green Day's 2004 Grammy Award-winning album American Idiot, is both a time capsule and an intimate profile. Shot and directed by John Roecker, and edited by Beast's (www.beast.tv) Dean Gonzalez, the doc- umentary opened in theaters across the US and provides a "fly on the wall" perspective to the band's artistic process. Roecker shot as unobtrusively as possible, eschewing interviews in favor of purely observational footage. He used a single Sony handheld three-chip camera, and in nine months captured approximately 350 hours of footage. After nearly six weeks of organizing and digitizing footage, Gonzalez cut the film on an Avid Media Composer, which took nearly a year. He worked closely with Roecker and regularly shared updated cuts with the band. FAMILY JR. LOS ANGELES — Creative production studio Roger (www.roger.tv) has rebrand- ed the new Canadian preschool network Family Jr., part of DHX Television's suite of channels. The realigned network and its French-language counterpart, Télémagino, are geared towards children, ages two to five. Working closely with Family Jr.'s in-house creative team, Roger, led by creative director Rich Scurry, developed a comprehensive on-air brand strategy and look for the network, including a custom logo, story-driven promos and station IDs. The new Family Jr. graphics package is highlighted by a cast of geometric, paper-textured characters that come to life to tell engaging micro stories. Roger combined stop-motion-styled techniques and 3D designs with hand- drawn character limbs and eyes to create photorealistic characters that were distinct to Family Jr. Roger created two custom typefaces, a handwritten font and a modern sans serif font. Both are clean, bold and geometric-inspired; the hand-drawn font has a pencil grain aesthetic, while the sans serif appears to be a paper cutout. Roger designed and animated the package using Maya, Cinema 4D and the Adobe CC Creative Suite.