Posts Tagged ‘mike sharman

16
Jan
13

Retroviral’s 2012 video Nominated for Academy Award

R ViralIn a move that has rocked the online world, Retroviral (arguably one of SA’s top online communications consultancies) has been nominated for an Oscar in the “Best Use Of Letters Made From Vegetables In A Company Promo Video” category.

“We got the call from the academy this morning,” said Mike Sharman, founder and MD of Retroviral, “it was Nelly Retardo.”

Since Retroviral started in 2010, the agency has landed some great campaigns and done remarkable work for brands and initiatives such as the Put Foot Rally, SAB, Nandos, 5Gum and Converse all of which is showcased in an innovative way in their annual showreel videos.

“Our inspiration with the first Retroviral showreel vid back in ‘11 was to show how the agency has evolved in a visual way by first writing the titles that are shown on-screen in a moleskin, then on a typewriter, then using a Macbook, then on an iPhone,” said Sharman.

 

 

“This time around we stuck with a similar theme, but chose to use a variety of mediums including a cassette tape sleeve, post-its on the bottom of sneakers, alphabet soup and notes stuck to a cork board.

“The coup de grâce though was the vegetable lettering we used at around the 2:30 mark,” continued Sharman, “our competition was Mozam-BLEAK when they saw that part.”

 

 

“For a young agency such as Retroviral, to graduate from the relatively straightforward method of using handwriting and typing in a showreel video to actual vegetable lettering in the space of only one year shows tremendous growth and innovation,” said Hawk Koch, President of the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences.

Fans and critics alike are all in agreement that Retroviral’s chance of bagging the award are exceptionally strong considering the brilliant work the agency did in 2012 and the fact that they are the only agency in the category.

“Twenty-twelve was our best year to date,” said Sharman, “we worked with incredible brands, who in turn helped to change some lives – even for a few hours. We made an impact on sales, and we had our name forever etched into a Bronze Cannes Lion, thanks to the creative genius of Black River FC and their Nando’s Last Dictator Standing campaign.”

Congrats to the Retroviral team: an inspiration to all and a daily reminder of #whywedodigital Winking smile

-ST

06
Mar
12

Slicky-T Hits Up The 5Gum Experience, Has Face Melted Off

5GumThere are going to be a couple of these 5Gum posts sprouting up all over the interwebs and rightly so because the 5Gum Experience on Saturday was a textbook example of how to throw a KILLER party.

I only got back from Thailand last week and have a lot of shit occupying my soupy Tiger-brain at the moment, so I’d all but forgotten about the gig until Saturday morning.

I love surprises. Always have, always will. So I was totally fine with the venue for the gig being a big secret but holy shit, NOTHING could have prepared me for what the legends at 5Gum had organised for us.

But let’s start from the top shall we? Rewind to the Wednesday before I left for Thailand and my main man Mike SharMAEN comes ambling into our offices with a whole bunch of BELTER dancers who start doing the exact routine the dancers in the Two Door Cinema Club do in the “What You Know” video.

 

 

After that, he drops off a pair of SICK Skullcandy headphones along with every imaginable flavour of 5Gum (which is a great substitute for actual toothpaste if say you’re stuck on a long-haul flight to Bangkok and you packed your toiletries in your hold luggage like a douche) and tickets to watch Two Door Cinema Club play at a secret venue.

Fast forward to Saturday night and J-Rab and I are boarding a bus at the overflow parking next to Cape Town International and heading directly into the heart of what I’m pretty sure is Nyanga.

I pack a hip flask with scotch for occasions like these on the off chance that instead of the big surprise blowing my mind with atomic force, it makes a sound like a turtle farting and bashfully shuffles off in shame while I drink the place interesting.

No need for that though. Shit was about to melt faces.

We pull up to what looks like a derelict prison / abandoned textile factory in an area where I’m pretty sure people get stabbed with rusty screwdrivers for their shoes and everyone in the bus is saying the same thing: “No wonder they kept it a secret. No one would come otherwise.”

 

 

But deep down we were all intrigued and the minute we’d all stepped out the bus and were able to take our surroundings in properly, we quickly realised that the venue was like NOTHING we’d ever seen before.

I was lucky enough to attend the press conference before the show and the band straight up said they don’t think they’ll EVER play a venue like this again, which I thought was a nice thing to say, but probably total bullshit.

 

 

I now know that it was the honest-to-God truth.

I’ll be VERY surprised if they play a venue this sick again and I don’t mean that to sound like a slight to the band at all – it’s a compliment to the event organisers who deserve some kind of fucking trophy or something for finding that venue.

We arrived just before sunset, grabbed a couple of beers and headed to the stage where we were totally blown away by both the setup and the sound, which rang out clear as a bell in the awesome natural acoustics of what looked like an old warehouse.

 

 

The Plastics were the first band to take to the stage, a band I’ve only seen play live once before (that I can remember) but even that one time, I remember being seriously impressed by their performance.

Their set on Saturday was nothing short of brilliant. They’re like a re-imagined version of early Arctic Monkeys meets The Kooks with enough of their own flavour to keep things interesting.

I dig the way they switch tempos effortlessly mid-song, rocking the indie / stoner rock vibes like a buncha pros.

I’ll definitely keep an eye out for them in future, I’m fucking ashamed I haven’t latched onto them sooner. Christ what an asshole.

After that I hit up the VIP tent with The MAEN, slammed some tequila and avoided security at all costs because The MAEN snuck me in there and they were eyeing me like they were measuring me for a coffin.

 

 

After that we hit a bit of a low-point, the only one of the entire evening.

J-Rab started feeling hungry. So we found the only place selling food, a tiny pizza caravan, and joined the back of the queue.

Two minutes passed and we didn’t move an inch, which was about all the patience I had at that point. I took a sneaky stroll right to the front of the queue, conveniently ran into a friend of mine waiting there and slipped in.

Before the people who were waiting in that queue go hating on me because I did what all of you wanted to, I’d like to point out that even though I did that, I still missed pretty much an hour of the show and didn’t see Ashtray Electric at all.

So I suffered too, ok? Although the rumours going around were that some people waited for 3 hours in that same queue.

What the fuck guys. Never wait for that long in a queue for ANYTHING. You’re better than that. Just brave the dirty looks and make a bee-line for the front. We aren’t cattle fer chrissake!

We ate our pizza just in time to get back to the main stage for Two Door Cinema Club’s set and all I can say is wow. I honestly never thought it was possible for a band to breathe that much life and fucking energy into a live performance.

 

 

Their album is good (Tourist History), it’s got some great hooks and is solid, dancey indie that has just enough substance to stay fresh a good couple of listens down the line.

But when that band takes that material to the stage all of a sudden the album starts to come alive in ways you could never imagine.

The chorous of “Come Back Home Home” hit like a haymaker, the crowd swelled and surged like an ocean during “Undercover Martyn” as we all screamed “To the basement people! To the basement!” and when they unleashed “I Can Talk” during the encore, the raw energy all around us reverberated through the busted concrete factory with the kind of intensity that would have brought the walls down if they were still standing.

 

 

What was also so great was how humble the band was throughout. Frontman Alex Trimble seemed genuinely happy to be there and was loving every second of the gig which I think was a refreshing change from other international acts that have played in front of SA audiences looking bored to tears.

When it was all over, I staggered outta that ruined factory feeling pretty ruined myself. I was totally spent, my muscles aching from how crazy I went during the show, my veins pumping cheap whisky and burned out adrenaline and my mind retreating into a warm, contented fog, satisfied that the evening couldn’t possibly have ended any better.

 

 

To Mike SharMAEN and the gang at 5Gum, I salute you. It’s gonna take one helluva event to top that show and I will personally chew my way through 100 miles of your gum for another experience like that.

Group hug.

-ST

18
Jan
12

Brilliant Retroviral Video

RetroviralA long time ago, before the Dead Sea was even sick (da dum. tssshhh) I quit the job I was working in insurance PR and got a gig with a way cooler company called Tribeca PR doing tech-spin.

I had about 2 weeks to kill between jobs so the crazy kids at Tribeca invited me to a media launch they were handling for the HTC Touch.

I walked into the launch and there was this big lug of a man who greeted me with a hearty handshake and was a loud, sweary, goofy kinda guy who I had no idea would one day start a digital agency as amazing as the one I’m about to show you.

Of course, the big lug I’m referring to is Mike Sharman (THE MAEN!) who founded Retroviral on a collaborative basis with total badasses like Mel Attree, who is Mike’s partner in crime on a lot of projects and definitely the brains of the operation.

 

 

As the video I’m about to show you illustrates, Retroviral has come a LONG way for a company that only celebrates its second birthday this year and now has an official “staff compliment” that includes the mastermind behind one of a small handful of blogs I actually read, Mr Dan Nash himself.

Check it.

 

 

A huge congrats to the Retroviral team. Really looking forward to seeing what you guys come up with in 2012.

In the words of my doff-as-fuck alter ego, KLAP IT CHARNAS!

-ST

17
Mar
11

The Sport That Is Barrel Rolling – Part 2

So we all saw the video on Monday of online (and sometimes real life) celebrity Mike Sharman challenging Shaun Oakes to a barrel Rolling contest that’s taking place today at De Waal Park (starts at 15h30, come on down!), now I present to you, Mr Shaun Oakes’ reply:

 

 

It’s awn! It’s happening today and if you had to say, take the afternoon off and enter into a barrel rolling competition to win a fine collection of Irish single Malt whiskies to celebrate St Paddy’s Day with, today is the day to do that!

See you crazy cats there Winking smile

-ST

14
Mar
11

The Sport That Is Barrel Rolling

It’s an intensely contentious debate as to who invented barrel rolling first, the Scots or the Irish, but the fact remains that to this day, barrel rolling remains the 287th most popular sport in the world and is played by roughly 311 people annually.

The sport is relatively new to South Africa but already has a dedicated following of between 5 and 8 people who understand the profound connection between man and barrel and have made it their life’s work to study and understand this phenomenally complex, rewarding and competitive sport.

One of these people, Mike Sharman, was among the first to enter a team into this year’s Bushmills South African Barrel Rolling Championship and went so far as to issue a challenge to another barrel rolling enthusiast and online pseudo-celebrity, Shaun Oakes.

The result is this deeply moving and inspiring piece of film that Sharman and his crew put together both explaining his love for the sport and throwing down the gauntlet for Oakes to step up his game and roll a barrel like no man has ever rolled a barrel before!

 

 

Too awesome. De Waal Park on Thursday. My god it will be epic.

-ST