You may remember a post a while back whereby I mentioned that one of my dear clients, Crown Chimp Productions, had hired me to voice the "6 Minutes" commercial for Brute - Adidas, featuring Henry Cejudo, the youngest American wrestler to win an Olympic Gold Medal.  They won a Gold & Silver District Addy Award for the piece.  Well, moments ago I received this letter from Crown Chimp: "We are extremely proud and pleased to announce that on Saturday, June 12th, Crown Chimp Productions won a National Addy Award for our "6 Minutes" Brute-Adidas piece. 

The Addy awards are the world's largest and arguably toughest advertising competition, awarding creative excellence in a three-tiered system. Over 60,000 entries compete each year, with roughly 1% making it to the National level. Our journey had "6 Minutes" win two GOLD Addy's (Internet Commercial and Cinematography) at the local Tucson level and our non-profit work for the JCF winning one SILVER Addy (for non-profit video.)  From there, "6 Minutes" went on to compete at the District 12 level (the country is split up into 15 districts) where it earned GOLD in Cinematography and SILVER in Internet Commercial. Finally, this past Saturday night, "6 Minutes" won a SILVER Addy for Cinematography at the National Level.

To even be in the same room as some of the winners was absolutely incredible.  The night saw GOLD Addys go to the likes of brands such as Old Spice, Durex, Tampax, Direct TV, Halo and many others. These were pieces that ranged from surreal humor to meta-comedy to blunt realism to the emotionally epic- all transcended their mediums and proved advertising can, and should, be considered a legitimate and beautiful art form. We were awestruck by some of the agencies represented: BBDO, DDB and Ogilvy for goodness sake! Someone must have made a mistake, because we did not belong there. 

Needless to say, we were blown away that our little commercial (with it's little budget) made it to this level.  

"6 Minutes" was originally commissioned to us by Brute-adidas in November after they saw our spec spot of the same name.  We shot the film with Henry Cejudo- the youngest American wrestler to win an Olympic Gold Medal and overall incredible human being. On the surface, the piece is about how athletes will spend countless hours training for the smallest window of competition. At it's core though, the piece is ultimately a story of sacrifice. "6 Minutes" was deeply personal to me and I was more than honored for Crown Chimp to be able to give back to the sport that has given me everything. 

Filmmaking is the most collaborative art form and I couldn't imagine doing any of this without my crew. We work in extremely unconventional methods and I count myself lucky to have such a talented team of artists able to adapt and realize a collective vision...."