Cannes 2013: Using technology to connect emotionally

On Day 2 of International Festival of Creativity, two of Japanese agency PARTY founders Masashi Kawamura and Qanta Shimizu talk on Prototyping Communication.

For readers bemused by the surprising success of Japanese animation with Indian kids, the session by Party Inc, a Japanese agency with offices in Tokyo and New York would have been a revelation. For it showcased some truly unique end products that the agency regularly produces, which are surprising, even shocking with its sheer ingenuity and approach. Their work was so interesting that it almost took out of the equation any fear of copycat work, by its technical brilliance and approach. Also taken out of the equation was Qanta Shimizu's (one of the four founders) unique accent, with the brilliant work speaking for itself.

In their talk on Prototyping Communications, Shimizu and Masashi Kawamura, the other of the four founders, talks about prototyping communication of the future. Besides traditional communication, agencies need to think of expanding to other business models, which allow them to own intellectual property rights in creative product, which are an outcome of their ideas. They also state that while they extensively use extensively use technology to provide new dimension to their creative work, they also believe it has to emotionally connect with the target audience.

"Emotion is everything and that's what we are trying to do with our work. We are using technology to produce content that will be able do that," Kawamura points out. He illustrates this point by showing a music video 'Music Saves Tomorrow' created for Space Shower TV. Instead of using actual children, the agency decided on using sperms, which is a child in a preliminary stage. The music video shows sperms swimming in what looks like a petri dish, who break into a dance when music starts playing. To further enhance the experience of watching the music video, they enabled users to make the sperms dance to their favourite song or customise the dance moves. Kawamura reveals that, in fact, they took real sperms from the team, got microscopic images, traced the motion of sperms and created animated sequence to make it dance to customised tunes.

Kawamura explains that it is essential to make sure that right technology is used to bring the right ideas to life. "Today, we have many new digital tools, which allow us to create our own tools in producing creative works," he says, explaining how they created a music video using 250 cameras, which were all controlled with computers. The video amazingly used flash to create designs and patterns in the background, while the band members played in the foreground. Considering music bands don't have a lot of budget, Kawamura says they use technology to create something that the clients' have not seen before.

Shimizu, however, cautions that technology doesn't simply mean digital technology as it could be a simple paint brush. He also cautions while PARTY uses a lot of technology, they don't use it in everything they do. He believes innovation isn't everything. However, emotion is! Adding to this point, Kawamura says that the stress on innovation is clouding people's vision and misleading people into doing things by complicating them.