REEL DE ORO

Martin Allais is a mixed-media director, animator, and illustrator whose life swings between Brooklyn and Barcelona. His early visual work in the Sonar Festival for live performances of Kid Koala, LCD Soundsystem, De la Soul, Madlib, Dj Rocc, Diplo among others, started his moving image career and a life-long relationship with music. His music videos & commercials are regularly featured in Vimeo Staff Picks, AICP, Cannes, Klik animation festival, SXSW, and Sundance to name a few.

Martin has directed commercials for brands like Oreo, Facebook, Samsung, and Dr. Pepper and is part of the director roster at 1stAveMachine, an international production house with offices in LA, NY & London.

1. What is your first memory with a camera?

My father is a photographer, so I have always had cameras near. I did a lot of fixed pictures as a child, but what I liked the most was drawing, I think it was a way to complement my father. I have always liked commercials, I thought it was amazing to create a commercial that made people laugh or that amazed them, they were always French in those days. One day, when I was 11, at school I saw an ad for a creativity course on lateral thinking from a book by Debono and enrolled because I wanted to do those commercials. That´s where everything started.

2. How would you describe your visual style?

I am a mixed media filmmaker. I have done a lot of styles and like them all, but I mainly like combining them. I started with traditional animation and collage, and then stop motion, live action and after began to mix them. I am very interested in the place where techniques re and I think that the idea is the first thing, and then look for an appropriate technique, or sometimes just an excuse to get into something new and explore.

3. What brands have you worked with recently?

Samsung, Adultswim, Wendy’s, Starbucks, Snapchat.

4. Are you preparing any fiction project or documentary right now?

I am in the process of finishing a series in VR called Battlescar, the first episode was launched on Sundance and it is now on a festival tour. It has done fine, and we already took it to five important festivals. We are now preparing the next two episodes and I am also pre-producing a documentary.

5. Since you have worked on VR, how do you imagine the future of advertising?

It seems very liquid to me. The game is being reformulated with the conquest of Instagram. Now it is all right to make a three-minute documentary. Everything is mixed, there aren´t as many TV ads now. Brands now go on the walls of our cell phones and there, millions of things are possible, it is a very experimental moment in my opinion.

6. Where is Martin Allais heading?

I founded a production company called BRUT with two other partners in Barcelona a bit less than a year ago. We have six mixed media directors and are represented in the US and Great Britain by 1stAveMachine. We are also raising some content projects and want to do service. Aside from my content projects, I continue doing advertising and have a band called Misstakes that is eternally recording. For the time being, this, but later, I´ll see, there´s always something.

Production Company: 1stAveMachine, USA
Contact: Martin Allais

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