Simon Hayes and Giles Clayton Cannes Diary: Excuse me Mr. Seacrest, why am I here?

Simon Hayes and Giles Clayton, a young creative team from J. Walter Thompson Sydney, have competed in the Print category of the Cannes Young Lions competition. The pair write exclusively for CB.

Excuse me Mr. Seacrest, why am I here?

The creative powerhouse that is Usher graced the festival halls yesterday to discuss his greatness with three-time Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Ryan Seacrest.

The pair exchanged 45 minutes of pleasantries with one exciting revelation – even Usher can’t pull off snakeskin pants.

Next up was a VR chat from Google that was actually really interesting (apparently there’s a use for these things besides laughing at people doing rollercoaster simulations).

The reason VR works, they explained, is that every experience you have is actually just a chemical reaction taking place in a dark theatre. Interesting analogy choice when you’re presenting it to a group of people already sitting in a dark theatre, thus creating some sort of theatre within a theatre, theatre-ception scenario. But anyway, they went on to show its applications in storytelling, art and memory.  

The most exciting part was when they wheeled out the original animator of The Little Mermaid and had him do a live 3D illustration using a device called shift brush or tilt pen or something techy and cool like that. With Ariel singing in the background he illustrated a scene from the film and then walked inside it. Why you’d want to do that, I don’t know, but it was pretty cool and the wolf-whistling audience seemed to enjoy it.