Tool Creates First-of-Their-Kind Interactive iPad App
As the iPad thrusts a whole new digital medium onto the world, Tool has become the first studio to integrate many of the device's innovative features into a free downloadable app. Five of Tool's top directors - Erich Joiner, Jason Zada, Sean Ehringer, Tom Routson and Geordie Stephens - collaborated with technology partner Domani Studios to create Touching Stories, which consists of four films that Fast Company has described as equal parts videogame and immersive entertainment.
The videos leverage the iPad's interactivity, often requiring users to touch, shake, or turn the screen, providing them with the sense that they are part of the unfolding story. Helpful instructions frequently pop up onscreen, along with links to Web pages and other videos. Tool shot all of the live-action footage and then collaborated with Domani to integrate this with the Web components, as well as the device's multi-touch and accelerometer features.
The Joiner/Zada collaboration, All Ends, Ends All is the only app that presents an interactive first-person experience. The story opens in hazy confusion, as a character wakes up inside what turns out to be a car trunk. Onscreen prompts help the app user burst out of the trunk, run from his enemies, and seek shelter in a cluster of beaten-up roadside buildings. The pursuit requires aggressive tilting back and forth of the iPad; if the player doesn't move fast enough, the character is caught and done in. The adventure continues through a roadside phone booth - in which a user actually pushes the iPad screen to dial for help - and into a dumpy hotel, where the hero of the story must find keys from a buxom woman in a swimming pool in his doomed pursuit of his lover.
Ehringer's Jerry and Sarah is a series of three experiences, in which freak circumstances descend upon the home of a couple, Sarah and Jerry. In Sarah, the woman sits on the couch of her suburban home, becoming increasingly more anxious as the iPad user pokes her in the eye, compels her to smack herself across the face with a magazine, and makes talking donkeys and bizarre dancing Indian men appear onscreen. Jerry features Sarah's husband taking a shower and becoming increasingly enraged as the player pulls back his curtain, flushes the toilet to transform the water into a scalding gusher, and makes him teleport randomly outside the tub and in the middle of the bathroom. In the third portion of the app, the couple races outside, where the user can compel Jerry to express his rage by smashing the camera with his golf clubs.
Routson's Triangle is a choose-your-own-ending tale of greed and betrayal, in which a tattooed, whisky-drinking roughneck and a boyishly handsome priest vie for the affections of a beautiful young woman, and all three compete - handguns at their sides - for a suitcase full of hundred-dollar bills. The adventure ends with someone laying dead in a vacant lot while someone else walks away with the cash case - only the player decides who survives.
A comedic tone dominates in Stephens' The Most Interesting Couple in Britain, a parody of the stereotypical dry English sitcom, complete with pop-up Wikipedia links to help clarify the dialect. After the couple gossips about football strategies and friends, a series of pop-up menus gives the users hilarious touch-screen pathways along which to steer the action. In the first, the player can choose between "his thoughts," "her thoughts," and "the dog's thoughts." He dreams of a sassy young mistress sitting on his knee and floats dashing visions of himself standing on mountaintops; she dreams of a knight feeding her grapes on bended knee; the dog envisions himself humping a firefighter's leg. The end-of-video options include a "happy ending," a "sad ending," a "random ending," (in which a grotesque troop of numbskulls posing as Girl Scouts bursts in and wrecks the place), and an offer from the lass standing alongside the onscreen menu: "I take my clothes off."
Credits:
"Touching Stories" iPad App
Filmed and Concepted by Tool of North America
Built by Domani Studios
Launch Date: June 28, 2010
Film Title: All Ends, Ends All
Director(s): Erich Joiner, Jason Zada
Co-Written With Timothy Immordino
Created by Tool of North America + Domani Studios
Live Action + Digital Production Company: Tool of North America
Executive Producer(s): Brian Latt, Matt Bonin
Executive Producer Digital: Dustin Callif
DP: Andrew Shulkind
Production Designer: Samantha Gore
Live Action Producer: Joby Ochsner
Digital Production Supervisor: Brian Armstrong
Associate Digital Producer: Jesse Pugh
iPad Development: Domani Studios
Executive Creative Director: Jon Hills
Lead Developer: Micah Acinapura
Digital Producer: Robbie Tilton
Director of Production: Shawn Clarke
Editorial Company: Lost Planet
Editor: Victor Brown
Editorial Producer: Bill Fortney
Online Company: Liquid Studios
Telecine: Company 3
Artist: Matt Turner
Music Company: APM
Talent/Hero: Will Collyer
Talent/Cowboy: Wayne Baldwin
Talent/Gangster Boss: John Polce
Talent/Boss' Wife: Celia Diane
Talent/Women in Pool: Virginia Hey
Shoot Location: Los Angeles, CA
Film Title: The Most Interesting Couple in Britain
Director: Geordie Stephens
Created by Tool of North America + Domani Studios
Live Action + Digital Production Company: Tool of North America
Executive Producer(s): Brian Latt, Matt Bonin
Executive Producer Digital: Dustin Callif
DP: Flor Collins
Live Action Producer: Jeff Tanner
Digital Production Supervisor: Kevin Clark
Associate Digital Producer: Jesse Pugh
iPad Development: Domani Studios
Executive Creative Director: Jon Hills
Lead Developer: Micah Acinapura
Digital Producer: Robbie Tilton
Director of Production: Shawn Clarke
Editorial Company: Lost Planet
Editor: Victor Brown
Editorial Producer: Bill Fortney
Online Company: Liquid Studios
Music Company: APM
Talent/Greg Castle: Danish Girl Scout
Talent/Hal Rudnick: Danish Girl Scout
Talent/Rob Janas: Danish Girl Scout
Talent/Jordan Morris: Danish Girl Scout
Talent/Joel Bond: Knight
Talent/Evan Arnold: Maureen
Talent/Jacqueline Smyth: Menu Girl
Talent/Lola Kelly: Secretary
Talent/Tom Konkle: Stanley
Shoot Location: Los Angeles, CA
Film Title: Triangle
Director: Tom Routson
Created by Tool of North America + Domani Studios
Live Action + Digital Production Company: Tool of North America
Executive Producer(s): Brian Latt, Matt Bonin
Executive Producer Digital: Dustin Callif
DP: Bill Pope
Production Designer: Jeffrey Beecroft
Live Action Producer: Caroline Pham/Peter Sprouse
Digital Production Supervisor: John Pi
Associate Digital Producer: Jesse Pugh
iPad Development: Domani Studios
Executive Creative Director: Jon Hills
Lead Developer: Micah Acinapura
Digital Producer: Robbie Tilton
Director of Production: Shawn Clarke
Editorial Company: Lost Planet
Editorial Producer: Bill Fortney
Editor: Victor Brown
Online Company: Liquid Studios
Telecine: Technicolor
Artist: Stephen P. Arkle
Music Company: Yessian LA
Executive Producer: Michael Yessian
Composer/Arranger: Andy Grush
Talent/Woman: Natasha Blasick
Talent/Man: Paul Zies
Talent/Minister: Phillip Ward
Shoot Location: Los Angeles, CA
Film Title: Jerry and Sarah
Director: Sean Ehringer
Created by Tool of North America + Domani Studios
Live Action + Digital Production Company: Tool of North America
Executive Producer(s): Brian Latt, Matt Bonin
Executive Producer Digital: Dustin Callif
DP: Richard Henkels
Production Designer: Janet Nelson
Live Action Producer: Lauren Bayer
Digital Production Supervisor: Chad Forsch
Associate Digital Producer: Jesse Pugh
iPad Development: Domani Studios
Executive Creative Director: Jon Hills
Lead Developer: Micah Acinapura
Digital Producer: Robbie Tilton
Director of Production: Shawn Clarke
Editorial Company: Lost Planet
Editor: Victor Brown
Editorial Producer: Bill Fortney
Online Company: Liquid Studios
Telecine: Company 3
Artist: Matt Turner
Talent/Sarah: Dru Mouser
Talent/Jerry: Brandon Moynihan
Talent/Man: Pramod Kumar
Shoot Location: Los Angeles, CA
About Tool:
Bicoastal Tool of North America represents top-tier artists to the advertising industry. Tool's collective of talent includes: directors, photographers, cinematographers, technologists, mobile content creators, and video game creatives. This diverse talent pool affords Tool the ability to serve as a resource for agencies across commercial and digital productions, packaging the best creative teams available to develop compelling advertising with our agency partners.
