Festival Day 6

Due to our inability to get a cab home the night before, I was exhausted and got a later start than I meant to on Thursday. However it worked out because I arrived and was able to slip into the end of a Proctor & Gamble speech in Lumiere called Raising the Creative Bar. This particular presentation was very work heavy and I found myself crying over Olympics mom commercials (story of my life) in the dark and thinking about how much I love emotional ad campaigns. It got me thinking about how people make a video truly sentimental. Like at what scene does your throat start to feel tight. How are the cuts and different scenes strategically laid out to form a cohesive story that bears so much sentimentality and emotional weight. I wonder if the original story boards for these ads include notes like "people will probably start crying here." Because people have mentioned repeatedly this week that stimulating viewers emotionally is one of the number one tactics in advertising. Its ads like these that attract a lot of attention and get a lot of shares and win Lions. These P&G ads truly strike a chord with me and it blows my mind how there can be multiple ads about the mothers of olympic athletes and the campaign doesn't even feel repetitive. That is some impressive strategic work right there. 

I stayed in the theater and watched another talk hosted by Getty Images about photojournalism on the frontline of war and conflict overseas. The two photographers, Brent Stirton and Lynsey Addario told incredible stories about some of the things they witnessed while working and how they captured some of these crazy, haunting, and iconic moments. A lover of my photography myself, this once again opened my "what job could I be happy doing" thoughts. Capturing a moment with a camera requires so much vision and God given eye that it would seem sad to not be able to use this skill of mine in some capacity in my work in the future. These photo journalists are relevant to the industry conversation because they are doing a very specific type of advertising. Instead of drawing attention to a brand, they are bringing awareness to important issues and providing a glimpse of situations the rest of the world would not otherwise be able to see. Its the photographer's job to capture the essence of the scene in a way that tells a story to the uninformed viewer. It made me very excited of the independent study I'm doing this fall to create my own photo book of work.

That evening I met up with some friends at YouTube Beach. The vibe there was so fun and I began to get very sad that we only had a couple days left. We had fun cocktails and tacos and ended up getting to see this amazing band of three insanely talented British guys who sang, beatboxed, and played guitar. The beatboxer in particular was so ridiculously talented that it was hard to even comprehend what he was doing. As I stood in a lively crowd full of fun, smart people all dancing and laughing and talking to one another, it dawned on me my newfound vocation as a global citizen. Back home in America, when you meet someone from other country its a rarity. Here, everyone is from everywhere, but people are all discussing the same passions and sharing ideas in a myriad of different languages, accents, and dialects. Its so inspiring to feel such a sense of global community. I think being able to travel like this is so invaluable and I feel it should be an integral part of a person's education. If you never go and expose yourself to experiences interacting with people of other cultures, your view on life is very small and narrow-minded. I've only been to one physical country on this trip but in a way I feel like I've been all around the world just from talking to people from every single continent and hearing their unique stories and opinions. I'm so grateful for this opportunity to get to broaden my horizons and expand my perspective. This might be one of the most valuable things I take away from this trip.

A big group of this headed to dinner before venturing into the marina in hopes of sneaking into a yacht party. It was certainly not easy and took a lot of begging and passing back but we finally snuck our way into the Elite Daily Daily Mail yacht party which is the biggest, most rave-like of them all. It was super fun and jam packed full of all the coolest people in Cannes letting loose and partying together in a fashion that I can only imagine is unique to this festival. I met an interesting guy from LA who said he'd give my website and look and pass my card on to some of his friends and colleagues (guess that means I need to put in some extra work on my website to make it look A1). We ended up at Gutter Bar before grabbing an Uber back to JLP.