*LTB launches laugh lineup

With laughs high on the ad-genda for many agencies these days, LTB Productions is launching a new division specializing in delivering comedy spots.

The Comedy Shop will be run out of ltb by Wayne Fenske and will offer agencies a directorial lineup focused on comedy directing as well as the ability to deliver creative support in the making of ads.

The division will include Lorne Frohmann, who has a tv comedy writing background; Gary Weis, whose writing credits include Saturday Night Live’s phony commercials; and Chris Nolan, an ex-Chiat Day scribe. Fenske says he’s still in negotiations with other potential Comedy Shop talent.

*Please, says Partners’

Addressing one of the big rumors of this festive season, Partners’ says a big nyet to the latest word on the street that the company will hire on-staff crew to move control of that component of production in-house. Logistically impossible, says the company. Next.

On the talent side, Partners’ has assumed representation of Sebastian Copeland from The Artists Company.

*One too many

Marking the full-swing point of party season, the bash everybody was talking about was jwt’s reinvention jam, and apparently everybody who talked about it showed up – the place was packed.

The event, occupying every nook and cranny of the capacious Guvernment nightclub, was a multimedia extravaganza, covering fashion, animation and sybaritic indulgences – foot and full body massages proved great fun for participants and onlookers alike – but the agency might have better served its goal of increasing its cool quotient if it had invited fewer people (a statement sure to guarantee that the next party’s guest list will be shortened by at least one).

*Clio deadline

Deadline day approaches for the Clio Awards, held May 14, 1998 at the Lincoln Center in New York. Entry deadline is Jan. 16. See the Clio site (www.clioawards.com) for a digital entry kit and details.

*The Lotus Beaters

Both Vancouver’s Apple Box Productions and Circle Productions came out on top at this year’s Lotus Awards, recognizing the best of West Coast ad efforts. The two shops tied for best b.c. tv commercial.

Apple Box’s winning spot was for the Vancouver International Film Festival by director/cameraman Tony Pantages through BBDO Vancouver, while Circle was recognized for icbc, ‘Road Safety Awareness,’ directed by Rob Turner and lensed by Ron Williams.

Circle nabbed another win for its icbc work, best tv campaign for ‘Counter Attack’/’Road Safety Awareness,’ also by Turner and Williams, while Imported director/dop Robin Willis took the Lotus for best tv commercial for a Kokanee Beer through Bryant Fulton & Shee.

*Bigger better Cuppa

Cuppa Coffee Animation recently expanded its space and capabilities at its 401 Richmond West location and has added three new directors, bringing its staff total to 14.

The new 11,000-square-foot space houses three shoot studios that now handle large stop-motion and motion-control projects and are equipped with custom multiplane shoot tables. Each studio is set up with a 15-by-20-foot rear-lit, blue-screen system and each is connected to the Mac Design area, the Avid edit suite and three Adobe After Effects compositing suites. The move coincides with wins to design two European tv networks.

*’Tis the season

With a barrage of charities searching for donations during the festive season, Saatchi & Saatchi creative directors Bruce McKay and Henry Wong decided to steer clear of the usual heart-wrenching psa and promote Project Warmth with a sense of humor.

The charity, which collects sleeping bags to distribute to the homeless, was looking to shake things up and do something different with this year’s campaign. The resulting spot features a lounge lizard-type comic, played by Tony Nappo, on stage in an alleyway spewing cold jokes in the old Carson tradition of ‘Boy is it cold. How cold is it?’

Wong says people have become desensitized to being guilted into donating and they decided audiences might better respond to a message that underlines the plight of the homeless with a touch of humor.

Those who donated their talent for the 30-second spot include Radke director Mark Mainguy and dop Simon Mestel. Marcus Valentine handled the edit at axyz and Ted Rosnick of Rosnick McKinnon looked after the audio. Agency producers were Anna Tricinci and Dale Harrison.