TODAY / 14 JAN 2010
Thursday / January 14 2010

We just moved to Brazil!

While in Spain we got an email from a guy that had seen our reel and just wanted to tell us he liked it. It turned out he was one of the owners of a Brazilian studio called Santa. They appeared to have a pretty sweet reel as well. We said "Hey, we're in Spain now. Maybe our next trip should go to Brazil." It was meant as a joke, but we got a really serious reply saying "Sure, we'll lend you some desks. Just come over here!" And so we did!

So for now two of us are working from tropical Porto Alegre, hanging out with the guys from Santa, exchanging knowledge and getting loads of new impressions. Maybe this is the way to stay fresh and avoid slipping into the same old tracks. 

Thursday / December 03 2009

We've just opened our first studio in Spain!

Two of us here at Upper First got tired of cold and dark Sweden and bought one way tickets to Spain. So Upper First now exists in Malmö Sweden, Karlskoga Sweden and sunny Marbella, Spain. So if any of you happy freelancers, potential clients or die-hard fans happens to be in the neighborhood, just drop us a line and we'll join you for a beer or two!

Wednesday / November 18 2009

Showreel 09

We finally finished our first showreel, showing of what we've been up to during our first year of existence! It took some time to get it finalized, as we had new interesting projects coming in all the time that we wanted to include. But now it's done! Hope you like it!

Friday / November 13 2009

One step closer to world domination

A few days ago we made an effort to increase our presence on the web. We published our films to a few sites like vimeo, behance and xplsv. The response was pretty nice, so to speak. So far we got featured at OEN, have had the movie of the day at xplsv three days in a row with different films, and rumors says that there is still a couple more to come. We also got featured at Motion Graphics Served and at the photo blog shuttercrack. Pretty cool, eh?

Monday / October 26 2009

Inpac Pharma

Upper First and McCann Malmö teamed up to promote Inpac Pharma a Nordic-based company developing, manufacturing and packaging pharmaceuticals and probiotics. Together we produced a film that strikes a slightly softer note than usual as far as the pharmaceutical industry goes. The reason is ”to elevate the company’s core values in a, for the industry, unique way, as it is an industry that is incredibly traditional in its way of marketing itself” says art director Mats Tejre. All in all it has been a fun project as it’s always great to work with clients willing to try something new.

Sunday / October 25 2009

2010 FIFA World Cup

Sony Ericsson is the official mobile phone of the 2010 FIFA World Cup which is going to take place in South Africa next summer. We were asked to design the PlayNow web campaign called "Football Fun" promoting football themes and wallpapers. The beautiful illustration is made by Krzysztof Domaradzki, our friend and a great graphic designer. 

Visit the site http://www.sonyericsson.com/footballextraman 

Saturday / October 24 2009

Alfa Laval / Beer handling

Alfa Laval asked us to produce a promo video for the Drinktech09 exhibition in Munich. The machine was a high speed separator for beer handling. We could not stop smiling when we realised that we were going to do a beer packshot including beer testing.....it sounded more like a nice afterwork at our studio, but it turned out to be a real challenge. Watch the video and read more about the treatment and the difficulties we had at the film shoot. 

Wednesday / September 23 2009

Paint by Numbers

Colorama is back, this time focusing on interior products. We thought it would be fun to experiment with a paint-by-numbers inspired concept and visualize it from an adult perspective while maintaining a childish playfulness. Please take a second to look at the last scene with the interior. A three day build resulting in a four second shot. Well worth it!

Friday / September 18 2009

T.M.N.T 2

Today we had a very special guest here at the office. The turtle Raphael. He will be the star in one of our upcoming films. Contrary to our expectations he did an excellent acting job doing more than just lying on his belly with his head tucked in. Stay tuned for more info on this one as we're just having one week till deadline and might be able to publish something quite soon. Let the crunch begin!

Tuesday / September 15 2009

Back on track!

We're now back in full force after a well deserved summer vacation. But we didn't get the soft start you could imagine. Instead we found ourselves directly thrown into interesting projects with short deadlines, working late nights and eating lots of junk food.

Luckily we just got an extra pair of eyes and hands in the form of intern Jonas Persson. He'll be helping us out with his motion graphics skills. Unlike other interns he won't have to make coffee, as we already have too many baristas working here.