Instead of churning out a typical camera advertisement, Nikon and McCann put the former’s product–the new D800 Digital SLR–to the test by producing Broken Night, a 10-minute short film capable of displaying its advanced cinematic capabilities. Don’t worry if you’re not a camera geek. The project is meant to appeal to professionals on a technical level, but the film’s story stands on its own legs. Sundance, in fact, selected it for the festival’s 2013 U.S. Narrative Short Film Competition.

Personally, I’m not a fan of horror movies, but this is more cerebral and gothic than a blood-and-guts flick. Oscar nominee Guillermo Arriaga (Babel) wrote and directed the short, and Oscar winner/Steven Spielberg‘s go-to DP Janusz Kaminski (Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan) provided the cinematography.

If you’re fed up with the crap currently playing in theaters and reeling from the post-Super Bowl ad hangover, Broken Night is for you. Credits after the jump.

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…And while we’re on the topic of McCann, we’ll refrain from using the word “quirky” this time around as we’ve learned our lesson after the last Wes Anderson/spot-related post. So, we’ll just tell you that the feature-film director is once again dabbling in commercials, this time for a new Sony Xperia campaign brought to you by, yes, McCann Worldgroup.

Here, an eight-year-old named Jake Ryan offers his take on the inner workings of the brand’s smartphone, which from his perspective, operates at the whims of a leader and his three tiny robots. The whimsical (wait, can we say that?) ditty channels the spirit of Willy Wonka and takes us inside the mind of a young lad, as we’ve been told the script is based verbatim on his thoughts. Kids informing major brand campaigns is all the rage these days, isn’t it? At least we give credit to the parties involved for tapping Sigur Ros frontman Jonsi to handle the music portion.

The above TV spot, which will debut this weekend, is complemented by a print campaign that’s already launched in European markets but will soon roll out globally. Credits and print asset after the jump.

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The above web film from McCann NY (which is slightly different than the TV spot that’s been airing) is for Verizon’s FiOS network, advertised as “America’s fastest Internet” with “speeds higher than advertised,” which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but we’ll roll with it.

In “Vision,” McCann employs good comedic timing and simplicity, the latter of which being an element we don’t see much in marketing for the latest, fastest technology products. For comparison, look at it next to TV spots for Verizon competitor, AT&T. AT&T’s been pushing their 4G mobile broadband service in TV spots for about a year now, and each spot depicts someone’s lagging Internet speed preventing them from sharing in their peers’ revelry on a similar time frame. The slice-o-life spots portray scenarios that could potentially happen to someone, but only in an extreme circumstance.

With “Vision,” on the other hand, the viewer doesn’t realize it’s a slice-o-life ad until the punchline, which in this case depicts an event that is an actual regular occurrence for most Internet users. And, it’s here that Verizon’s insight bests AT&T. The most frustrating problem with slow Internet is not the “fear of missing out” due to a slight network delay, it’s being forced to play the waiting game. Credits after the jump.

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