Production Company A-List: Tool

What can't Tool do? The company continued to dabble in all sorts of production pies and wowed us with digital and filmic projects alike. One of its best efforts in 2012 was the innovative digital project, "Clouds Over Cuba," created out of The Martin Agency, which revisited the fateful period 50 years ago that brought the United States to the brink of a nuclear war with Cuba. A project by the JFK Presidential Library, "Clouds" was the brainchild of directors Erich Joiner and the newly recruited Ben Tricklebank, a gorgeous documentary film that was coupled with archival photos, videos, documents and declassified audio recordings that let you experience the 13-day period of the Cuban Missile Crisis like you were actually there. What made the project even more special -- and relatable -- was a short film tacked onto the end of the campaign, which showed a "What If" scenario where the crisis actually escalated into a full-blown war. Mr. Tricklebank, who joined Tool after serving as a creative director at fellow A-List shop B- Reel, also made waves with "Jam With Chrome," one of our favorite Chrome Experiments from 2012, which let you play music with remote friends, using just your keyboard. Facebook apps we've seen plenty of, but few caught are eye like Mr. Joiner's "Unpretentious App" for Mitsubishi, created via agency 180 Los Angeles. To promote how unpretentious the new Outlander Sport is, the app identified your friends' most pretentious Facebook posts to visually destroy them, through a pretty slick video that showed the car crashing through the posts themselves. In the music video space, director Alma Har'el delivered a trippy, fantastical piece of work for Sigur Ros, starring Shia LaBeouf. Part of the group's Valtari Film Experiment that tapped an assortment of talent to create clips for the various songs off the group's album, the video for the band's "Fjogur Piano" and relayed the tumultuous, sensual relationship of a drug-addicted couple via sophisticated metaphors and lyrical dance sequences. James Cooper, another new addition to the Tool roster, who joined from JWT New York, entered the production space with a nifty little app for Help Remedies, which let flu-stricken people find someone to blame for being sick, with "Help, I Have the Flu." And Jason Zada, who appeared in our Creativity 50 last year for what might be one of the most viral Facebook apps ever, "Take this Lollipop," announced plans for a sequel to the creepy film, and along with Jason Nickel, worked on an interactive music video for Linkin Park's "Lost in the Echo."

Production Company A-List: Tool

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