Posts Tagged Commercials
The Future of Music Videos
It’s common knowledge that music videos are a dying breed. They make no money, they’re shot on barely nothing, and unfortunately, they don’t really advertise new talent unless their video is stellar. Even then, we barely see them.
These past two years have shown us some radical changes for what may just be the future of our beloved shorts, namely, the commercialization of bands and the products they place on screen. While music videos may be an ad for the artist, advertisers have realized that they can be ads for other products, too. Products that will pay for the cost of the video and promote the band at the same time, of course.
The first major fusion of the two; singing and advertising, is, I felt, with the Three Doors Down “Citizen Soldier” videos. Sure, tons of bands have their songs IN commercials, but rarely do bands make their entire music video a commercial for an organization. Yes, we’ve seen videos that include the movies they belong to the soundtrack of, but that’s different. Turning their entire music video into an ad not just for a product but for an entire organization marked the first transgression of music video purity. See the filth here.
In 2007 we saw the appearance of the the “Where U At?” Boost Mobile campaign, featuring Jermaine Dupri, Young Jeezy, and the seriously flamboyant Mickey Avalon:
5 comments November 19, 2008
Cillit Bang Commercials Make Me Happy
Living in Ireland for the spring of 2007, I grew to become very familiar with their T.V. commercials. Inbetween marathons of watching Scrubs, Betty and I would get to a point where we could memorize almost every commercial. So it is understandable that when I think of Ireland, I think of none other than Cillit Bang.
3 comments October 22, 2008
Commercials are Gay.
Don’t get me wrong here, as the founder of my high school’s Gay Straight Alliance, as well as the former roommate of a very gay (and very fabulous) man, I think it is a shame that our societies can’t deal with gay people, especially in the case of Heinz’s newest commercial:
8 comments June 24, 2008
Attention to Detail
My new favorite blog has to be Photoshop Disasters. It’s a collection of heinously ‘shopped images from magazines, advertisements, and websites, compiled for our endless amusement.
Here’s a recent one that was absolutely brilliant:
(click to see original post)
Not only is the giant check a badly edited piece of clip art, note the shadow on the ground. And the reflection in the side of the Hummer. And the fact that the check says “Hunderd”. The site is updated daily with these gloriously awful monstrosities, accompanied by often-snarky commentary. Check it out.
6 comments June 24, 2008
Sofia Boutella
Recently, on my YouTube playlists, I’ve tagged some choice women’s Nike commercials.
Women’s running, boxing, yoga, all pretty much use the same camera movement and lighting.
They’re all shot on a white cyc. Sometimes the subject is lit with high keys, sometimes low keys (to get those various shades of grey).
Unusual camera movement such as the use of horizontal pans as subject moves vertically i/e normally or a bird’s eye view shot following subject’s movement in an arc disarms the viewer’s normal perspective.
Every subject is female in her late 20s, dark-skinned or ethnic.
I was really drawn to this ad:
Nike Dance featuring Sofia Boutella, French (of Algerian descent) break dancer:
I questioned whether any of her moves were real.
I think they are, check out her mesmerizing demo dance reel.
If Sofia performs in NYC, I’d really want to go see her.
Also watching her dance makes me very interested in seeing Planet B Boy, a break dance documentary that came out earlier this year.
1 comment May 30, 2008
