The Dumbest Kid in Advertising

How many times does this kid need to be told?

They don't expire... they're rollover minutes.

I mean after half a dozen commercials doesn't this kid get it yet? I think his Mom has had enough. Look at her face... she can barely contain herself. She is practically quivering with rage.

If another one of these spots gets produced and this kid still can't understand that one AT&T minute is just as good as another, I think the Mom is actually going to beat him senseless.

It's funny to watch how she becomes more and more unhinged from spot to spot... a couple of years ago she's mildly annoyed, then begins to get more frustrated, starts becoming unhinged, then positively paranoid.

Beat it kid.

I like these spots. They're well written and the casting is great. The Mom is a real quirk, the Dad is like an actual person, not the doofus dad we're used to, and the kids are close enough to real teens to be convincing.

Only one problem, though.

See, your AT&T rollover minutes actually do expire.

They do get old, and after a year they expire. Says it right there on the bill... "Unused Package Minutes Expire After 12 Billing Periods."

So cool it Mom.

Turns out your kid is the smartest kid in advertising.

Dead Baby Alert

Yep, that's a spoiler alright.

At least it is if you're the type of person who is disappointed to know in advance that this video contains, among other things, images of a dead child.

For the rest of us, it's more like forewarned is forearmed.

This video is an excerpt from a 30 minute film co-produced by the Tredegar Comprehensive School and the Gwent Police. It is a graphic and disturbing illustration of the consequences of distracted driving.



There are a million potential distractions in your car that you can't do much about. Crying babies, barking dogs, arguing siblings. Those things are part of life. But no matter how cacophonous screaming kids can be, they do not usually compel you to take your eyes off the road.

The car stereo does. Back in the day, everybody knew someone, or knew someone who knew someone who was in a wreck because they were fiddling around with the radio and took their eyes off the road for too long. Or maybe the driver of the other car did. Either way, there was a wreck and you heard about it.

But that was just the car stereo. And 20 years ago, that's all there was. Today we bring other, more insidious distractions into the car.

Blackberrys and cellphones.

No matter how brilliant of a texter you are, even if you can text without looking, there is one thing you cannot do. You cannot read texts and e-mails without looking at something which is not the road in front of you. You cannot keep one eye on the road while reading with the other. Sorry, not possible. We are just not designed that way.

So what do we do instead? What is our workaround for this problem?

Simple. We get into our cars and get up to speed. Maybe 65, 75 miles an hour. Seriously, no one drives 55, not you, not anyone. Then we take a teeny, tiny device out of our pocket or purse. This teeny, tiny device has a teeny, tiny screen, and teensy, weensy keys which are about 1/4 of the size of your pinkie fingernail. Isn't that the cutest thing! And now, every few seconds, we will switch our focus back and forth from the road and cars all around us, to the 3 inch screen in front of us.

This sounds like an excellent idea so far.

There are two basic techniques one can use going forward from this point. If you're a Blackberry kid, you're accustomed to typing with both thumbs. So you'll press the Berry up against the top of the steering wheel, at the 12:00 position, support the back with your index and middle fingers, type with your thumbs, and grasp the wheel with your ring and pinkie fingers.

Out of 10 fingers you've got a full 4 of them on the wheel. Atta boy, sport!

Now this sounds like a good idea, because the Berry is right up near the windshield so it'll be easy to glance back and forth between the road and the screen, right? Your eyes barely have to move at all, right? You can even use your peripheral vision to sense the cars in front of you, right?

So when your Spidey-sense detects a car cutting in front of you, the 4 weakest fingers that you possess are going to be able to quickly and securely steer you out of harms way, in a split second.

Right?

The other technique is the "one hander". Used mostly by veteran texters, you will cradle the phone in the palm of one hand and manipulate the keys with your thumb, while grasping the wheel firmly in the other.

This also sounds like a good idea. If you held the phone out at arms length in front of you, right up by the windshield. But you're not gonna do that. You're gonna hold the phone down near your lap, the back of your hand supported by your thigh. So now you look through the windshield for a while, then eyes completely away from the road down to your lap for more seconds than you realize, then CRASH! YOU'RE DEAD!

I think we all would agree that texting or e-mailing while driving is not a great idea. I admit I've done it, usually in the morning when I'm running late for work. Which is usually always. But it is a terrible, awful, dangerous behavior. I won't be doing it again after today.

So why do we do it? What is so compelling about our messages, or the thought that we might miss something that can't wait till we get there? Tell me, please. Is any of it worth dying for?

Screw that. You can die for it. You can kill yourself if you want to. But killing your family, or friends? Stealing children from parents, or mothers and fathers from babies? That's fucked up, and so supremely selfish that if you do it, you deserve to die. Hope you do.

Have a nice day.

A long walk spoiled.

I've produced so many commercials over the years that I've become accustomed to all dialogue being delivered in one or two line bits. It's difficult to remember that actors sometimes are called upon to do more difficult things, like walk and talk at the same time.

You think it's easy to walk and talk at the same time? Try this.



Could you do that? I know I couldn't.

I've watched this half a dozen times and I keep getting nervous for Robert Carlyle, like he's somehow going to screw it up halfway through and have to start over. And each time he delivers the last line and walks away from camera, I feel like he must be heaving a sigh of relief thinking, "Thank God I got through it that time!"

I know Carlyle is a trained professional, and I know the amount of choreography and rehearsal that must have gone into this. But still, one take? I think that's brilliant. And the Red camera is gorgeous here.

How far was the walk, do you think, from beginning to end?

I'm not above being manipulated. Christ, I've spent my career trying to do it to other people. So even though I know I'm watching a commercial, and a 6 1/2 minute commercial at that, I don't mind it in the least. It is so well executed that I've got to appreciate and respect the craft that has gone into it.

Except for one minor thing. One teensy weensy little thing.

WTF with the 60 second credit roll at the end???

See, now this is where everyone gets a little off track and begins to confuse art with commerce.

"Look at this beautiful piece of art we've created. It's like a little movie, isn't it? By God it is a little movie. Oh, look at us lads, we've made a little movie. Why, we must attach our names to this because everyone who sees it will want to know who we are. They will want to know the name of the Props Buyer, and the Caterer, and the Brand Manager. Because we are important. We are the important people who create these beautiful little films and bring them to you."

Does anyone care who the Johnnie Walker Brand Home Manager is? I don't think so. It's a commercial for chrissakes. Get over it.

This unfortunate lapse in judgement does not negate the fact that Johnnie Walker has a history of really smart, beautifully directed and produced spots. Here's another one of my favorites.

A Collection of Things I Like

Been looking for something to write about but it's been a pretty dry week. Nothing's jumping out at me, and I really need to feeeeeeeeeeel it, you know? Otherwise what's the point? Gotta have passion in everything we do, right?

But the header of the blog does say "a collection of things I like"... it's not solely devoted to spots and production. So here's three items I've come across in the past few weeks that I find generally wicked cool.
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iPhone: I don't know about you, but I'm just not as fast messaging on the iPhone as I am on a Blackberry. Not having actual keys to press still fucks me up sometimes, there's simply no tactile feedback to let me know that I did indeed press a key, or the space bar, or whatever. But the real pain in the ass is switching between keyboards to add numbers and punctuation.

So here's how to make that go faster. When you want to add a number or other mark to your text, press and hold the ".?123" key, then drag your finger to the mark or number you want. When you lift your finger it should insert the mark and switch back automatically to the alphabet keyboard.

Just think what you can do with all the time you'll save.
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Drop.io: As a freelance producer, I never cease to be amazed at the minuscule attachment sizes allowed by most agency and client e-mail servers. I understand that nobody wants to clog up their e-mail server with a lot of huge files, and no one deletes anything anyway until their mailbox is full. But sometimes you just need to e-mail a rough cut, you know?

Enter drop.io. This is a great tool for freelancers, agency producers, anyone who needs to move large files around and doesn't want to deal with managing those files when the job is over.

There's plenty of drop box services, but drop.io has a couple of features that make it particularly user friendly. First of all, it's free. Your drop box is 100MB, which is a decent size, but you can have as many drop boxes as you want. So it's really unlimited. The most excellent bit, though, is that you can set the length of time that the files stay active. Default time is one year, but you can set the expiration for different lengths. So your vacation photos or client materials won't be floating around the Internet forever, and you don't have to remember to delete the files or the site when the job is over. To me, that's huge.

There are some other great features that you won't find on other drop box services. You can fax to the drop, and it creates a pdf of the file. You can e-mail directly to the drop. You get a phone number; people can call the drop and leave you a voice-mail. And you get a conference bridge to boot. It is a pretty useful tool.

I'm gonna go drop something in there right now.
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This is kind of trippy and creepy at the same time. Open up this picture and take a good look at it. Actually it works a lot better if you download it and make it bigger. Like fill up your whole screen with it, or print it out. Now get up from your computer and walk across the room and look at it again.

Aaaaaaaah!

Is that crazy or what? Apparently it's got something do with how our eyes pick out different resolutions (sharp lines vs. blurry ones) and process that information over distance and time. It's part of some work being done at the Computational Visual Cognition Laboratory at MIT.

There's some more of these creepy pictures here. If you are so lazy that you cannot get up from your desk, or if your office is really small, these movie files will simulate the experience for you.

You know it's funny...

A little something for Friday, apropos of nothing.



I do so love the Japanese.

Where's the joke?

Have you see this spot?



I get this. The guy hears his wife talking on the phone about all the delicious goodies in the house. Apple Turnovers, Boston Creme Pie, Key Lime Pie. But where are they? He can't find them. Where could they be?

Ahhh they're the yogurts!

Duh-oh! What a dumb ass!

Another commercial where the man/dad is a dope. I don't particularly care for it but I get the joke.

But the next one makes no sense to me at all.



Is this sequel supposed to take place on the same day as the first spot? The guy is wearing the same shirt but different pants. The woman is wearing a very similar sweatsuit, but with a different T-shirt, and her hair is now in a ponytail.

If it is supposed to be a different day, the wardrobe would be obviously different, not sort of the same, right? Is it later that same day? Later that month? Next week?

And the relationship between these two? She doesn't respect him; every look she gives him pretty much says "what a idiot I married". He is obviously scared to death of her... he's afraid to talk on the phone when she's in the room. Is he in trouble now for talking on the phone, or eating the yogurt, or both? Was he supposed to ask permission? Did he eat her favorite flavor?

I don't get the joke.

The first spot follows the familiar, unfunny formula where the woman/mom is smart and the man/dad is a hopeless doofus. It's a terrible construct, but we're inured to it, so it goes by largely unnoticed. It's usually executed in a good natured manner, no one gets hurt.

I guess the second spot follows the formula too, but there is nothing good natured about it. It's just uncomfortable to watch. And not funny, either.

Did the first spot sell so much yogurt that a second one had to be produced? Maybe the demographic for this is "women who think their husbands are idiots."

Hmmm, that's probably a pretty big segment of the population. Maybe they've got something after all.

The beginning of the end

My morning routine goes something like this:

-Wake up to the sound of our daughter over the baby monitor.

-Roll over and groan… can it really be 5:30 already?

-Pick up baby, smile, give many kisses.

-Put baby in high chair, make a pot of coffee, make baby bottle.

-Sit down on couch, put on morning news, administer bottle.

This Saturday morning was a little different, though, because after I made the bottle I uncapped it, put it in front of her, and watched. 

She knows how to drink from a sippy cup.  But a bottle is a little different.  She needs to hold it at a specific angle so that the nipple fills with milk and she gets liquid, not a bunch of air.

So on this particular morning she picks up the bottle, puts the nipple in her mouth, then throws her head back and begins to drink.  And I am delighted.  “Yay!  What a big girl!”

And then it hits me.

This is the beginning of the end. 

This is the beginning of a process that ends with my baby girl not needing me anymore.

I've got 2 kids, so I've given hundreds of bottles in my lifetime.  Maybe a thousand, even.  And every time I had to drag myself out of bed at  3 AM it was a colossal pain in the ass.  But by the time I’d settled into the chair, and got that little baby nestled in my arms just right, that was always gone.  There is a closeness, a bond between you and that half sleeping baby.  She needs you.  She needs you to care for her and look out for her and wake up in the darkness and feed her. She needs her Daddy.

Now she can drink it on her own.  She doesn't need me for that anymore.  And while the advantages to this are huge, I am happy and sad at the same time.  It is a milestone marking a dependence that has begun to slip away.

We want our kids to grow up and become strong, independent individuals.  We want them to sleep through the night and get potty trained and dress themselves.

But on some level, we want them to stay little forever.  To depend on us, to need us in this most fundamental way.  To know that when they are frightened, we will be there to hold them, when they are sad we will make them laugh, and when they are hungry in the nighttime, the bottle, and the Daddy, will always be there.