Greater Than Or Equal To » advert

Black Dynamite, I don’t think you understand…

Alan Trotter — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 15:13:13 +0000

You’re a spoof! A joke! Your poster should be a half-bright pastiche. Not a legitimate, even kind of stunning piece of work in its own right.

Oh well.

Official trailer on YouTube.

(via The Font Feed)

Advertising Will Eat Us All · vol. 2 · Pablo Ferro

Alan Trotter — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 11:00:36 +0000

Just to reiterate, this is an occasional attempt to trace the work of creative minds as it is adopted, reused and transformed by those that follow them, and (either sooner or later) ingested by the hungry maw of advertising. Only because the attempt might be kind of fun, not because referencing or being influenced by previous creative work is necessarily a bad thing.

Here’s the trailer for the American release of Armando Ianucci’s implausibly funny and just as clever political satire In the Loop.

Trailer for In the Loop on Funny or Die

The frenetic cutting of the trailer calls back to the work of Pablo Ferro, who was recruited by Stanley Kubrick to make the trailers to Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb and A Clockwork Orange. The In the Loop trailer also refers to the Clockwork Orange trailer in its choice of soundtrack: both use a disturbingly insistent electronic version of the William Tell Overture (in the grip of madness, or when woken by them first thing in the morning, all mobile phones sound like this).

Trailer for A Clockwork Orange on Google Video

Trailer for Dr. Strangelove on YouTube

As well as working with Kubrick on these two trailers and on the opening credits for Dr Strangelove, Ferro’s work includes the titles and the iconic split screen editing in The Thomas Crowne Affair.

However, Kubrick apparently initially approached another master of quick cuts to produce the trailer for Dr Strangelove – Arthur Lipsett, whose short film ‘Very Nice, Very Nice’ Kubrick much admired. Lipsett declined the offer, and Kubrick got Ferro. (You can see ‘Very Nice, Very Nice’ here, if the National Film Board of Canada’s website is working.)

Whether Ferro was influenced by Lipsett when cutting his trailers together isn’t clear. But this is the tradition the makers of the In the Loop trailer built on to convey a sense of the film without including any of its impressive, inventive and near-fucking-constant profanities. Which is a pretty miraculous feat of editing.

Advertising Will Eat Us All · vol. 1 · Blu

Alan Trotter — Fri, 22 May 2009 16:29:00 +0000

To create any kind of art, whether personal or commercial, without taking inspiration from the art of others that preceded it is neither a realistic nor a desirable goal. Still it seems like it might be worthwhile, or at least interesting, to track some more or less original ideas as they work their way into advertising – advertising being constantly hungry for new and attention-grabbing ideas.

This isn’t to pass judgement or cast scorn. In art (including advertising) being under an influence is nothing to be ashamed of. Appropriation can be done intelligently and elegantly (as much as it can be done crassly). And good derivative work will stand up to having its influences identified and examined.

Anyway, this time, the excellent work of graffiti artist Blu, whose animation MUTO appeared on the internet about a year ago and has since had more than 7 million views through Vimeo and YouTube. If you haven’t seen it before, you’re in for a treat.

MUTO a wall-painted animation by Blu on Vimeo.

On 15 May last year, in response to all the attention MUTO earned him, Blu wrote on his blog:

if you are asking for advertising works the answer is: NO THANKS
if you are asking for music videos the answer is: see above

Unable to recruit the original artist, advertisers have done their best without.

BBC Radio 6 Music ‘Get an earful’ promo by the BBC on Vimeo.

Lee’s story from Action for Children on YouTube.

(It’s worth mentioning that this is one of a series of, I think, very successful adverts by Action for Children.)

And here’s a music video using a similar technique (leaving the remnants of previous frames of animation visible) but using chalkboards.

Autumn Story chalk animation by Firekites on Vimeo.