Superballs video

Sony is selling a new large LCD TV called BRAVIA. I don't particularly care about the TV itself (I'm not likely to ever spend thousands of dollars on a TV), but the ad for it is totally cool.

In the BRAVIA ad, Danish director Nicolai Fuglsig and his crew dropped 250,000 superballs at the tops of a couple of hills in San Francisco, and filmed the results. (And then cleaned up after themselves. Also, they worked with the locals to make sure there was no property damage. They probably could've achieved similar effects with computer graphics, but somehow knowing they did it in real life adds something to the video for me.) It's a lovely piece of video; I recommend the three-minute extended version, but if you're short on time, the one-minute standard version is also quite nice. There are also some making-of clips; most of the short making-of clips are just slightly extended excerpts from the longer 3-minute making-of segment.

The pretty (and slightly melancholy, to my ear) song that provides the music is José González's "Heartbeats," from his debut album, Veneer. Turns out it's a cover of a song by a Swedish group called The Knife. There are lots of copies of the lyrics online, but most of them are so badly spelled that I suspect they were transcribed by a non-English speaker. Here's one set of lyrics that seems vaguely reasonable, but then here's another set of lyrics--is it "We had divine scent" or "We had demons in"? "Four hats and then away" or "Four hands and then away"? Dunno. His enunciation is not great, nor are my PowerBook's speakers. Oh, well.

I think it might be kinda cool if this turns out to be the direction that the advertising industry takes in response to TiVo and such: make the ads so compelling that people want to watch them.

. . . I was thinking of combining that last entry and this one, with entry title "Superman, Superballs," but I decided against it.

7 Responses to “Superballs video”

  1. Karen

    It may not be just errors in transcription — Swedish pop lyrics (Jose Gonzalez is Swedish) can be baffling. In my house, the line we like to quote to illustrate this point is “I’m free like a flying demon”, from E-Type’s song by the same name. No idea what it means, we just roll with it…

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  2. Sharon

    Just kidding — this is Jacob, but I couldn’t resist the series of commentors’ names on this particular item.

    I liked the ad, though. The other interesting trend is use of slightly melancholy music in ads, which I feel like I’m seeing more of. The one that comes to mind off the top of my head is that VW ad with the Nick Drake song (Pink Moon?).

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  3. Darren

    Nope, still Jacob

    Interesting note — when I posted the above, I got that Interal Server Error, which I’ve never gotten when posting as me. Note that when posting as me I’ve been using TypeKey. Anyway, using Firefox 1.0.7 on Windows XP. Three cookies are set: mtcmthome, mtcmtmail, mtcmtauth, all of them empty. Did not Preview before posting.

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  4. Ro Laren

    The VW “Pink Moon” ad, by the way, was the first TV ad that I saw as an adult that made me feel like I was its target audience. I have an odd combination of feelings about that — it’s scary to be identified as a demographic, but it’s also a little disheartening to see that you’re largely considered not worth wanting at the same time.

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  5. Zefram

    (This is Joanna, and that’s the closest rhyme I could think of for a reasonably well-known character in the same show…)

    I think it might be kinda cool if this turns out to be the direction that the advertising industry takes in response to TiVo and such: make the ads so compelling that people want to watch them.

    Like the iPod ads! Literally, I have the extended video of the U2 ‘Vertigo’ ad on my desktop, which was the flagship iPod/iTunes song, so to speak, when I got my iPod mini — I watch it all the time, because it’s so cool. 🙂

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  6. Warren

    make the ads so compelling that people want to watch them.
    I prefer this to what the networks were doing before, which was make the shows so bad the commercials come as a relief.

    I’m all in favor of putting the sponsors into the show itself, like they did in the old days. I know nobody will do it as cleverly as Burns and Allen, but there are opportunities. Mostly, though, it’s an opportunity to mention my favorite of the Burns and Allen ads I’ve seen. This is from the television show, and it’s after they’ve changed sponsors. The episode involves a banker, for no very good reason, and the following conversation takes place:

    Banker: George, I see you’ve got a new source of revenue.
    Burns: No, I’m still married to Gracie.
    Banker: I mean your sponsor, Carnation Milk.
    Burns: Oh, yes.
    Banker: They’re an A-1 investment property, you know.
    Burns: A-1 product, too.

    … and then they talk about Gracie for a while.

    Thanks,
    -Warren.
    (actually Vardibidian)

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