If This Is A Blog Then What's Christmas?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fuijhUn0pk&feature=player_embedded

Nicely done. Unnecessarily cheesy driving shot ending.

I never watch all three minutes of anything that’s three minutes long, but I managed it with this.

The charity is a good cause, the script is funny and the performances are excellent.

Hats off.

The above line is attributed to designer Abram Games and it is truly brilliant.

It communicates the essence of quality in art in four elegant, alliterative words that practice exactly what they preach.

But why is economy of expression such a prized skill?

Although you can argue for nebulous abstractions such as ‘beauty’, I think it, and everything else we admire, comes down to a single thing: difficulty. Expressing elaborate concepts, such as the essence of a company, in three words (Just Do It), or the way love works in a single line (the love you take is equal to the love you make) is really, really hard, and therefore worthy of our admiration. It’s why we like short titles that have many meanings (War and Peace), or puns (they often have the added difficulty of being spontaneous), or works of art such as Shepard Fairey’s ‘hope’ image of Obama.

Advertising’s short timelengths are rich areas of density of expression and this can happen in very different ways. For example, he beautiful imagery and wonderfully lyrical voiceover of ‘Surfer’ can be taken in on the first viewing, but those 90 seconds can be watched time and again, revealing different layers on each occasion:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zff9hVH3ptY

But equally, there’s a whole life, backstory, attitude and personality in two words and a muddy football pitch that we can all recognise and enjoy in various ways each time we see it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUSpjZEhNU8

Saying a lot with a little is quite a skill (that, as you can see, I have yet to master).

I once watched a programme (I think it was Secrets of the Pop Song) that talked about writing hits. One quote from that has really stuck with me, and it said that one of Abba’s writers believed that a really good song needed five hooks.

Since then I’ve listened to very popular music with this in mind.

Dancing Queen has the chorus, the ‘You can dance, you can jive, having the time of your life’ bit, the ‘la, la, la,’ bit it starts with, catchy verses and ‘See that girl, watch that scene, digging the dancing queen’.

We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together has ‘You go talk to your friends, talk to my friends, talk to me’, the little musical riff at the very start, the chorus, the verses, ‘Oooh, oooh, oooh, we called it off again last night’ and ‘this time, I’m telling you, I’m telling you’ (that’s six).

Gold Digger (apparently the only massive hit in a minor key) has ‘She take my money…’, ‘I ain’t sayin’ she a Gold Digger, but she ain’t messin’ with no broke niggas’, ‘get down girl, go ‘head , get down’, the verses, and the staccato horn/keyboard bit behind ‘to a Benz out of a Datsun’.

Someone Like You has the piano intro, the verses, the chorus, ‘I hate to turn up out of the blue…’ (the bridge) and ‘Nothing compares, no worries or cares…’ (the middle eight).

And Bohemian Rhapsody has them coming out of its ears.

I thought that was interesting because we just think of a song as being catchy without even realising why, or what’s behind that. Also, I think many of us come up with one hook on projects that will never become great unless they have more than that. For example, I once worked on a campaign with Paul Belford where he was making the visual side different for each execution but always with the same line. At some point I think he suggested that for the campaign to be great it would need a different line each time. For whatever reason we left it with the single line and sure enough, it could have been better.

I also have occasional conversations with people where they have a great idea for a plot and don’t know what to do from there, or they want to know if there is a demand for initial ideas without the development that makes them into scripts or books. I’d say that a book requires hundreds of hooks, from the first idea to every page that develops it. A song is only five minutes long but a film is two hours and a book often lasts a week or so, and that entire time needs to be filled with enough hooks to keep the viewer or reader gripped.

I can explain this in the context of the novel I’m currently writing. The story involves a man who goes back in time and lives his life again with the thoughts he has as a thirty-eight-year-old. The idea is interesting, but I’ve now explored it so much (110,000 words) that I’ve found many more hooks that go beyond that initial concept. In fact, I’d say that the sentence that describes the book is one of the least good ideas in it. It feels familiar and people talk about that kind of thing all the time, but in looking for the new hooks I’ve discovered what that story really needs to be about and effectively I restarted the plot at the 70,000 word mark. It might turn out great; it might not, but I’m now thinking up hooks that have almost made me forget the initial one.

Does your work have all the hooks it needs? If not, what are you going to do about it?

Here are some things you may not know about this blog:

1. I get a lot of spam. I don’t know how the spambots work out what to do, but when I check my comments approval page there are always a few that have been added to random very old posts. They often say something very nice about the blog or offer a piece of advice, then I look to the left and see that they’re from ‘men’s cashmere scarf’ or ‘X-Box 360’. The most recent example is from esteemed luggage superstar, Louis Vuitton, and says: ‘You made some decent points there. I checked on the web to learn more about the issue and found most individuals will go along with your views on this web site’. Odd, really, as I would imagine Mr. Vuitton wouldn’t expect the readers of this blog to give a toss about all that. Anyway, I’ve hidden thousands of these things over the years, but I still find them strangely endearing.

2. I’ve run out of advertising things to say and I don’t care. When I was an angrier, younger man I could dip my quill in the gallons of bile my stomach produced and rattle off 1000 words about thievery, laziness, racism or something similar. Alas, the well is now far drier, hence the posts about morality and Jesus. I just fancy having a big cyberchat with some quite intelligent people, so if something interesting occurs to me I might see if it hits the spot with a few of you. It helps pass the odd Monday, anyway.

3. This week I was asked why I write ITIABTWC. Well, see number 2, but also I like to keep up the discipline of cranking out words. It’s a muscle that can certainly atrophy, so why the hell not? If I want to write it and you want to read it let’s leave it at that, eh? Also related to this subject is the regularity with which I consider abandoning it, but those thoughts never become that serious. Let’s grow old together, you and I, whoever you are, even the monstrous perverts and those of you who read The Daily Mail.

4. I love it when there’s an ad to put up. Covers a day nicely and ensures a good bunch of comments. Do send them along if you fancy throwing them to some fellow creatives.

5. I put the weeeeekkekndnndnndndn email together during the week, adding to it as funny shit appears on my journey through the internet. Some people send me stuff (thanks, P, G, S etc.), but otherwise I just put up the best stuff from Twitter (thanks, J) and my Facebook friends. There is a bit of method to it, in that I don’t put up things that have already been wiped across every corner of the web (so no Kai the hitchhiker last Friday), but I’m just keen to share anything I enjoy in the hope that it also brightens up your day. Feel free to send contributions to bwmkay@gmail.com, but don’t get offended if I don’t choose them; often I already have lots of links, so I’ll start culling the 7/10 ones if I can replace them with 8s.

6. Sort of on that subject: I don’t like to put friends’ ads up unless they’re unequivocally amazing. If they’re just 9/10 they’re bound to get some shitty comments that I don’t want to be indirectly responsible for. Also, I do feel a strong urge to be ‘honest’, putting up pretty much all comments that come my way (unless they’re personally rude about me, in which case I’ll just change the comment  to make it about you and the loose morals of your female relatives).

7. About 2000-3000 people read the blog each day. I very rarely check my stats and I have little idea of who the readers are, although it’s a pretty fair bet that 90% are advertising creatives, mainly based in the UK, and include a lot of CDs. I think that’s as much a consequence of the lack of similar content out there as it is of the quality of the writing (what an ironically awful sentence). I’m surprised more people haven’t done it, but it does take up a decent chunk of the week. I just happen to find that the pros considerably outweigh the cons.

8. I often come back during the day and check my grammar/spelling etc. All mistakes horrify and shame me. Apologies in advance for any that you might find in future.

9. Finally, some people ask what the name is all about. Well, Christmas is the best thing ever, so if this amazing experience is a mere blog, then where does that leave Christmas in the order of things? Lower down. Does that make sense?

If you have any other questions I’d be delighted to answer them in the comments section. If your inquisitiveness has been satiated, great. If you’re just passing 9:17 to 9:20 on Monday morning in as undemanding a manner as possible, thanks for stopping by.

The useless web (thanks, A).

Behind the scenes filming The Shining (thanks, V):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsKKwPXCjpc&feature=player_embedded

…and a slightly different version of that:

Apple designs that never came to be.

Jamie Oliver’s ‘Cookin’ With’ sleevenotes (thanks, R).

George Lucas responds to the Death Star construction question (thanks, G):

It’s incredible what snake venom does to blood:

Jimmy Savile megamix (thanks, J).

Let’s kill the hater:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1tqWLKMN1Mk#!

Amazing original film posters.

Equally amazing shots of tulip fields (thanks, J).

Man dresses up as Facebook pictures and tries to friend the people (thanks, G).

Nigerian men tattoo their lips pink:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trqdYTtx6XI

I think it joins that small group of McDonald’s ads that is much more powerful for slipping the golden arches in at the end of a well-observed slice of British life.

Lots of people across the country will recognise the situation, so it has to be played perfectly to make it work.

I’d say they’ve got it pretty much spot-on.

(thanks, G.)

(Thanks, D.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sillEgUHGC4

Alas, it’s a massive rip-off.

It’s not ‘inspired by’ or taking a bit of something here and adding it to a bit of something there.

It’s exactly what the Arkansas Farm Bureau did, only with a massive car brand stuck on the end.

Wankers.