If This Is A Blog Then What's Christmas?

I’ve just read this article by Victoria Coren in The Guardian.

It suggests, somewhat disturbingly, that black women are much happier with themselves because mainstream media doesn’t represent them to quite the same extent that they do white women.

So all those pictures of Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis looking perfect are making white women feel bad about themselves, while the far lower number of perfect Tyra Banks and Halle Barry pictures means that black women don’t have the same opportunity to feel like shapeless old bags with no lives.

Shit.

If that’s true then if you’ve ever done an ad with a beautiful person in it, you’ve made someone (possibly lots of people) fundamentally unhappy.

I did an ad with a beautiful person back in ’99. She was a model. They tend to be beautiful. And there was that ad I did with Posh Spice. Is she beautiful? She was quite nice. We had her eating crisps in a bath. She was charming and chatty and ate M&S low fat crisps. I don’t remember much else about it. It was only a morning. Then we did that Walkers ad that never ran where we had to film Simon Cowell and the X-Factor people. He was also very pleasant. Really owned the room when he walked in, though. Smoked like a burnt chimney. Sharon Osbourne was fun. I once had to wait backstage with her and Ozzy while they set up a shoot for the BBC. She told all sorts of salacious stories, mainly involving Judy Finnegan and a bottle of booze. And then there was that time Ricky Gervais did a voiceover for me. Good guy. Even when the (American) client kept trying to get him to do a posher accent he was fine about it. Hang on, what were we talking about again…?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=f5ip2YRfu_A#!

UPDATE: ‘Ivor Script’ has just weighed in with this (37,000 views?????):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7PIgqvAS3So

The world’s dumbest QR codes (thanks, J).

Closely followed by pictures of people scanning QR codes (thanks, V).

The most astounding fact about the universe (thanks, P):

Rickroll your lecturer here, here and here (thanks, P).

Putin’ on the Ritz (thanks, J).

Billy Childish David Cameron posters (thanks, P):

http://www.thestoolpigeon.co.uk/features/gallery-billy-childish-cameron-posters.html

Unintentionally sexual sporting photos (thanks, J).

Howtothinkforyourself.co.uk (thanks, J).

Confrontation in movies (thanks, P):

http://vimeo.com/37865623

The pointless genius of the breadfish (thanks, G).

Who said it, Mitt Romney or Mr. Burns? (Thanks, D.)

Epic pee prank (thanks, P):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7TzPEYci_w&feature=youtu.be

I went to the Creative Circle Awards last night.

In many ways they were as an awards do should be: short on awards, long on drinking, chatting and listening to Paloma Faith.

Talking of whom, I was chatting to Mr. Mark Denton when a strikingly dressed and glamorous lady appeared behind him and proceeded to hover politely, waiting to interject. When she finally got her chance she said to Mark, ‘Hi, you’re Mark Denton. I’ve been told I have to come and talk to you’. I took this is as my cue to chat to Tony Cullingham, and it was only when said lady took to the stage an hour later that I discovered that she was indeed Paloma Faith. What did she say to Mark? I have no idea. Maybe he can enlighten us. (By the way, I have no idea who anyone famous is. I thought I nearly ran down Gok Wan on my bike this morning, but it wasn’t her.)

Anyway, the big winner on the night was this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSLOnR1s74o

Creative Circle seems to have binned the Platinum award in favour of a ‘Gold of Golds’, which was won by JL. Hats off to everyone involved. They played it twice. I cried twice. My son is very similar to the boy in the ad, and I’m a right whoopsie, so it was bound to happen.

I was also able to find out CC’s plans for education. Apparently I’m not supposed to talk about them yet, but if they accomplish half of what they’re planning I think we could see some real forward strides in the quality of young people coming through (not that the current lot are bad by any stretch of the imagination – I gave a crit to the third years from Lincoln this week, and they were excellent – but there’s always room for improvement).

I laughed out loud at the sellotape and machete bit.

And I know we say this many, many times, but look how brilliantly American ads get all the product crap in AND amuse you at the same time. It ain’t easy, but it’s clearly possible.

*That post title’s a bit inelegant. Sorry about that. I’ve got to rush off to a meeting.

I’m rather looking forward to it.

It’ll be full of advertising greats, with entertainment provided by Paloma Faith.

That’s good, but I’m even more pleased that it’s on at The Roundhouse, which is 10 minutes walk from my front door.

And my Water Water Everywhere ad has been shortlisted, so maybe some more people will see it and stop drinking so much bottled water.

If you haven’t seen it, here it is (please lean forward and give it a kiss for luck, even though there’s no such thing):

And rather than thank everyone involved again, here’s a link to my original post about it, which mentions every single one of them.

The explanation from Carling, who posted this on YouTube, goes thusly:

The Ad is set to a classic British track and tells the story of a couple getting ready for a night out. Our hero notices a Carling Chrome poster which causes him to start thinking about the refreshment of an ice cold Carling Chrome. We then rejoin the couple as they enter a bar to meet their friends, finally enjoying the refined refreshment of Carling Chrome.

Ummm…

1. I had to restart the ad six times before I stopped being confused about what was happening at the beginning. The shots of the record player and woman and man and all that… I thought I was supposed to be following a plot of some sort (the explanation says it’s a ‘story’ about the couple getting ready to go out) but there is no plot. It’s just some stuff. Some eighties black-and-white stuff that seems really quite odd. The man looks out of the window and notices, apparently for the first time, a massive fucking ad for Carling Chrome on the building across from his flat. Then we zoom into his eye* and see that this makes him think of a trippy water visual, then his girlfriend’s earrings made of beer, then some more beer, then his watch strap clasping his wrist in a really dynamic way. Then we see his face and he looks like he’s just inhaled some poppers. Then he and his girlfriend go to a bar and drink cheap lager out of bottles. Yes, even the model-hot girl. She looks like the type, doesn’t she? Cheap lager out of a bottle. In a ‘classy’ bar. And I wonder what they do for a living. I only ask because they have a reel-to-reel tape player in their living room. That’s unusual for a pair of bland yuppies who drink cheap lager out of bottles in a ‘classy’ bar. And although they have a reel-to-reel tape player, they like to listen to Mark Bolan on vinyl then drink cheap lager out of bottles in a ‘classy’ bar. You can see why I’m confused.

*2. Carling, Carling, Carling… we’ve been over this. When you made your last ad I clearly advised you not to zoom into a man’s pupil. Clearly. Come on. I don’t do this shit for the good of my health, you know.

3. One of the YouTube commenters says: ‘Off to steam clean my computer now I’ve soiled it by playing this piece of rancid, over-blown, mid-eighties crap’.

4. He then adds, ‘My apologies to the Eighties, it was never this s**t’.

5. But that means nothing. After all, another YT commenter says, ‘That music is a blatant rip off of Cigarettes and Alcohol by Oasis!!’

6. Is it refined? Really? Refined? I have yet to taste Carling Chrome, but I have my doubts.

I have to confess something: if I’ve posted an ad on here that’s longer than a minute, chances are I haven’t watched it all the way through. Life’s just too darn short, and if they haven’t got me interested enough to spend the extra 30-60 seconds with them, well, that’s job not done, innit?

But on that subject, I happily sat through the 155 seconds of the above. It’s a cute idea very nicely written and made.

However, it is a bit of a rip off of One Man And His Dog*.

*Joke

(Thanks, Anon.)

I just read an interview with Jurassic Park and Spider-Man writer David Koepp.

The interviewer asked why everyone thinks they are qualified to change screenwriting:

William Goldman said once that it’s because everybody knows the alphabet, so everybody thinks they can write. And, by extension, everybody thinks they can change a writer because, basically, anybody can write. And it’s the cheapest, easiest part of the production to change. You can even have more than one [writer] going at once, which isn’t the case with a DP or an actor or anybody else. The majority of the other jobs involve a tremendous amount of upheaval because the majority of the other jobs on a movie don’t start until production. But because the writer works in the netherworld of development, where time can expand infinitely, there is much less risk and turmoil in changing writers. And you can always go back to what you had. It’s the hell of too many choices.

Does any of that sound familiar from your own line of work?

UPDATE: here’s another excellent article on the subject (thanks, S).