Darren aronofsky’s anti-meth ads

Darren Aronofsky, director of Black Swan, has just directed a new anti-meth campaign.

Although I’m not sure of its intention (I think it’s to put non-meth addicts off trying the drug rather than an attempt to help current addicts see the error of their ways) I think they could have a good chance of succeeding.

Back in the 1980s, scenes like these certainly scared me off heroin:

So I’d imagine that these could certainly have the same effect (by the way, these are quite disturbing, particularly the first and second clips. Don’t say I didn’t warn you; thanks, B):

(For a real laugh, imagine you are the kid on the bed and your most hated client is the bearded man.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12bvBHG6ChM&feature=player_embedded

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyxn1ol6kNI&feature=player_embedded

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



This ad depresses the hell out of me

Sorry, but for so many people Christmas is already a guilt-ridden consumerist nightmare that they can’t hope to afford.

This ad, with its naked smashing of those very buttons with a titanium sledgehammer, makes me feel a little bit sick.



New John Lewis Christmas ad

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

Another impeccably crafted slice of middle-class GB.

It’s just unfortunate what happened to the dog, a theory compounded by this REAL version of the ad:



weekend

Awkward family pet photos (thanks, J).

Movie poster trends (includes the excellent phrase ‘High likelihood of suck’. Thanks, A).

Hitchcock on the art of cinematic tension (thanks, P):

George C. Scott watches the trailer for the new Adam Sandler movie (thanks, N):

Eating insects (thanks, P):

The world’s most expensive photo (thanks, J).

Don’t embarrass yourself by sending your friends internet links they’ve already seen (thanks, D).

London Olympic posters, some very good (thanks, D).

Biggest wave ever surfed (thanks, P):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nd2jtwviyC8&feature=youtu.be

Is the finger really the future of interactivity? (Thanks, A.)



Phil Bowker

When I was working at 4 Creative last year they gave me a brief to do a poster for a new show called Phone Shop.

My expectations were low, but I ended up watching the pilot three times, then went on to become a big fan of the whole series (best clip here).

Well, series two is about to start (Thurs, 10pm, E4) and by a strange coincidence my friend Stephen Gash has just signed Phil Bowker, its writer, producer, creator and director, to QI Commercials (reel here). This has given me the wonderful opportunity to ask Phil a few questions:

What research did you do to get into the high street/phone shop world?
I personally spent a lot of time just hanging around and watching the High Street and its goings on – also like most people I worked in retail when I was younger so had that insider knowledge plus our associate producer, Jon Macqueen put together an incredibly in depth dossier on the the world of mobile phone stores.
How much do the cast contribute to the scripts?
I’ve worked on many series where either the cast contribute – and don’t get recognition for it or they’re not allowed to change a single word of the text and when you’re working with such brilliant actors who know their characters inside out it seems ridiculous that a) they’re not allowed to contribute and b) that they don’t get a credit for generating material.  We’ve hit on a lovely system where we get time to workshop, so I’ll bring scripts to the table and then we’ll break them down, stand them up, act them out and improvise elements. We shoot these rough scenes (in the basement at Talkback) and then watch them back in the room, noting what we like, what works and what needs work – I guess it’s like a version of the American table writing system but with actors as opposed to writers.
Do you have a lot of rehearsal time?
Most sitcoms will have a week or two at most which precludes you from actually rehearsing everything you need to – you then find yourself in the situation where you’re having to rehearse on set before you shoot – it’s mental.  I figured that if we moved that element nearer to the front end of the process  a) we’d save money as we don’t have a crew of 20/30 people hanging around (and the attendant pressures that it puts on everyone) waiting while you figure out why your scene isn’t working versus the more attractive option of paying six actors to come in and muck around for a day – where you can iron out your problems in advance so that when you get onto set not only are you ready to go with stuff that you know works , you’re also in the lovely position of being able to add stuff on the day.
What comedy do you most admire?
Seinfeld for its plotting. 30 Rock for its density.
Do you want to do good ads or just take Cillit Bang’s cash and run?
I’ve got too much at stake to make bad ads!
Did you come up with ‘a owl’ or was it improvised?
The ‘Owl’ was based on a girl that I saw walking through Bromley. She had an Owl tattooed on her back with these big staring, accusatory eyes and I thought why the fuck would you do that?  What must be that like for her bloke? Maybe he’s getting romantic, kissing her neck and all that and then gets dead eyed by a big fuck off owl….. so, I plotted around that idea and drafted scenes.  Andy and Jav being as brilliant as they are started playing with it in the workshop and it led to A Owl? A Owl. A Owl? sequence.
Any other TV shows in the works?
Very much so. I’m hoping that we’ll hear soon about Phoneshop 3 and I really want to do a Razz Prince spin off with Kayvan Novak. – The man is a true genius and that’s a word that’s horribly overused but entirely accurate when describing him.  I’m also working on a project with David Earl called Cumbo. If you’ve got a mo – have a look at this -David has a videoblog for Cumbo, it’s hilarious….
What’s the best thing about writing and directing your own TV show?
2 Dinners.
How did you team up with Ricky Gervais?
The first telly job I did was a thing in 1997 called the jim tavare show – I knew steve merchant through having worked together on a BBC2 show, Comedy Nation and I  was looking for writers for Tavare.  i asked Steve if he wanted to come and have a chat about doing some stuff for us and he said yes, can I bring my mate, ricky? he’s never done anything before but he’s brilliant….. we’ve been mates ever since then and I asked him to cast his eye over my first script for PhoneShop as I didn’t want people to think (esp because we had an older boss) that we were trying to do an office style thing.
Finally, what are your favourite ads?
I want an ad to elicit a laugh. I want to laugh out loud when I see an ad.  A knowing smile isn’t good enough for me. When I used to write ads for radio in my early 20’s, my boss used to drum into us if  you want people to their take time and effort to listen to your message, the least you can do is to entertain them. And I still stand by that. So the ads for me that have stood out over the years have tended to be the ones that made me laugh out loud….. When I was a kid I used to love the Cinzano campaigns with Leonard Rossiter and Joan Collins. Those and the Hamlet ads.  I loved the Boddingtons ads and the Peter Kay John Smith’s campaigns, the Barclaycard ads obviously and  more recently the Old Spice spots felt near perfect and although not strictly an ad the Kenny Powers KSwiss virals were top drawer.


Thanks Phil. And there’s a bonus point (in the weird quiz show that goes on in my head) for anyone who can tell me which star of Phone Shop has been in one of my ads.


Lovely lottery ad

How many lottery ads have we seen?

And how many have been really quite poor?

Well, just like Bag of Smiles, this one has decided to avoid the down and dirty crapola we usually see and instead bring a simple truth to life in a beautifully charming way.

(Thanks, L.)



David Abbott on independent bookshops

(Thanks, L.)

He’s right. There is something unusually appealing about a good independent bookshop. I suppose they are like calmer versions of independent record shops, which allow you to browse for the rare, the obscure and the forgotten.

It’s hard to resist the bargains and convenience of Amazon, but this is the point at which we have to understand that all our choices have consequences.

Perhaps you have no interest in preserving shops which provide a more expensive product that you actually have to go out and buy. Perhaps you’d like Amazon to grow even bigger so that it can sell even more products (houses? Cars? Pets?).

Neither path is right or wrong, but it’s good to be aware that the choice you make will cause the rise of something and the fall of something else.



LA

I’m in Los Angeles for a couple of weeks.

Over the years I’ve been here many times: I holidayed here as a kid, honeymooned here, shot here, my dad lives here and now the headquarters of the company for whom I work is here.

Lucky I like the place.

It’s an unusual city for many reasons, some of which contribute to its status as one of the most creative places in the world.

Its geographical location meant it was the last stop on the great American land-grab. As people moved further towards the Pacific, this was as far as they could go, so it was where the last American pioneers ended up. Interestingly, that position has remained as people continue to come here to make their fortune, and much else besides.

For those of you who haven’t been here, LA is not so much a city as an interconnected series of towns: Malibu, Santa Monica, Venice, Beverly Hills, Los Feliz, Silver Lake, Compton, Pasadena, Brentwood etc. are somewhat self contained, and people who live here tend to say that they are from one of these areas rather than the less specific ‘LA’. Most have their own administration, some have their own police force, but all have their own distinct character. Santa Monica, for example is much more upscale and straitlaced than its groovier southern neighbour, Venice; where Beverly Hills stops, West Hollywood begins and the giant houses and manicured lawns give way to a more decadent part of town; Pacific Palisades is very well off and can often be described as soulless, especially when compared to the laconic stretch of Malibu to the west.

Another feature of LA that took me years to grasp is the way it combines the urban and rural in one city. It’s by the sea, so much of it has the healthy, leisurely feeling that comes with that location, but then its vast spread of low buildings recedes into wild mountains that can be hiked or admired. When I say ‘wild’ I mean that finding coyotes and deer  roaming around back gardens is not an unusual occurrence. When I was over here getting married eleven years ago my wife and I decided to hike up to the Hollywood sign. On the way down we were confronted by a steadily growing pack of coyotes who didn’t seem quite as afraid of us as I’d have liked. We weren’t quite sure how to get back down without being eaten but as luck would have it a passing jogger suggested that throwing rocks at the coyotes would scare them off, then he continued up the hill. My wife and I welcomed the advice, but the idea of throwing rocks at animals didn’t really sit well with us, so we continued to be very British about it and watch the pack grow further until the jogger came back down. ‘Are you still here?’ he asked, picking up a rock and throwing it at the coyotes. They ran off and we made it back to the hotel unscathed.

In 2005 I shot a Wrigley’s ad there (actually, we shot it in Page, Arizona, but we did all the prep in LA). This was the shoot I’d been waiting the previous nine years of my career for: we spent a couple of weeks in the Sunset Marquis, whose bar was populated by people like Jon Voight and Brad Pitt, and when we weren’t working we were driving up to the wine country of Santa Ynez to follow the plot of Sideways. We also went to Six Flags Magic Mountain, a Lakers game and Matsuhisa, where Nobu himself was cooking (or at least walking about in his whites). Thanks, Wrigley’s. (My friend Hugh Todd has just returned from shooting there. The photo of him with Lemmy at the Sunset Marquis bar was no less impressive for being captioned ‘Lenny’. I think Hugh might have had one too many Um Bongos before typing.)

What else? Well, the weather is amazing, the food is often ridiculously good and the amount of space means that homes shops and offices are often much bigger than those in London (and relatively much cheaper: LA’s most expensive area is Manhattan Beach at $814 per square foot. Decent areas of London will set you back £1000 for the same amount of real estate).

But there are downsides: I’ve just enjoyed a quintessential London Autumn weekend: the streets are covered in the reassuring tea and coffee colours of fallen leaves, Guy Fawkes night left a cosy scent of burnt wood in the air and there was just enough of a chill to justify tea and crumpets. But none of this would really happen in LA. I was here last November and very much enjoyed the blue skies and 80-degree heat, but would that get monotonous? David Hockney seems to think so: he’s just returned to the north of England because he misses the seasons.

And I’m sure some of you are thinking that the entire place is populated by vapid airheads for whom botox and many hours of he gym are a way of life. You might also cite the lack of real art or culture as negative points. Perhaps the car-centric lifestyle puts you off. Well, you can argue for and against all those suggestions and ultimately whether you like any city is just another opinion.

But whether you warm to LA or not, it’s hard to think of it as boring. From David Lynch to The Doors, Frank Capra to Frank Lloyd Wright, Raymond Chandler to Raymond Carver, the place certainly breeds and attracts creativity, and that has to be something to be grateful for.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HO1OV5B_JDw



weekend

Michael Bay infographic (thanks, M).

Wayne Rooney is an excellent actor in this excellent ad:

The beauty of murmuration (thanks, P):

Saul Bass promo (thanks, P):

An hour of 80s and 90s visual wonder (thanks, P):

http://vimeo.com/29999445

William Gibson interview (thanks, P):

“I think with one exception I’ve never changed an opening sentence after a book was completed. […] It’s like that joke about the violin maker who was asked how he made a violin and answered that he started with a piece of wood and removed everything that wasn’t a violin.” do you take notes? “I take the position that if I can forget it, it couldn’t have been very good.”

How much does the internet weigh? (Thanks, P):

The cars of Dita Von Teese (thanks, P):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7cEkaS-HCA&feature=youtu.be

Women struggling to drink water (thanks, W).



Really rather wonderful promo for Soulwax

Beautifully conceived and executed.

(It’s only 83% SFW).