If This Is A Blog Then What's Christmas?

Lady poos self while twerking (thanks, J):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eANZZGjke8

Alan Partridge Lorem Ipsum (thanks, T).

The town of Twin Peaks sculpted in clay (thanks, T).

Ker-azee Chinese music video (thanks, J):

Data maps of London (thanks, D).

Japanese clothing with random English words (thanks, P).

Silhouettes in movies:

http://vimeo.com/112001790

Delightful street driving in LA:

Wonderful spotter of Christmas ad cliches (thanks, J).

Elizabethan super heroes.

Excellent Ferguson animation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ixRx4kOBPU

Seinfeld and Wale talk ‘the list’:

Do viral life hacks actually work?

Very funny Key and Peele sketch.

You need a Smart Pipe:

Here’s the article on screenwriting that sentence came from.

I’ve had a few chats with people who (think they) have had a great idea for a script and asked me (as if I’d really know) if there was some kind of market for those ideas. ‘Well’, I would generally begin, ‘No. No there isn’t.’

I think this situation exists in all areas of art (unless, as the article continues, you have already proven yourself to the extent that someone would believe you could execute seven shades of shit out of an interesting idea). This is because the execution is where the road meets the rubber. I’m fond of explaining the plot of my novel to people, and when they respond in a way that suggests they’re unsure such a story would be worthy of publication by Penguin I point out that ‘Dinosaurs run amock when they’re brought back to life on a remote island’ would not necessarily seem like a great plot until it was executed brilliantly by Michael Crichton.

In the screenwriting world a premium is placed on the ability to produce a plot that can generate a good logline, that is a distillation of the concept to a couple of appealing sentences. Yes, that can indeed be very helpful, but it’s about 2% of what someone really wants to buy. Either it’s the key to getting a producer/director/rich bloke to read the full script, or it’s a way of getting someone interested enough to pay you to write the full script. On its own it’s as valuable as a dead dog’s cock.

So have a great idea, but don’t start celebrating until you’ve done the months of work required to execute it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiCtWX7J69I&feature=youtu.be

Mark Fenske is a bit of an ad legend over in the States.

Fortunately for you he’s kindly written a blog with lots of great advice.

And here are his 14 anti-laws of advertising.

The things there are no questions about: it’s beautifully made, affecting, gloriously shot and rather moving.

The thing there is definitely a question about: should a large corporation use a commemoration of World War One to sell Christmas pudding etc.?

The YouTube commenters generally say yes.

The Guardian says no.

But fuck them. The important thing is: what do I think?

Well, it’s not the first time Sainsbury’s has exploited celebrated British soldiers to sell mince pies (check out 3:04 here), and I did in fact express a degree of queasiness last year. So in the interests of being consistent and not hypocritical, I still feel a bit uncomfortable at the ‘use’ of that moment in WW1 to make some more money for a giant corporation.

Does the money for the Royal Legion mitigate things? Or is it just a way of Sainsbury’s deflecting possible negative opinions? In the end the old soldiers get some cash, but it’s a small fraction of what Sainsbury’s will make from running this ad. It’s almost as if they know they’ve jumped on the back of something a lot of people care about and feel a bit apologetic. Or a giant company that has responsibility to its unhappy shareholders is just really lovely. One of the two.

I dunno…

This stirs up so much shit in my head I might as well be on a bag of ketamine: WW1 exploitation; lovely, lovely Christmas; it might have been done by friends of mine; I’m writing this in a hotel room in Bangkok; should we even celebrate what soldiers did in wars?; I now love sticky rice and mango; corporate greed in 2014; PLAY THE PIPES OF PEEEEEEEEAAAAAACCCCEEEEEEE; what’s that lady doing with that ping pong ball?

I’m going to bed.

ICYMI, The best thing on the internets last week.

Shake It Off 1989 stylee (thanks, J):

Drop It Like It’s Hot with no music (thanks, D):

Excellent B&W photography.

Art in film (thanks, J).

Random Darknet shopper (thanks, T).

Nic Cage on classic rap album covers (thanks, J).

Quite, quite wonderful (watch to the end; thanks, J):

What’s it like to be a cinematographer? (thanks, G.):

Hidden secrets in Fight Club (thanks, J).

72 great things.

There’s plenty to agree/disagree with in this very long year-old blog post. 

I can’t be arsed to go through the whole thing, so you’re on your own.

All I can say for sure is that a couple of the comic strips are pretty funny and it’ll kill 15 minutes on the lav.

Here’s a great article from ‘Hey Whipple’ author Luke Sullivan on what makes a great CD. There are many wonderful pearls to extract, but I wanted to bring up one point that Luke hammers home towards the end:

Another thing I wish I’d heard less of when I was a young creative?

It usually comes during a creative meeting. Someone in the back of room puts down their donut and says, “Well, if I could just be the devil’s advocate here for a sec….”

Dude, shut up.

Ideas are fragile. The bubble can pop so easily. Instead of being the devil’s advocate, why not be the angel’s advocate? Don’t just blurt out what you hate about something. Not liking stuff is easy. Anyone can do it. It’s harder to find out what’sgood about the idea. The trick is finding that little coal and then blowin’ on it till it’s flame.

I forget where I read this quotation from writing coach Jay O’Callahan, but it went like this: “It is strange that, in our culture, we are trained to look for weaknesses. When I work with people, they are often surprised when I point out the wonderful crucial details – the parts that are alive.” He went on to suggest, “If our eyes are always looking for weakness, we begin to lose our intuition to notice beauty.”

I found this very same advice from a venture capitalist, David Sze of Greylock Partners: “Anyone can tell you why something’s going to fail. The real trick is to find out why something will succeed.”

There is, of course, much to agree with here. It is indeed the CD’s job to spot diamonds, whether they be in the rough or glinting right in front of your face. However, I just want to explore in greater detail what a CD should do when faced with an idea that might not fly in its current form…

‘The trick is finding that little coal and then blowin’ on it till it’s flame.’ Absolutely, but what if there is no little coal? Or what if the coal would require a great deal of blowing to reach a flame that’s either going to be very small or much smaller than another flame you (the team) have ignited? I think it’s also the CD’s job to make the call of when it’s not worth pursuing a certain idea because there are limited time resources and one (or more) of your other ideas is better. That’s not to say a CD shouldn’t be positive if there is positivity to be found, but just as you sometimes have to scrape away the rough to expose the diamond, you also have to tell the team to stop digging if they have accidentally found themselves in an underground cubic zirconia lab.

Luke also says ‘when you eat a turd, don’t nibble’, and I’d say, both as a creative and a CD, the desperate search for something worth pursuing in an idea that needs to die is more damaging, in terms of wasted hope and effort, than a quick bullet to the back of the head.

There isn’t always something good in every idea (and by ‘good’ I mean ‘worth pursuing in the context of the other work’), and telling people there is will only lead to heartache on both sides. On the flip side, Luke is right, that if there’s a faint glow that looks like it could become a forest fire then blow on that puppy like a motherfucker. But don’t apply those electric heart paddles to a corpse.

Have I mixed enough metaphors?

Here’s an article on that very subject (indeed, with that very title) from Anomaly ECD Alex Holder in The Guardian.

First off, Alex is a friend of mine, and I’ve already taken my hat off to her feminist efforts.

So can advertising and feminism ever get along?

Unless I’ve missed the point, Alex argues that by compromising her feminist principles in some situations she is placed in a more advantageous position to make greater strides elsewhere. Fair enough. An unemployed Alex, or one who works in a less persuasive industry, might do little or nothing for the advancement of feminism. We’ll never know for sure, but I can see how that might make sense, after all we have some evidence to back up her claim.

So do the ends justify the means?

Only you can decide…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJYwfEI4Fyo

According to the Guardian:

Ray Shaughnessy, creative director at Wieden + Kennedy, the ad agency behind the campaign, said: “This year’s campaign is an important step change for Tesco. They are doing all sorts of unexpected things to help people have a brilliant Christmas. It won’t just be about them making sure you get the best turkey on the table; it will be about making sure that people feel Christmassy too.”

‘It will be about making sure that people feel Christmassy, too.’ (My added comma. I would also have removed ‘that’.)

What an ‘important step change’.

What did they do last year? Use a calypso for the soundtrack? Create a story around the Easter Bunny? Set the ad in North Korea?

Nope. They made sure people felt Christmassy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_4AOpcBwZ4

Slightly odd press releases aside, will it rescue Tesco from its current doldrums? Well, sorry to everyone involved, but as we say in my neck of the woods, this ain’t gonna move the needle.

It’s so generic that it could be for anyone from Boots to Morrisons, and considering its explicit aim, it doesn’t even make me feel that Christmassy. Perhaps a heavily disguised version of ‘What A Feeling’ wasn’t the best choice of track. The sentiment is fine (if enough people can tell what it is), but it’s got nowt to do with Christmas.

‘It’s Christmas, and we’re here to help, every step of the way’, they claim. Great, I’d like some sausages devoid of horsemeat, accounting devoid of lies and a workforce that isn’t paid on zero hours contracts, please. And if you can pay your suppliers fairly, that would also be a bonus.

I dunno. It seems like a strange move all round: first, it doesn’t feel like the kind of thing W&K would do, and second, it’s a timid move for a broken giant that needs boldness and strength.

Right, that’s enough about Christmas. I’m sitting in the 29-degree heat of Singapore, so it’s time for a trip to Raffles for a dirty martini. When I get back I’d love to know what you think.