Have you got a bear in your freezer?

Among the usual dross, trying to sell me things I don't want; trying to persuade me that their vision for my life is much more desirable that what I have and I could have it if I just bought their product; there are a series of adverts for a frozen food company that make me smile every time they air and they feature a slightly disturbing polar bear.



Things are fine here. Just very very busy at work and my spare time has mostly been split between chores and having a big clear out and tidy (I have too much junk) and working on wedding photos and compiling a photobook for the bride and groom as a gift. I'm very pleased with how it looks and can't wait to see the final printed version myself.

Bring on the trumpets! Apparently.

Thanks to all those who stopped by and left well wishes. I can honestly say I haven't felt so awfully ill in a long looooong time. I am much improved though still far from well, weak as a kitten and still having difficulty breathing properly and that darned cough is still here. I've been coughing for over a month now and the novelty has worn off somewhat shall we say. Enough for me to go back to the doctors next week if needs be despite really hating going anywhere near anything medical. And this time I will refuse to see Dr. Deaf if they give me an appointment with him.

Anyway, I am still working on a post from my trip to Edinburgh (there will be a couple eventually, I promise), but in the meantime I thought I would leave you with this little video. It's an advert for some very tasty natural sweeties that have recently been launched in the UK. It just tickled me is all. The humour is right off the wall and right up my alley :)

Dominoes

I am still as busy as before, in fact even more so now as I spent most of the weekend feeling very poorly and so didn't achieve as much as I needed to. All this means very little time left for fun stuff like blogging and I am in danger of becoming dull I think due to this work/play imbalance.

So, just a minute post from me then: It's a bit like minute steak, it doesn't take long to do. The clip below is of another advert that is currently running here in the UK that I think is very clever (though I prefer the bunnies in the post below). It is apparently the most expensive Guinness advert made to date and was directed by Nicolai Fuglsig of the Sony Bravia 'Balls' fame. The advert was shot on location in a remote side village called Iruya, in the Salta region of northern Argentina, with a population of around 1,000 people and is a celebration of community spirit set around a huge scale domino toppling project which included toppling: 6,000 dominoes, 10,000 books, 400 tyres, 75 mirrors, 50 fridges, 45 wardrobes and 6 cars.

Enjoy and I will hopefully find a moment to visit each of you soon.

More Colour

This is my life at the moment:

• Work
• Study
• More work
• Deadlines
  

My boss has been ill for a while now and I have had to take on much of his work. All this at the same time as many of my project deadlines have been compressed and shifted left by a senior manager. Right about now I also have a deadline for my MBA and no idea what to write as it is meant to be work based and I am too busy doing actual work. All this has meant that blogging has taken a bit of a back seat so I apologise as I haven't been able to visit my blog friends as often as I would like to, and I haven't posted all week either. This pattern is liable to continue for a couple of weeks or so and then oh my gawd I have to start thinking about Christmas at some point!!! (Takes a moment to panic). Anyway, I will pop round when I can. I haven't forgotten.

Anyway, I thought you might like this commercial that I saw the other day. It was for the Sony Bravia TV. I posted about one of their adverts before *here*. You remember the one with all the bouncy balls in San Francisco? I just love their adverts. They are always so creative and colourful. They are art. This time art involving rabbits and NYC, 40 animators, 2.5 tons of plasticine and 3 weeks of shooting. What do you think?

The Cog

My insurance saga goes on. I am too stressed and angry to write about it though. It seems that between them, the insurers and the motor company contracted by them to change my locks cannot get anything right. I'm swimming in treacle folks. I will certainly be making a formal complaint and I will be looking for other quotes when the policy needs to be renewed.

Anyway, I need to get on with my studies as I have soooo much to get done so I thought I would leave you with a car advert. It is called 'The Cog' and was made for Honda. No computer graphics are involved and it took 606 shots to get it just right and quite some time to set it up. I think it is very clever and considering what is going on in my world at the moment, I just love the irony of the last line of the ad!

Sony get Tango'd

I found the following clip on the internet and it made me grin. A lot.

If you have visited my blog in the last few days then you will have seen an advert for Sony Bravia LCD televisions that I posted (if you haven't seen it then it's well worth a viewing - see the post titled 'Colour. Like no other' and if you are interested in how they did it or don't believe that the balls were real then see the post before this one).

Anyway, there has long been an advertising campaign in the UK for Tango fizzy drinks with the slogans 'You know when you've been Tango'd' and 'The hit of the whole fruit' and they have made their own version of the Sony advert to promote their drink 'Tango Clear Bravo' (see the link?). Watch the real ad first if you've never seen it and then you will apreciate how clever the makers of this ad have been in making their spoof version. Enjoy :0)

Behind the Bouncing Balls

I thought you might be interested in seeing this little clip about the making of the Sony Bravia advert(see previous post). When I first saw this commercial, like some of you, I thought that many of the balls must have been produced using CGI but apparently they are ALL real. The makers thought it was important to use real balls and not 'cheat' so they basically bought up as much of the stock as they could in the US and ended up letting 250,000 of these colourful balls bounce through San Francisco!

The footage on the clip below is quite informative (just ignore the marketing bit at the front - I'm not trying to work for Sony!!). They used 23 camera men instead of the usual 4 in order to capture the live action as it happened from different angles and locations on the road. It seems you don't get too many chances to capture hurling that many balls down a hill at once. It's quite funny as it shows the crew cowering behind riot shields as they are bombarded with bouncing balls. I love seeing behind the scenes stuff. It always reminds me of my time working behind the scenes in theatre.

Colour. Like no other.

This was the slogan Sony used to launch their Bravia LCD television. When I first saw this advert I was at my parents and I remember very clearly that we all stopped one after the other and just watched it. Trust me, when my family is together, having everyone go quiet is pretty unusual!

Anyway, I remember thinking what a clever and simple idea it was. Apparently they used 250,000 rubber balls that were all colours of the rainbow and filmed them bouncing down the hill in San Francisco. Of course many people would recognise the main street as Lombard Street which is where the famous car chase in the movie Bullitt took place (with green VW Beetle)!

The cinematography and editing are fantastic. The soundtrack for the advert is also a wonderful choice. It is a song called 'Heartbeats' by Jose Gonzalez and is beautiful to listen to. The advert reminds me of warm summer days and of being a child (I used to have one of these balls and I was always losing it on the roof or somewhere when it bounced out of control!). Whenever I see this advert it always makes me smile and feel happy. I hope it has the same effect on you.