T’is the season of Christmas parties. OK, this year, subdued Christmas parties, but the “be careful on the road” message still applies.
Twenty years ago, the transport accident commission of Australia created its first television safety campaign. The video below is an edit of 20 years of campaigns. Be warned if you thought that the “The Faster the Speed, the Bigger the Mess” advert for the Republic and Northern Ireland was bad, 20 years worth will have you in tears.
As we all know, the future was supposed to be full of flying cars, and that simply didn’t happen.
Maybe they were too busy thinking “jet cars” to think “sail boats that fly”.
Industrial designer Damien Grossemydesigned a hypoththetical flying electric vehicle for Renault that is simply beautiful. The “Zep’lin” has a mostly vertical structure, a large part of which can be covered with solar panels, that resembles the offspring of a seed pod and a sail boat. Its actually possible to imagine that this is a genetically engineered type of maple until you see the elegant rudder / engine combination. True, I don’t see this doing a tight turning circle, and I’m not too sure how it would perform in a high wind take off to work, but it needs no dedicated infrastructure to land.
To park might be another matter.
And I wanna try it out.
It sails rather than powers from one location to another. The promotional video implies a potential around the world Zep’lin race for rich playboys. Which, if the design works, is not as infeasible as an around the world yacht race. So he has his early adopters identified, and can use their attention seeking antics to market the thing while their payments pay for the development of a commuter model.
And they look beautiful.
You may need to click through to see the embedded video.
Apparently the solar panels can tilt toward the sun, but looking at more of the designs I think its the solar equivalent of tacking, getting power in the sail from one angle, while traveling in another.
Renault spent 2 months designing a scale model, and we’ll see if it eventually becomes a working design.
I will admit that the idea hit me while watching the video below. Disney has its Disney Princesses line. Well what about those little girls and boys not interested in being kind and nice (and trust me, its a lot of people). Those girls will eventually grow out (mostly at least) of their princess stage. Boys grow out of their Power Ranger phase (says the guy still in his Transformers phase from childhood). Can we have the Disney Bad Girls.
Think about it. Some girls want more spice with their sugar.
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Essentially a sub set of the Disney Villains grouping (rarely used as a group). Name-checking Queen Grimhilde (the Queen in Snow White), Anastasia Tremaine (the kinder of the Ugly Sisters from Cinderella in the video), Maleficent (the wicked fairy godmother in Sleeping Beauty), Ursula (the Sea Witch in The Little Mermaid), Cruella de Vil (from The Hundred and One Dalmatians) and Madame Medusa (from The Rescuers).
The main problem with the female villains in the Disney movies is that they are almost all fully grown women. Compare this to the young princesses or the fairies. Is it hard for little girls to cast themselves as fully grown? Probably not. Admittedly in the case of stepmothers (the Queen or Lady Tremaine) it makes sense, Cruella is a well known character, and Maleficent is a major character in the Disney parades. But small changes can be made, just as happened with the princesses.
A shape changing Ursula could look like the queen she is in a black gown (with 6 frills or pleats on the way down the black dress to hide the fact that she is actually an octopus). Come to think of it, octopi can change shape themselves, as does the character. The major change for the character would be to have her walking out of water. Madame Medusa could easily be changed (she isn’t that well known) but a more flattering dress and stockings is all that’s needed. As for the Ugly Sister, she is already the same age as Cinderella if not a bit younger.
I’m sure that most of the princess stock could be adapted to the colour scheme of the “bad girls”, and Grimhilde or Maleficent would be good halloween costumes. Imagine a Ursula duvet cover or bedspread available with matching tentacle beanbags. And given the span of time-lines available (medieval witch queens and other magic users (yes, young Miss Tremaine gets a wand at some point) jumping to the 1930s and 1960s) there are more options available.
Unlike the princesses (who never really seem to acknowledge each other) have the bad girls working together. Maybe in a modern setting. Yes its a little bit Fables, but being bad can be just as much fun in the now, as well as in the past.
What happens when you mix footage of news anchors with the voice track of old B-movies? (with a bit of “stunt mouth” action thrown in to avoid lip syncing problems)?
The “cards” are actually the beermats used in promotion of the Smirnoff Mule drink. They look very distinctive. Personally they remind me of the traveling carnies that cross the US Midwest during the Great Depression the 1930s.
Probably not the intention of the drink makers (I’m sure they were after the roaring 1920s or the early 1940s, but still).
Their advertising is all circus based, as the TV advert embedded video below shows.
I’m not sure why, but I suspect part of it is to stand out from the other name of the drink, the “Moscow Mule”. Russia has great Circuses, but this way its an implied link rather than a direct one.
And you can have a lot of fun with a circus.
Now, I have to ask. Are photos of, well, photos a bit of a cop out?
On Wednesday a group of bloggers arrived, by invitation to a PR company’s headquarters. There was, pizza, information and, naturally Budweiser for it was because of Bud we were there. (There was also coffee, for geeks need caffeine too).
There is also an Irish only contest linked to the advert, more information down below.
There we were shown the Ireland only Budweiser Lyrics advert which is tied in with to the first use of the Sky green button feature in Ireland. I’m slightly confused by the green button (and hoping to get comments on it). Depending on where you read, pressing the green button allows for content (usually a video) to be downloaded in the background and viewed at a later date, much like the XBox 360 live videos and trailers. (Indeed the first use of this was last week in the UK where it was used for the Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince trailer). I’ve also read that it downloads the content to be viewed at a particular scheduled time. The “twice a day” bit is throwing me. Do you have only 2 times of the day to watch it, or do the downloads only happen between certain hours?
I’m wondering how, and how much this will be used. I can understand someone wanting to get the full (usually longer than 30 seconds) movie trailer or a music video advertised as part of an album, but I seriously wonder just how many people will download the “making off” of an advert once the novelty has worn off.
On a side note, Diageo, if you’re reading, given the iconic nature of the Guinness adverts, and your 250 anniversary celebration of showing the old adverts, put together a downloadable package for the differing advert histories you are collection. I can see that selling in the storehouse too.
Having said that, the creation of this advert is actually interesting. Filmed off the side of the elevated trains in Chicago it offers you an unusual view of the city, and creative interpretations of the lyrics of the Beatles song “All Together Now”. The timing involved is impressive, even more so when you learn that to re-shoot a scene involved the train having to loop around sections of the track.
And now for the advert…
As you can see, you sort of want to see it again to get all the lyrics.
I’m waiting for the spoofs.
But the contest may prevent those for a little while. You see, the makers,of the advert want you to enter your own versions. The advert above was put together using 30 different scenes, each one ties with a line of lyrics in “All Together Now”. The challenge is: create another version of a line of the song. Eventually (if there are enough clips of good quality) another, user generated version of the ad will be created and released on an unsuspecting world. Check out the alltogethernow.ie website, and pick a line from the song.
Tip: find out which are the least used lines, gives you a better chance of being picked.
The first 100 people to upload their clip to the site will win a case of Budweiser. The closing date for video entries is the 15th August 2009.
So get your cameras and renderers ready…
take care,
Will Knott
Full disclosure: I had 2 cups of coffee, about half a large pizza and a UBS stick with a copy of the advert and descriptions on it. And met a few interesting people too.
I got a late enough phone call telling me that it seemed that Michael Jackson had died. The vagueness of the call and the fact that there was a panicked family search on for keys (if you’ve met the family in panic mode you will have heard how loud panic is) I asked if I could call back.
Keys found, call made.
Yup he’s dead.
I’ll admit that his death will not bring out non-existent stories about being a fan for years or the extreme sadness felt. I didn’t know him, as much as I didn’t know Farrah Fawcett. I knew of them, but I didn’t know them. I sort of feel sorry for their families who I don’t know.
If it weren’t for the video I wouldn’t believe that this story was true.
A week old puppy gets flushed down the toilet in North London. The fire brigade was called, but they couldn’t get down the narrow drains. So Dynorod got a call.
They used their CCTV system to find the puppy in the sewerage system(after telling all the neighbours to not flush for obvious reasons). Eventually they found the puppy, still alive and pushed the little tyke to the nearest manhole and in to the waiting arms of the fire brigade.
The puppy is alive and well, and Dynorod have an amazing story, with a video. According to the audio they did this free of charge, so I hope the video goes viral for them.
