3 ms·

They made and aired a 90 second ad which could have showed the entire process uncut, but they wasted a lot of the ad time with pointless filler of a little girl

They made and aired a 90 second ad which could have showed the entire process uncut, but they wasted a lot of the ad time with pointless filler of a little girl walking around and whatnot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7gxp9JKqDQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7gxp9JKqDQ

starkparker 3y ago
Because watching a copier from 1959 actually, literally take 40-odd seconds to make one copy in real time is boring, even if it was novel for the time. The ad's runtime took as much time as the copier, which was the point. Yeah, it's filler. They did a bunch of filler ads. The article ignores this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vJk_JVl9ME https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vJk_JVl9ME
AlbertCory 3y ago
So: you're critiquing the editing of a commercial from 60+ years ago? The point being... what?
- mcpackieh 3y ago
  Paraphrasing: > > > p1mrx: they should have show it working unedited > > Animats: commercials were very expensive [implying it was too expensive to run a commercial long enough to show that] > me: they _did_ run a sufficiently long commercial [the price of commercials was not the problem.]
masswerk 3y ago
Back then, it was an important aspect of ads that they were self-contained, pleasing stories. They sold products by becoming a cultural reference. Also, the rather abstract, but still charming scene (the girl walking by the chairs, and wandering on) not only adds to the development of the story, but also adds a style and production value, which not only separates the spot from what came before and what came after, but which – at the best of times – becomes also associated with the product. It's probably the essential pivot of the spot, establishing style, pace, and mood, and by this claim. Showing the copier running for a minute in real-time couldn't have achieved any of this, and it wouldn't have conveyed a great message either, when there were already wet process offset copiers running 50, maybe even 150 copies a minute. Also mind that these wet processes were much more complex, requiring specialist jobs, organisation, etc., something that the story, namely, "a little girl does it on her own in a minute", brings home.

starkparker 3y ago

Because watching a copier from 1959 actually, literally take 40-odd seconds to make one copy in real time is boring, even if it was novel for the time. The ad's runtime took as much time as the copier, which was the point. Yeah, it's filler. They did a bunch of filler ads. The article ignores this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vJk_JVl9ME https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vJk_JVl9ME

AlbertCory 3y ago

So: you're critiquing the editing of a commercial from 60+ years ago? The point being... what?

mcpackieh 3y ago
Paraphrasing: > > > p1mrx: they should have show it working unedited > > Animats: commercials were very expensive [implying it was too expensive to run a commercial long enough to show that] > me: they _did_ run a sufficiently long commercial [the price of commercials was not the problem.]

masswerk 3y ago

Back then, it was an important aspect of ads that they were self-contained, pleasing stories. They sold products by becoming a cultural reference. Also, the rather abstract, but still charming scene (the girl walking by the chairs, and wandering on) not only adds to the development of the story, but also adds a style and production value, which not only separates the spot from what came before and what came after, but which – at the best of times – becomes also associated with the product. It's probably the essential pivot of the spot, establishing style, pace, and mood, and by this claim. Showing the copier running for a minute in real-time couldn't have achieved any of this, and it wouldn't have conveyed a great message either, when there were already wet process offset copiers running 50, maybe even 150 copies a minute. Also mind that these wet processes were much more complex, requiring specialist jobs, organisation, etc., something that the story, namely, "a little girl does it on her own in a minute", brings home.