commercials

The Hollywood Reporter reports that 65% of the 2010 Super Bowl is already sold out, including all of the first-half "A" spots. The prices are running in the $2.7-2.8 million range - just off the 2009 rate (as high as $3 mil, but largely in the $2.8-2.9 mil range), but still ahead of 2008.

It's not that CBS doesn't have its hands full, and its work cut out for it. Last year at this time, NBC had already sold 85% of its spots - but they're feeling good about getting there in fine shape. It's certainly far from the cratered, post-apocalyptic vision painted in most of the press.

Now, I'm not much of a football fan, but I never miss the Super Bowl. It's an even bigger deal for commercials than for sports, at least for me. But I think it's true for the world at large. Yeah, most people tune in for the game or the half-time show...and the shows have been getting bigger and better of late, with unforgettable sets from Prince, Paul McCartney, and Bruce Springsteen in the past few years.

But the ads are important for US in this business for several reasons. One, they're a look at the state of the art. When somebody spends roughly $100,000 to show a commercial, you can be sure that they're spending a lot more than that to get absolutely top-shelf production. You want to see the technology that's going to shape the next few years of our industry? Start with the Super Bowl.

The other reason is that they're often inspiring. The best of them remind me of the power of storytelling, and that that power can often be increased by packing it into a short span. The commercials in the Super Bowl make me glad I'm in this business. If you're not watching the Super Bowl, I frankly don't think you care enough about your trade. Otherwise, how could you even imagine missing the best of what the best can do?

Hopping off my high horse, here's one of my all-time favorites...which has other folks on THEIR high horses. GREAT rotoscoping and compositing, and a great story too. I wish I could find a higher-quality version, but this one's pretty dang good.



Cat Herding - Click here for more free videos


There's a higher-quality version at the director's page at his agency website, John O'Hagan at RSA -- which also contains pages for directors including Joe Carnahan, Ridley Scott, Tony Scott and Sam Mendes among many others.

Here's also a little piece on the "making of" Herding Cats, at The Inspiration Room.

And since we're talking inspiration, here's a Super Bowl commercial by Ridley Scott that's also not too bad.




You can see it even bigger and in higher quality here.

I noted in my entry on the Tron sequel that a speedy look at Joseph Kosinski’s IMDb profile reveals virtually nothing -- not even his birthday. I’m amazed that nobody has gotten around to it yet, but he doesn’t even have an entry at Wikipedia.

(I wonder if it's related to the absence of an entry on the Tron sequel. Probably. The only power in the universe I can think of that's more powerful than the masses converging on Wikipedia is Disney.)

And so we ask,





who is this man, and why is he directing the sequel to Tron?

I first discovered him a year before any mention of him helming the Tron sequel, the same way that millions of other folks did: I saw this AMAZING commercial for the Xbox 360 videogame, “Gears of War.” On top of footage of horrific battles and a massive, terrifying monster, he lays a haunted, heartbreaking version of “Mad World.” It makes for an unsettling mix of violence, sorrow, humility, fear, and overwhelming mortality.

Hit the HQ button. Set it to full screen. Turn it up.





Here’s Kosinski talking about his work on the spot, which, remarkably enough, started with the song.





That version of “Mad World” is by Gary Jules, and was first heard by most of us in the remarkable “Donnie Darko.”





"Donnie Darko" was enough to propel the song to #3 in the UK in 2003, but its presence in the Gears of War commercial drove it to #1 at iTunes in 2006.


If you like that, you should also check out the full-length version. It lacks the blunt-force trauma of the shorter version, but it gives you a stronger sense of Kosinki’s cinematic vision. Again, click the HQ button. Watch full screen. Turn it up.






What I did IMMEDIATELY after seeing that first clip was to find out as much as I could about it. I quickly found the director’s website, josephkosinski.com. It turns out that he’s directed quite a few very, very high-impact spots over the years – even if, to be honest, I still haven’t seen most of them outside his website.

The website is in Flash, so links beyond that one are a no-go. The site is also a little old, I think – the clips are small-ish, and dog slow. It’s still worth poking around – lots of great info about the spots, including credits...but watch the spots here before you visit.

One of his commercials is among my recent favorites: “Lincoln Effect,” and it includes the great tagline, “Starships Don’t Need Keys.”





Since we’re talking about directing “Tron 2.0,” I want to draw your attention to “Apple, iSPEC,” a short film that, according to the credits, “postulates the evolution of the personal media device and experience, placing the viewer within a digital recreation of the Colorado Lounge from Stanley Kubrick’s ‘The Shining.’”

Sound freaky? Well, it is. It also evokes a postulatory (I guess) evolution of the world of Tron, from one oriented around the dark, to one oriented around light. Regardless, the camera moves through the opening scenes, including a very interesting new software UI, exactly as you might imagine it moving through a Tron sequel.





That one was all CG, and frankly looks it. Not in a bad way, but for all that it offers a strongly personal camera perspective, there are clearly no people in this environment. It’s truly gorgeous, though, and I’m not shocked that it won the Autodesk iDesign Award.

I learned that from a brief bio formerly posted at the site for his (former?) company KDLAB. The site’s just a landing page now, pointing you elsewhere, but I found the bio floating around, apparently untethered.

Also jumping out at me from his bio: graduating from “Stanford University with a BS in Mechanical Engineering in 1996 and from Columbia University with a Masters of Architecture in 1999. Since then, he has taught Advanced Digital Design at Columbia and serves on the beta board for Discreet in the development of their next-generation design software.”

Let’s add this up: engineering, plus advanced design, plus next-gen software development, equals TRON, baby!

To really, really see this pay off, check out “Nike, LesJumelles.” That’s French for “The Twins.” Watch it first, and then we’ll talk.





A profile at Autodesk’s website talks with Kosinski about using an alpha version of 3D Studio Max and some other Autodesk tools to put it together.

He offers a slightly more artistic take at Archinect, where he discusses the "twin" motif. Here’s the money quote:

“I did some investigation into the relationship between speed and energy and rediscovered Einstein's concept of “Time Dilation” - something which had always seemed fascinating to me. Basically, it states that as you approach the speed of light, time seems to slow down for you, and speed up for everything else that isn't moving.”

Man, oh, man, I cannot WAIT for this movie! After reading that, and seeing those, even if I’d never heard Tron, I’d want to see a full-length version of whatever this cat is up to.

That first Gears of War I saw came soon after “LesJumelles,” when Kosinski had moved to Venice, CA’s "Anonymous Content"...after being recruited by one David Leo Fincher, who is credited as “Creative Consultant” on "Gears of War, Mad World.”





A last note about college degrees in mechanical engineering and architecture, and work in the world of software design: it’s not all that many steps from building devices, to building buildings, to building a world. Because whatever else is true about the world inside the game of Tron, it reflects the strong mechanical and engineering design of a software/hardware mind. It’s not enough for the world inside Tron to be beautiful. It has to visually make SENSE.

I’m going to end this post where it began, with the original version of “Gears of War, Mad World.” This clip opens with that, followed by “making of” footage from Digital Domain, with block renderings and motion capture footage intercut with the final version. Like many of the best magic tricks, it becomes even more impressive once you see how it’s done. You’ll see the technology, but you’ll also see how Kosinski and his team turn it into art.





Kosinski is our boy, all right.


Bonus clips:

It turns out that our boy is quite at home with sequels. I showed his sequel to Gears of War, above. Here’s the third sequel. You know the drill: HQ. Full screen. Turn it up.





And here’s his sequel to “Les Jumelles.”





Here's a 2005 montage of his work. Most of my favorite bits are in the “Les Jumelles” and “iSPEC” pieces, but check the intro: very, VERY Tron.





And a special bonus digression on commercial directors who, like Fincher, transitioned to features. Here are a few off the top of my head:

Errol Morris (The Fog of War), Jonathan Glazer (Sexy Beast), Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich), Tony Scott (Top Gun, and more others than you remember), Mark Romanek (24 Hour Photo), Tony Kaye (American History X), Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind), Antoine Fuqua (Training Day), and Ridley Scott (take your pick).

(Who am I leaving out? Let me know in the comments.)

I should also note that some of these guys have done some of the best music videos of all time. Romanek: “Constant Craving,” "Are You Gonna Go My Way," “Closer,” and one of the all-time greats, Johnny Cash’s version of “Hurt." (I wrote about it here.)






Fincher’s videos are so off the hook that, as with Kosinski, I looked him up the first time he caught my, with Madonna’s “Express Yourself,” another on my short list for best ever.






Check it full screen, and loud. Some obvious nods to “Metropolis,” only with crotch grabbing. “Rated M, for Mature” – no kidding -- but a real joy to watch again. Throw in “Vogue,” “Forever Your Girl,” “Janie’s Got a Gun,” "End of the Innocence," and “Cradle of Love" off the top of my head.

Anyway, I like commercials. I like music videos. I like movies. Storytelling is storytelling.

Which brings us back to Kosinski and the Tron sequel. I have no idea if the guy liked the first Tron, or even if he saw it at the time. (I'm guessing he was around 8 when it came out.) But as I look at his work again, I can’t imagine anybody better equipped to direct the second one.

Mike Cohen made a very interesting post on commercials and product placement. I commented on it there, so won't repeat it here. So when he began by mentioning "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" – which I like a lot – I was reminded of a recent episode where the actor Brian Austin Green stepped out before the show began in his character costume and makeup, and announced that Dodge was sponsoring that episode. I liked this a lot too. It took what can be a very cynical arrangement and put it front and center, where we could evaluate it ourselves. Of course it also helped underscore the Dodge presence in the show. Now I was looking for it!

Terminator's approach was pretty straightforward: just an extra truck in the show.

(Mike mentions exasperation with new models. My exasperation is that virtually EVERY vehicle on TV, new or old, is spotlessly clean. No way, man. On the other hand, the first use I saw of a car sponsoring an episode was on "Alias," a show with the distinction of blowing itself up and starting with a new story every season. (The went at least one too many.) There, the gleaming new surface was played as sinister. And in last season's premiere of "Heroes" (a show that has really, truly hit the rocks I'm afraid), a high-school cheerleader received a "sponsored by" car as a graduation gift.

But there have been examples that are far more extreme, and the Writer's Guild has been upset about it for years. In a June letter to the FCC, "the western division of the Writers Guild of America called for real-time notification whenever product placement occurs in a scene. It said a text message, or crawl, should appear at the bottom of the screen alerting viewers to the fact that a paid ad has appeared in the program.

"Since crawls are used with relative frequency, and viewers are accustomed to this practice, such a crawl would be no more intrusive than the warnings required for pharmaceutical ads or the network identifiers, or 'bugs,' that are now a mainstay of our TV visual field," said division President Patric Verrone."

Is he on crack? Because I have to tell you, that struck me as really, truly stupid, and genuinely offensive. Do they think that I don't know about product placement? More important, do they think I care about it one way or another because THEY do? Do they not know that we don't like crawls and animated bugs? Fooey on 'em.

The guild has been insisting on a code of conduct that governs how they can be pressed into service as advertising copy writers since at least 2005. Look, writers are paid to write. They have a long list of network instructions about what they can and can't write, frequently making changes on a scene-by-scene basis on the day of shooting. I don't see how being told what to write isn't part of the job. People on every job get told by bosses to do things they don't like, or think makes the boss look like an idiot. You suck it up and do it anyway. That's why they call it "work."

Actors may sometimes have a legitimate beef, noting that they typically get paid for product endorsements. Among the issues in the looming actor's strike is a demand for actors to have some say in the matter, especially when they're being paid for straight-up offscreen commercial endorsements for competing products. I also think their suggestion for exposing product placements can be the right one: announcing it up front, just the way Fox did, and others do.

I still think the "individual endorsements" argument is weak. There are very, very few character-specific placements – one notable exception being TNT's "The Closer," another show I like, but whose main character is frequently the only one eating Keebler cookies, or the one with the T-mobile phone, ringer always turned on. In general, though? Products are placed in the shows, and woven throughout. Actors are not typically the target of the placements, or the sole ones executing the plan.

I've enjoyed the main placement for Sci Fi's "Eureka," now on mid-season hiatus, Degree antiperspirant. The placement is very, very much front and center, in two directions. One is that there are Degree logos spread around in creative ways, such as on the jackets of scientists in the lab. This plays into Eureka-specific ads running during commercial breaks touting Degree as hyper-engineered by geniuses in Eureka.

The writers of Eureka host their own blog, which has some great stuff on it. One of the truly great entries in September 2008 came from Eric Wallace. It's a long entry, and worth quoting from at length.

It all began way back in October 2007 when the Sci Fi Channel announced to the Eureka staff that 1) we would have an official commercial sponsor this season, one that was kicking in a lot of dough and would therefore 2) require tons of product placement throughout Season Three. We were also told that 3) ONE EPISODE in Season Three would have to incorporate a storyline in which the actual product HAD to save Eureka somehow, or at the very least, be INDISPENSABLE to Carter's Act 5 solve.

Oooooookay…

That product turned out to be Degree Absolute Protection For Men (deodorant) and "Here Comes the Suns" (originally entitled "Little Miss Sunshine") would become that episode.

And how did the staff feel about writing an episode of Eureka under so many pre-existing conditions? Well, on the one hand… Degree money meant a higher budget, which would hopefully translate into a better-looking show. On the other hand, there was the danger that this much product integration could throw our story off balance. Needless to say, great care was taken along the way during this one. Never before has any episode of our show been so scrutinized on all levels.

I'd be lying if I didn't say it wasn't just a bit nerve racking. But, man… it was also fun as heck, too.

When Showrunner Charlie Craig asked for volunteers to write this episode, there wasn't exactly a huge show of hands. In fact, there was dead silence. Except for me.

Along the way we got tons of Network notes about the "Degree"-ness of things. The funniest one involved the ending. Originally Carter and Zane used a spray-on Degree deodorant to protect themselves from the heat in Act 5. However, it was then pointed out that Degree is a roll on. So the spray quickly got changed to a roll-on-esque fireproof goo.

Once we had come to terms with the "Degree-ness" of things, there was another challenge to tackle: what was the biggest, best story we could tell? If we had extra money, then let's spend it. Concepts involving blowing up the sun quickly appeared, but even we thought that was too big, so we ultimately settled on a little girl's class project that creates a second sun.

A couple of things to note. One is that Eric has his head screwed on right. The word comes down that this is the way it is, so he gets it done. The other is that he made sure that the extra money was used to raise production values, by telling a story that was going to make more money to produce. Eric goes on to tell about the last minute changes to the script to accommodate the notes – quite a tale, so be sure to check it out.

A funny quote about the whole thing: "It's less about stopping you from sweating, but more about saving the world," says Blake Callaway, Sci Fi's VP-brand marketing.

Which means that there's a vice president more or less responsible for product placement.

Eureka has spun off all of this marketing energy into a "Made in Eureka" mini-site, largely devoted to selling obviously fictional products, presented with tongue firmly in cheek. This is part of a pitch for a cell phone built into your hand: "Talk to the hand."

 

The little bubble there is what I got when I tried to find the product in my zip code. Pretty funny...although my IQ was measured at 170...although that was when I was much younger. I'm much less smart now, I'm certain of it.

Needless to say, as is the case with just about everything, some people don't find this funny. A coalition of 23 consumer groups is pressuring the FCC to come down even harder than the writers want, on the grounds that product placement is that "[t]he hijacking of content by marketers...threatens public health."

Now THAT's offensive. It trivializes the work of consumer advocates everywhere by overstating what doesn't actually threaten anyone at all as far as I can tell – certainly not public health. This foolishness make it easier to dismiss anyone who, say, protests fouled water or poorly designed air bags or alcohol addiction or [insert your favorite cause here] as a threat to public health. Those are. Nothing that happens with marketing in a TV show is.

Here's why product placement isn't going away: $2.9 billion in revenue in 2007, on track to be $3.1 billion in 2008. (Quoted from the same LA Times article cited above.) Over the past 2 years, revenues are up roughly 50%! There are now dozens of agencies specializing in product placement. Google has a short list in their business directory. (Did you know they even had a business directory? Much more helpful than a raw search return.)

With this much money at stake, these agencies are being called on to provide the same kind of audience measurement data that programmers and networks are. But because product placement is more varied, and can be more fleeting, the measurement is much more refined. ITVX, "Measuring the Evolution of Product Placement," doesn't do placements, they just measure 'em, with an amazing variety of metrics – including the ability to predict recognition and response to specific placements, and equivalent value of a product placement to a straight ad buy.

They recently featured the placement of the children's game toy Simon on The Family Guy. I'm not sure "Simon" is even being sold anymore, but their analysis tools offer a remarkable insight into where this is all going. Check it out.

(You'll also see "Top Design" and "Dancing with the Stars" featured. I could do a whole entry on product placement in non-scripted television, where it has been going on for decades, and far more pervasive than anything in narrative television..)

You'll click on the link for the Play Report, which will open a player window with frame-by-frame analysis of the "presence and clarity" of the placement, integration, the awareness it generates, its equivalent dollar value, and more. Seriously, one of the coolest things I've seen on the web in years.

Below is the right half of the player. You can see the clip, the player controls, and, notably, the cumulative value of the segment, updated in real time as the clip plays. You really have to see it.

 

Here's the left half of the player, which is a bit more technical. You can see what it's doing in general, but note the timeline at the top of the window. You get a graphic representation of exactly where in the clip the placement exists and doesn't, and how "big" the placement is.

 

 

Once again, seeing this in motion, in real time, or stepped through frame by frame, will make your jaw drop.

There are also now news outlets in addition to ITVX that cover product placement, including Product Placement News (catchy, no?) and Brandchannel.com, which tracks not only product placement but (surprise, surprise) brand placement as well. They recently posted the Brandcameo Product Placement Awards which sometimes even noted especially annoying placements in both TV and film. The Film Whore Award, for example, went to the Sex and The City movie. Gotta love that -- although only 900-ish people voted, so not exactly statistically significant. Of course, these are people who do product placement for a living. If THEY say it's annoying, it probably is.

Brandchannel.com is run by Interbrand, "Creating and Managing Brand Value" with offices in 40 countries.

Big, big business, friends.

I've also noted a trend for product placements within ads themselves. For example, our pals at Dodge Ram Tough who sponsor Sarah Connor? Their ads on NBC are sponsored BY NBC, who promotes their shows withing the Ram Tough ads, offering a chance to win a truck if you watch a given show.

Taco Bell has been promoting baseball's World Series on Fox, with the promise of a free taco for everyone in America after the first base was stolen in their "Steal a base. Steal a taco" award. No kidding either. There are rules of course, but they're no big deal, and they really do result in a free taco. Which means that every story about the World Series the next morning included a mention of Taco Bell.

Dr. Pepper has been in on the act for a while. They've promised a free can of Dr. Pepper for everyone in America in the year that the "new" album by Guns and Roses, "Chinese Democracy," promised since 1994. Needless to say, nearly every mention of the record includes a mention of Dr. Pepper. The stories also mention Best Buy, which is the only place you'll be able to buy "Chinese Democracy."

For a wonderful example of the whole machine in motion, check Billboard magazine's story on the album release. That's all the headline says it's about, but toward the end: "We're waiting to hear about 'Chinese Democracy' just like all the other GNR fans," Dr Pepper VP of marketing Tony Jacobs tells Billboard. "But if the rumors are true, we're putting the Dr Pepper on ice."

Our boy Axl Rose has apparently been having plastic surgery in his free time.

Before:

After:

Not that I have Axl's ear the way I used to, but I highly recommend getting back to the music business, my friend. Hey, and who ever knew that the music business would be the HEALTHY alternative?

By the way, the new AC/DC album, "Black Ice," is available exclusively through Wal-Mart and Sam's Club. It debuted at number one this week (October 28, '08 as I write this) with over 787,000 copies, the first time AC/DC has ever occupied the top spot in the US. Guess how many times Wal-mart has been mentioned in stories about the record, the band and the sales. Wal-mart's own press release on the subject notes that overall music sales in the store were up for the first time in a while, as were clothing sales to young men. The system is working. Stay tuned for AC/DC themed games for your favorite console, also available exclusively at Wal-mart.

Aside from misguided watchdog groups and guilds, there are plenty of viewers who don't like how visible these product placements are. Sorry kids, that's the way it goes. Not just for TV either, but for movies too. At the other end of the spectrum sits another favorite movie, "Repo Man." In it, every product had a generic name on a white label, and a bar code – that's it. See Emilio Esteves, below, with the can labeled "Beer."

Your "Sex and the City" ridiculous extremes notwithstanding, product placements have at times played a critical role, especially in independent productions that are truly strapped for cash.

Remember "Longtime Companion"? It was one of the first movies to treat gay couples as couples, not hustlers or closeted timebombs waiting to explode. The title refers to the euphemism used in obituaries when one member of the couple passed away. Although the movie was made in 1990, it was set in the early 80s when the New York Times refused to use the word "gay" and President Reagan refused to use the word AIDS. Both eventually came around of course, but the early 80s were a long hard ride into visibility.

As the first movie to treat homosexuality in a non-exploitive manner, and to deal with AIDS at all, funding was an absolute nightmare. The producers couldn't find one single vendor willing to step up and help pay for the thing with a product placement...until Miller Lite. When the bottles showed up in the movie, crowds in theaters literally cheered.

"Longtime Companion" was nominated for an Oscar, and won the audience prize for drama at Sundance. I don't especially care how you feel about homosexuality. I love the story of product placement coming to the rescue.

I'm all for it, especially when done creatively, even for fun. And even when it's ham-handed and boneheaded, it's no big deal. Unless you're one of the parties buying ads or taking the money, in which case it's a very very big deal.

It's not even a background, really. It's pretty explicitly the absence of a background. Even lighting, no shadows, almost adrift. Not in a bad way. Stephen Smith did a great job of covering this in the May-June issue of Creative COW Magazine, including why it's best to use chroma keys to acheive the look.

The most frequent place you're seeing it these days is the "I'm a Mac" ads. (Check the end of this entry for a great variation.) If you cast your mind back a little further, you might recall the same look in the Apple "switch" campaign. As an Oscar-maniac, I hope you saw the short film with this look in the 2006 Academy Awards show, one of the highlights of what I thought was the best Oscarcast in years.

All from the same guy. The guy who invented the look: Errol Morris.

Almost. While it was common in still photography, it hadn't been used in any meaningful way before he used it for the first time in a short film for the 2002 Oscars.

You may have heard his name before, by the way. He won an Academy Award for the documentary The Fog of War, and has been nominated for others of his films, which include The Thin Blue Line, Mr. Death, Gates of Heaven, and Fast Cheap & Out of Control

Roger Ebert has said, "After twenty years of reviewing films, I haven't found another filmmaker who intrigues me more...Errol Morris is like a magician, and as great a filmmaker as Hitchcock or Fellini."

Mr. Morris is not shy. This quote is on the front page of his website.

I've always been struck that he's also unapologetic for enjoying making commercials, including the Mac Switch and "I'm a Mac" campaigns. You can find dozens and dozens of his commercials at his website. Be sure to check the links in the right margin -- yet dozens more.

These full-frame commercials are what got him the gig making the short film for the 2002 Oscar Award, where he used the white background style for the first time. The short film that opened the show that year instead of the traditional musical number is a whole bunch of folks, famous and not, talking about movies they love.

First, watch it here. I watch it pretty regularly, and it still delights me every time.

Then read the whole tale of how it happened in this AMAAAAAZING New Yorker story.

Just in case you're thinking that reading this might be a waste of your time, here's an excerpt from the article.

The interviews were stacked up, one per half hour, and by mid-morning the schedule was a shambles. Walter Cronkite was [on camera.] Donald Trump was waiting, with mounting impatience, in the wings. Mikhail Gorbachev and entourage were trudging up the stairs. And Iggy Pop was in the greenroom.

You read correctly. Iggy Pop was scheduled to go on after Mikhail Gorbachev, who it turns out is a big Russell Crowe fan. "And anything with Julia Roberts." You think I'm kidding?

BTW, I also put the "schedule was a shambles" quote in there because every one of us in production can relate to that nightmare.

So here's where he talks about that "white background" style for the Oscar film.

I interviewed over a hundred people on a white background....Of course, I'm not the first person to film someone on a white background. It's been done by a whole number of photographers, August Sander, Avedon, etc. I have no patent, no trademark, on shooting someone on a white background. Of course, when you try to do something that's free of artifice, somehow that becomes artificial as well.

(Although I can't find it online, here's an article in the Hollywood reporter talking about it, again, very much worth your time to read.) 

The white background isn't the reason that that Oscar short, as well as the Switch and I'm a Mac ads, among others that he's done, so compelling. It's the way that people look so directly and comfortably into the camera. To acheive that, he's created a device he affectionately calls The Interrortron. It's like a teleprompter, but instead of text, it superimposes his face in front of the lens.

Soon after the Mac Switch campaign, he applied the same white background style to a series of political ads for MoveOn.org that also played on his own site. They were a variation on the switch campaign if you will: dozens of people who voted for Bush in 2000, but were voting for Kerry in 2004. Darn near none of them was happy about it either, but they felt compelled by their consciences to switch anyway.

When we first discussed shooting [them], my producers and I would have endless discussions about the way to shoot these political ads, what the appropriate way of doing it might be. Should the lighting be absolutely flat? Should the background be white?...But I like the idea that there's something very straightforward about the ads....

So no matter how you feel about either of those candidates, take a look at political advertising at its best. (Sez me.) And again, lots of related links in the right margin.

After watching the spots, you might think you've got his politics pegged, and maybe you do, but it's more complicated than that. He bumped into Karl Rove in a Hilton breakfast room in Waco. I introduced myself. I said, "I'm Errol Morris. I made this film The Fog of War." Karl Rove said, "That's one of my favorite films. I give that as a present to my friends." So it's certainly not that he's incapable of accurately representing what people say across the range of political experience.

That's really the power of The Fog of War, and an example of how startling it is to look someone in the eye, really look. McNamara's clarity is startling, an experience you won't forget.

I could keep yammering about it, but I'll spare you that to show you this, six of Fog of War's strongest minutes. 

As deeply visceral a reaction it provokes while watching it, Morris has little confidence that much will happen as a result of his work.

I think we're rudderless bumblers, regardless of what we might imagine. You can think of my films as cautionary tales, but you might even think of them as despairing tales, because at least in a cautionary tale, you have this idea that by listening to the story you can assure a better outcome. Whereas I'm not at all convinced that's the case. In fact, if anything, I'm convinced that it's the opposite.

That's from an interview in a magazine called, appropriately enough, Stop Smiling. Still, there's a reason he keeps going.

My interest is primarily in what people are saying, and in not detracting or distracting from what they're saying, because that's at the center of what I'm doing.

That perspective, applied across all the work he does, and his strong visual style, are a few reasons among many why I agree with our man Roger that Morris is among the most important filmmakers -- and commercial-makers -- of our time.

And you thought this was going to be an article about keying.

PS. Xavier Reivax made a short film called "Same" that matches Nine Inch Nails' "Every Day is Exactly the Same" with film footage, the largest source of which is The Fog of War.

PPS. On the I'm a Mac ads, your pal and mine Eric Bliss sent me this GREAT picture: