check this out…
This is a commercial for the new European Honda Accord, which will be
sold here as an Acura (TSX):
http://home.attbi.com/~bernhard36/honda-ad.html . It’s a two-minute ad
done without any computer graphics, but will surely
go
down as one of the most amazing commercials of all time. If you are
interested, watch the movie first before reading the narrative below.
"Six hundred and six takes it took, and if they had been forced to do
a 607th it is probable, if not downright certain, that one of the film
crew would have snapped and gone mad. On the first 605 occasions
something small, usually infuriatingly minute, went just slightly awry
and the whole delicate arrangement was wrecked. A drop too much oil
there, or here maybe one ball-bearing too many giving a fraction too
much impetus to the movement. Whirr, creak, crash, the entire,
card-house of consequences was
a
write-off and they had to start again.Honda's latest television advertisement, a two-minute film called
"Cog",
is
like a fine-lubricated line of dominoes. It begins with a transmission
bearing which rolls into a synchro hub which in turn rolls into a gear
wheel cog and plummets off a table on to a camshaft and pulley wheel.
All the parts are from the new Honda Accord - #16,495 to you, guv'nor,
or #6 million if you want to pay for the advertising campaign. And
what an amazing ad campaign it is, too.Back on Cog, things are still moving, in a what-happened-next manner
redolent of "there was an old woman who swallowed a fly". With a ting
and
a
ding of metal on metal, a thud of contact and the occasional thwock,
plop and extended scraping sound, the viewer watches as individual,
stripped-down parts of car roll into one another and set off more
reactions.Three valve stems roll down a sloped bonnet. An exhaust box is pushed
with just enough energy into a rear suspension link which nudges a
transmission selector arm which releases the brake pedal loaded with a
small rubber brake grommet. Catapult! Boing! On goes the beautiful
dance, everything intricately balanced and poised. Nothing must be
even a sixteenth of an inch off course or the momentum will be lost.
At one point three tyres, amazingly, roll uphill. They do so because
inside they have been weighted with bolts and screws which have been
positioned with fingertip care so that the slightest kiss of kinetic
energy pushes them over, onward and, yes, upward. During the pre-shoot
set-ups, film assistants had to tiptoe round the set so as not to
disturb the feather-sensitive superstructure of the arranged
metalwork. The slightest tremor of an ill-judged hand could have
undone hours of work.Utter silence, a check that the lighting is just right, and "action!".
Scores of grown men hold their breath as the cameras roll. An oil can
is> tipped and glugs just enough of its contents on to a shelf that
has been weighted with a Honda flywheel. Some valve springs roll into
the oil and are slowed to a pace perfect to make them drop into a
cylinder head assembly. If all these technical names are confusing,
that is partly the point. The advertisement was designed to show
motorists all the fiddly little bits of engineering that go into the
modern Honda. The result, in this film at least, is something
approaching mechanical perfection and a bewitching aesthetic. As car
adverts go, it certainly beats the "Nicole! Papa!" school of
commercial.If nothing else, Cog is a welcome departure from the generality of car
advertisements that feature winding-road landscapes, empty highways
and clear blue skies. The absence f people from the commercial at
least saved Honda having to make any regional alterations. It will be
able to be shown everywhere from Japan to South America, Finland to
the Maldives, without any more alteration than perhaps a change of the
closing voiceover, currently delivered by laid-back Garrison Keillor,
the American author,
who
announces:"Isn't it nice when things just work?" Cog looks certain to become an
advertising legend and part of its allure is the seemingly effortless
way the relay of parts slide and touch and roll with such apparent
ease. The reality of the film's production was slightly different. It
was, by most measures of human patience, a nightmare.Filming was done over four near-sleepless days in a Paris studio,
after
one
month of script approval, two months of concept drawings and a further
four
months of development and testing. One of the more surprising things
about the ad is that it was not a cheat. Although it would have been
much easier to fiddle the chain of events by using computer graphics,
the seesaw and shunt of events really did happen, and in one, clean
take. The bigshots at Honda's world headquarters in Japan, when shown
Cog for the first time, replied that yes, it was very clever, and how
impressive trick photography was these days. When told that it was all
real, they were astonished.One of the more striking moments in the film is when a lone windscreen
wiper blade helicopters through the air, suspended from a line of
metal twine. "That was the first and last time it worked properly,"
recalls Tony Davidson, of the London-based advertising agency Wieden &
Kennedy. "I wanted it to look like ballet." After that, a few yards
and several ingenious connections down the assembly line, another pair
of windscreen wiper blades is squirted by an activated washer jet.
Because Honda wipers have automatic sensors that can detect water,
they start a crablike crawl across the floor. It is as though they
have come to life. As take 300 led to 400 which led to 500, a certain
madness settled on the crew. Rob Steiner, the agency producer, started
talking about "our friends, the parts", but in the slightly menacing
tone of a primary school teacher discussing her charges at the end of
a trying day. Some workers on the
film
went whole days without sleep and had to be asked to stay away from
the more delicate parts of the assembly. Others started to have bad
dreams about throttle activator shafts and bonnet release cables.When things were going wrong - a tyre that kept trundling off to the
left, or a rocker shaft that kept toppling over like a tipsy cyclist -
the production lads on the shoot would start grumbling that "the parts
are being very moody today". Commercial makers are often accustomed to
working with human prima donnas but no Hollywood starlet, no
footballing prodigy
or
showbiz celeb, was ever as troublesome and unpredictable as the con
rods and pulley wheels and solenoids that Davidson, Steiner and Co had
to work>with. Towards the end of the production, Olivier Coulhon, the first
assistant director, had spent so many hours in the darkened studio
that
his
skin had turned a luminous green and his eyes had sunk deep into his
Gallic
cheeks. Antoine Bardou-Jacquet, the commercial's director, kept
puffing
out
his cheeks and whinnying, a note of deranged despair twitching at the
corners of his mouth. Asked how long he had been working on the
commercial,
he gave a high-pitched giggle and replied: "Five years? Or is it
eight?"
It
felt that long.Two hand-made pre-production Accords - there were only six in
existence in the entire world - were needed for the exercise, one of
them being ripped apart and cannibalized to the considerable distress
of Honda engineers. By the end of the months-long production, the film
had used so many spare parts that two articulated lorries were
required to take them away. The idea for the advert derived partly
from the old children's game Mouse
Trap,
and from the wacky engineering of Caractacus Potts's breakfast-making
machine in the Sixties film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. The corporate
suits
at
Honda liked the idea immediately, despite the high costs of production
and the fact that it was more than twice as long, and therefore twice
as pricey, as normal car ads. The two-minute version of the ad ran for
the first time last Sunday during the Brazilian Grand Prix, and
brought pubgoers across the nation to a wide-eyed speechlessness after
the Manchester United v Real Madrid game on Tuesday night."It was a painstaking process, a tough experience," says Honda's
communications manager Matt Coombe, recalling the making of Cog. Some
of the original ideas, such as one stunt involving an airbag, had to
be dropped owing to a shortage of new Accord parts or simply because
they
were
too hard to set up. And on some takes the process would go perfectly
until agonizingly close to the end. "It was like watching a brilliant
footballer weaving his way the whole way through a defending team's
players, and then shooting wide right at the end," says Tony Davidson.
The crew resorted to placing bets on which part of the sequence would
go wrong. Invariably it was the windscreen wipers. When the final,
606th take eventually
succeeded,
there was a stunned silence around the Paris studio. Then, like
shipwrecked
mariners finally realizing that their ordeal was at an end, the team
broke into a careworn chorus of increasingly defiant cheers and
hurrahs. Champagne bottles popped. The cylinder liner had brushed its
nose affectionately against the rocker shaft and the gear wheel cog
for the
last
time. The interior grab handles and the suspension spring coils had
done their bit. A classic was complete. Cog was in the can."
thansk ghalib
my bro had sent me the link for this and i had misplaced it, a truly amazing ad.
wicked.
The commercial might be ingenious - but it wont make me buy a Honda any more or less. Im guessing this ad was created solely to generate hype, because broadcasting a 2min ad which only needed 30seconds to convey the message would cost alot.
Wow! :)
That's why I love my Honda! :D
ya I got that link in my email a while back. seems like its still being forwarded. the ad is still amazing to watch!
Honda rulez
watched it again and .. wow..
-Sal
Honda Accord--> Official Car of Pakistanis around the globe.
Toyota Camry--> Offcial Car of Bangalis around the globe.
Bill Gates drive an Accord (whenever that is) .. thats what I heard.
That's one heck of a cool ad.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Aurous: *
Bill Gates drive an Accord (whenever that is) .. thats what I heard.
[/QUOTE]
Maybe like 20 years ago!
Aaaah, good to see it again :k:
NYTimes automobile review of the TSX described it as "the car that has everything but a soul"
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Matsui: *
NYTimes automobile review of the TSX described it as "the car that has everything but a soul"
[/QUOTE]
They were just jealous that it's a finer car than any US-registered company can make....
:k:…
Yep...Fantastic ad...Acura rules!