The 2005 Sony Bravia ad
sfgate.com
sfgate.com
I've seen this story discussed around the internet over the last few days and found it interesting how younger generations seemed to only view it negatively (pollution, excess, etc). It's quite sad that something that seems like it could be universally enjoyed at the isn't now.
I love the ad and the stunt. I would have been as giddy as a child if I'd seen it in person.
It's also rings true to me that it's rather wasteful and destructive in service of selling TVs.
Shrug, what's done is done so I'm free to enjoy it guilt-free while also thinking we probably shouldn't do stunts like this anymore.
We should encourage and welcome more of this, not less. How it is funded does not diminish this, IMO.
It's just not a very persuasive argument, even when I make it to myself, because I believe so strongly that other things are more important.
ps i also hate ads and attention economy.
When I want to know what kind of neat electronics I can play with my raspberry Pi, I don't sit around and wait for Youtube to show me ads, I browse the fucking store.
When my dad wanted to start a pressure washing business in the early 2000s, he didn't wait for an ad on the radio, or see a billboard, he ordered a catalog from some pressure washing companies and browsed their offerings at his leisure
In the 60s, if you ran a electronics lab, and you needed a new instrument to calibrate your new atomic clock, you would order an HP catalog and flip through their offerings, which included a basic description, a picture sometimes, and some specs.
Notably, the old way primarily required you to start from a point of dissatisfaction, intentionally seek out information, and purchase a solution to an actual problem you have.
The current days, advertising is all about convincing us with evolutionary brain tricks that we actually have so many problems. I'm tired of it.
(In general, it's a good rule of thumb to assume that the widespread existence of something suggests there's a reason for it, and to be inquisitive as to what that reason might be.)
If adverts were for my benefit I would be able to choose them, rather than have to block them.
Billboards, on the other hand, are awful as your eyes are drawn to it as you drive down the freeway.
I truly don't understand the idea of praising a commercial that exists solely to sell you something we could probably, reasonably, be making and selling a lot less of. We only keep going "because growth". When's enough? This is gross.
Edit: And after watching the video, it's extra jarring to me to feel the warm fuzzies it gives you, and then realize, "It's not asking me to be a good person or do something that's gonna match the feeling this commercial is giving me, it just wants me to buy something it's gonna want me to replace eventually". Ick. Get the fuck out of my emotions like that.
Commercials are interesting as they are a way to support artists financially. Many artists make a living in commercials while also getting a chance to exercise a creative profession.
Conceptually it isn't that much different than church commissions during the Renaissance.
It’s a pattern I’ve noticed with Americans, this bundling up art with the capitalism. Commercial/Ad work can be a lot of fun and a good living for any artist, but it’s just not fucking art. It’s such a cringey pattern - that somehow makes commercial work into chivalrous patronage.
That being said - cool ad! Fun to make and probably good money! Would love to work on something like that! But. Not. Art.
My spouse is doing artwork for a beer company right now and she would throw the chair at me like in that Orange Country TV Show meme if I tried to insinuate that this is her “art”. It’s not art it’s artwork, it’s labor, it’s a job, it’s for a boss.
This is where the ick is from - nice artwork can be commissioned, can be labor intensive and require talent. But it’s not truly the distillation of the artists process that art is.
Any arbiter of the arts will find that these handy guidelines readily facilitate the elimination and/or downsizing of unnecessary galleries and other non-art collections.
See, that’s the thing about this POV that the term “art” is placed on some sort of pedestal and then all the other forms are then compared against it. “How dare you say [other thing requiring effort] is not art!”
Art !== artwork
An element of art is that it functions for its own relationship between artist-work and maybe somewhat the viewer or participant. It’s neither better or worse, it’s just something separate from all of those ideologies. It just is, they just make it. They place it in museums so we don’t have to bump into each others’ egos.
I will reiterate my belief: it’s foolish to wrap up art with corporate, religious or institutional patronage.
On the music side, we'd have to dismiss The Beatles, Bach, Mozart, and probably most of the greatest composers and musicians of all time.
They are doing marketing to get me to buy things. You are doing marketing to get me to NOT buy something.
The iPhone enabled everyone to see consumer buying cycles in that most people don't go buy the 11-12-13-14-15-16, they go 11-16 and 13-17 and the like. It's the same with all products. Most people don't buy every single new model, unless they are an enthusiast, in which case who are you to say what someone's hobbies are?
If that were all it is, there wouldn't be much problem.
Marketing is also creating a demand where there wasn't one before and exploiting psychological weaknesses to prompt actions not necessarily in a person's best interest.
"exploiting psychological weaknesses to prompt actions not necessarily in a person's best interest" This is any sort of communication with malintent.
He's talking about a couple million roadside billboards, ads on busses, ads in TV services you pay for, drug companies spending more on advertising than R&D, political machines driven by 24 hours news cycles that are funded from ragebait, social media companies that have us literally addicted to our screens due to their advertising-based revenue models. It goes on... ad infinitum indeed.
It's a fucking cancer and it truly is the root of so many of our problems and we are running out of time to start thinking clearly about the damage the industrial advertising complex causes.
I hate to say "go touch grass" because it sounds condescending. But please, go outside and have some fun! The dumb billboard isn't stopping that.
>Advertising might be annoying, but not even on the top 100 list of major world problems.
Hard disagree. Advertising, in some form, is likely the root or primary facilitator of probably 25 or more of those top 100.
>because it sounds condescending.
Your comment is condescending, yes.
I'd be curious to see this Top 100 list.
See, I'd contend that the business models and businesses enabled by advertising, and the combined social impact of ads plus those business models very much are one of the world's top problems.
> People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you. (…)
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/461383-people-are-taking-th...
I'm perfectly fine doing that without 2005 Sony Bravia advertisement tyvm.
Advertising is part of that trade.
I’m happy it exists.
Unabated capitalism has more poverty than capitalism with social programs. Social programs save people from poverty.
Also, capitalism can exist without advertising.
You meant the EXACT opposite, right? :)
Is it that you don't want an interruption? Because for the information to be out there, someone had to pay for it and at some point, it was pushed on someone who didn't care.
I don't think I understand how any sort of commerce or awareness happens without advertising.
What I object to is the practice of tricking people into wanting things they otherwise felt no desire for by putting advertisements for them in places they will be seen while the victim is trying to do something else. Billboards are a blight, radio and TV ads are an intrusion, web banners are a nuisance. I filter them all out of my life as hard as I can, because I don't want people getting into my head and making me desire things I don't need. Ye olde hedonic treadmill never stops spinning, you know? Making a living by telling people to feel less satisfied with their lives, so they will want to fill the lack with whatever you are selling, does not seem very honorable.
It is visually stunning for sure, but I have to not think too hard about the implications of it.
As for children, I would be strongly opposed to showing a child that commercial. It isn't hard to imagine them trying to haul buckets of bouncy balls to the roof after being ... inspired.
"We want to set City Hall on fire, we want to bump a blimp into the Golden Gate Bridge and we want to jump a hook-and-ladder truck over Lefty O’Doul Bridge with Roger Moore on it’ … and they were seriously like, ‘OK.’”
My main question is, where did this San Francisco go? I'd love for the city to create more memorable moments because the city is special. But today, this ad would've been buried in CEQA lawsuits. Hell, parking in the wrong public spot could get your car keyed by some irate millionaire[1].
[1]: https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/parking-wars-sf-billion...
I'm sure somebody has a similar timeline for NYC.
That is until he, inevitably, would shoot me with impunity.
This happens frequently for a good many things. Collective ignorance gets replaced with the lens of hindsight.
… and there it is. People knew but saw through it all to just maybe enjoy the wonder of the event.
>When Conner was checking in to his hotel later that night, a ball bounced by on the sidewalk. He was 4 or 5 miles away.
I have to assume there was so many they never found just left to the ecosystem.
As much as I loved bouncy balls as an 80s kid, anytime I see them now it just reminds me of the sheer amount of useless plastic/rubber waste we produce. Even if bouncy balls in and of themselves are a tiny portion of that overall waste.
For example I live in the South, Mardi Gras is huge here and after every parade it looks like a god damn war zone of trash and waste left behind for prison labor to clean up as best they can. If it was me I would do a ban on plastic beads entirely as throwable parade objects.
> It's quite sad that something that seems like it could be universally enjoyed at the isn't now.
IMO at some point we all have to look back at the reality of past actions and be cognizant of our waste and abuse of the planet even if it was a fun time.
They're not useless. As you've just pointed out you enjoyed them as a kid. For a few cents in plastic how many hours of enjoyment did you get? What was wasted here?
> after every parade it looks like a god damn war zone
Yea but when you stack up the tax receipts it suddenly looks very worthwhile.
> reality of past actions and be cognizant of our waste and abuse of the planet even if it was a fun time.
Humans are always going to want to have fun. From my point of view have all the plastic beads you want. It's the nuclear weapons and daily war that gives me pause.
Bleak reminder that I will never jive with the general vibes of HN and the VC trash types polluting the world for a tax write-off.
>tax revenue generated by the production and sale of those "pollutants."
The other local problem being from 1985 to 2024 Mardi Gras beads were sale tax exempt, but we've somewhat closed that loophole to more specific circumstances.[1]
[1]https://casetext.com/regulation/louisiana-administrative-cod...
The total economic value of Mardi Gras to the city as a whole is estimated around $800m.
This, by the way, is true for almost any successful event. For every $1 you invest you generate at least $2 in revenue.
The idea that advertising is a “cancer upon society” fundamentally misunderstands how mass media, telecommunications, and modern society works. It’s about passing and sharing information.
I hate most ads and almost all modern advertising sucks. But this ad ain’t it. It relies on nostalgia, a dream like element. The amount of pollution is, globally, negligible, and they largely cleaned them up. We hear stories of people keeping balls as mementi [1].
Call me cynical but if we are not meant to enjoy even the aesthetically pleasing stuff the neoliberal environmental disaster of the last 40 years creates we are in for a bad time. May as well go back to hunter gathering of subsistence farming.
[1] I know it’s non standard but if “octopi” is cromulent then so is “mementi”
I’m too young to remember this ad but I’m disgusted by it now. I hate advertising to begin with but this one floods the street with plastic which destroys private property and will never get cleaned up. What is there to like about it? How was this ever allowed? Imagine today I make an ad about dumping red 40 into the Mississippi River for a Netflix show. It’s evil and everyone knows it.
It is easy to find faults with the SF bay area (politics, costs, and derivative issues), but is somewhere actually better?
EDIT: Thanks for the downvotes. It was an honest question, and I badly wanted to be informed, having given the issue in-depth consideration over the years. I wasn't being snarky.
It has been far and wide the least welcoming, interesting, and lackluster food city I’ve ever lived in.
Also, the coffee scene there is worse than SF, Chicago, LA..rare stop for bands and musicians touring, and unpleasant transit.
The only people I know who are genuinely happy there are people who moved from Florida, and wealthy white families with young children who moved there (from California) “because taxes and better education”.
Don’t even get me started on the lack of diversity and casual racism.
SF is far from perfect, but Seattle isn’t even in the conversation for places I’d ever recommend someone leaving SF to shortlist.
SF isn't any better on that count.
Seattle is another tier above. SF people I find far more interesting and smart vs. the smartest people I met/knew/know in Seattle. Seattle is like a pissing contest for nerd snipers. At least in SF we drink our own pee (at Folsom of course)
For tradition's sake, I feel obligated to give you the classic Seattleite response to such complaints: "whatever, man; if there's somewhere you like better, feel free to go there."
The weather kills me, though. The weather is too British.
It’s just an enormous shame it’s become grossly unaffordable— on an income adjusted basis, it’s more expensive than the Bay Area. That, and the weather, although the summers are perfect IMO.
The people left there are those who like what it has become or are trapped in someway; others have moved.
Weather is cold and moisty...
There are thousands better places around the world. I would like to hear a pitch, why start company in SF today.
As in: if you want something at decent quality you can pretty much get it pretty easily with a bunch of options (assuming you can afford it).
Caveat - not necessarily the top of everything for all markets is available, but overall stuff is still around -- even as some things are disappearing from the area.
In contrast, other places are just poor, and you "cannot" find as large a variety of lots of goods and services, I imagine. But I could be wrong -- I'll check my assumptions. Thanks.
How easy is to get a dentist or masseuse, with a few hour notice?!
> In contrast, other places are just poor, and you "cannot" find as large a variety of lots of goods and services
I think you need reality check on "poor". The place with the widest selection of services and products (for example types of meat in supermarket, or hand made tailored clothes) is Bangkok in Thailand. Places like SF just do not have enough people to provide all those services.
IDK about in the city itself, but in the surrounding metro area I would say yes.
> At normal city you just drop into nearest good restaurant, and if they are full (very unlikely) you go to next.
Right, I was biased toward considering the surrounding cities in the SF metro. I think popping into next open restaurant with seating applies to the healthy downtowns in the area metro area. But the city itself, I wouldn't know.
> a dentist...with a few hour notice
I don't think that kind of dental scheduling is typically found/done _anywhere_ in the US AFAIK.
> meat in supermarket, or hand made tailored clothes) is Bangkok in Thailand
Good counterexample, thank you.
Back in 2012 I had a raspberry seed work it's way down into my gums and not come out. Made an appointment at Townsend dental and saw him 3 hours later.
A few weeks ago I had a filling fall out. Called up a local dentist here and got it fixed 90 minutes later
> How easy is to get a dentist or masseuse, with a few hour notice?!
I mean, everyone who lives here is already affiliated with a dental office and they’ll take you in same day for a real emergency. You can get a Thai massage in two hours very easily too.
The quality of medical care is also stupidly high compared to almost anywhere outside the US. Sure your insurance will pay $$$ for it but who cares?
Because you're around a ton of people who are interested in the same thing as you are. Caveat: If you're not interested in the things SF engineers are interested in, that means you're surrounded by masses of incredibly boring - to you - folks :)
Because that introduction you need to make things pop is super-easy compared to other places.
Doesn't mean you _have_ to start in SF, but for certain classes of ventures, it's the place that makes it the easiest.
For other problems, elsewhere may well be better. Gamedev, I'd say SoCal, NC, TX are all better places.(Though the studios have done a "great" job choking off the indie scene). If you talk high performance non-gfx, I'd go with NYC, HFT is pretty interesting.
But that's the whole point. Pick a place that has people who care about the thing you want to do. Because top engineers are almost always engineers who deeply care about the field they're in.
> Caveat: If you're not interested ... incredibly boring
Everyone in SF has basically the same correct opinion.
And not just booring, but hostile. People in SF are really not that tolerant. Try to say that Dubai is more diverse, because it has many cultures, religions, people from Africa, India, Philippines... Or someone is not XYZ, but mixed race (whiter than me) and you will understand.
If you did, they'd be a non-exempt employee, so you'd need to track and pay out overtime. A quick look puts the minimum non-exempt salary for jobs in California at ~$69,000.
Also, honestly? I expect you'd be hard-pressed to find a decent programmer for $80k/year in ANY major metro area in the US... post 2020, housing prices went NUTS across the country and aren't getting any less nuts.
(One of the big reasons I haven't moved out of San Francisco is that my ~50% less than "market rate" rent is not THAT much more than current rents in most other US cities. (Plus, most other US cities don't even pretend to have any sort of useful public transportation.))
P.S: I'm sorry Lisboetas..you are already getting swamped by Digi Nomads, but it's true.
There is horror everywhere, and always will be until the end of our days.
I'm not advocating isolation, but our primitive minds are not able to really understand that what is projected in front of us is not the same as what happens in front of us. I don't know how anyone could solve that.
I can’t remember where I heard this, but it was someone questioning joy and frivolity in a time of war. And the answer back was that people need to remember what they are fighting for otherwise what’s the point?
If you don’t allow yourself joy until the problems are gone, there will never be joy and the problems will multiply for lack of it.
It may seem counterintuitive, but that way of thinking doesn't actually solve problems, it only perpetuates them.
but also in the 40s/50s/60s/70s/80s
Look! Colorful rubber balls bouncing in the sunlight! Fun!
Would thousands of colored balls careening down streets bouncing off objects and each other and damaging things in their path be an okay metaphor for this?
There are a few causes here. One is that everything - absolutely everything - is severely problematic. Another is that people now scrutinize the minor differences among their friends and try to evangelize them. When everything is a life or death issue, you really should fight for the right thing. And the problem is that many things really are life or death matters. People really are dying in horrific ways in the Middle East, and plastics really are filling our oceans, and politicians do often embolden people to kill members of the out-group. The modern internet and social media gives us the most extreme and attention-grabbing examples of any of that, neatly cut and cropped into heartwrenching short-format video. MLK and a fuzzy blanket and a kitten are all positive things, but in an instant the modern internet can fill you in on countless reasons that they are problematic. I mean come on, most fuzzy blankets shed microplastics like mad, cats devastate our ecosystems and MLK has countless words written about his wrongs [1]. If you're positive about fuzzy blankets, kittens or MLK then you're probably naïve at best and a member of the wrong group at worst.
I think the solution is twofold: one, strongly limit the type and amount of internet use, and two, try to be positive. To be positive in these modern times is a revolutionary act. Positivity and happiness are contagious.
[1] https://archive.ph/oKKcC - The New Yorker: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Perilous Power of Respectability. I linked this article because, while it is generally positive on MLK, it gives a good rundown of the various issues people have with him.
Coming up to YEAR 2000, the future felt here. I remember watching the TV shows in preparation for YEAR 2000. Then the future never really happened like predicted. We didn't wear silver suits in 2001.
SF seems to be a lot more in-flux compared to other cities, so if you don't like the scene now just wait a few years and a new one will be along :-)
The Man Your Man Could Smell Like: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=owGykVbfgUE
Pitch presentation: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/britton-taylor-7829292a_for-y...
Behind the scenes interview: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VDk9jjdiXJQ&t=11m40s
It was a big success and a series of similar clips followed; this one has an actual “behind the scenes” video:
Scent vacation: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PJKAr1r5zlA
Behind the scenes: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=32TZSXG2y7E
Anyone know of an alternative source, ideally without the typical internet-friendly/heavy compression?
I've tried finding some better version (not on YouTube) but been unable to, maybe it is lost to the passage of time.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Sony_Bravia_television...
Probably not, would be my guess. Uploading the very same source video to somewhere else than YouTube (and ideally a place that doesn't do heavy compression at all) would lead to an higher quality version easily, someone somewhere must have done just that.
Similar but slightly larger file from henry.tv at https://vimeo.com/293364002
The high-quality extended version Sony originally published at bravia-advert.com/includes/vid/bravia_150_sec_high.mov was 700x394 apparently.
I dunno, when even the 4K version (offered by YouTube) shows the very same compression artifacts on a 4K modern TV, then I kind of feel like you screwed up. At least from the perspective of a viewer, of course from the perspective of the business that saves a lot of money from it.
<https://tensorpix.ai/blog/video-compression-snow-confetti>
Video compression functions best where little of the shot changes frame-to-frame. This is also why rapid-cut video performs poorly online.
Sony's 2005 website for the ad: https://web.archive.org/web/20051124203345/http://www.bravia...
Sony's 2005 behind-the-scenes page: https://web.archive.org/web/20051028021817/http://www.bravia...
Fallon's (ad agency) materials: https://www.fallon.com/?s=Bravia
One of the making-of videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOpq2aD5btA
A resident point of view: https://archive.org/details/BouncyBall
They made at least one more commercial [1] during the same time period and it was also inspired by awe and wonder. While it did waste paint and likely pollute the local groundwater temporarily, it was conducted in a building that was scheduled for demolition.
Paint
"The day explosions of colour painted a Glasgow estate: In 2006, Sony set out to create 'Paint', widely regarded as one of the most technically complex adverts ever made..."
I find it hard to believe that they really went around for months buying maybe 100 balls each from random dispensers until they had 250,000 - especially considering the design of the balls is mostly consistent in the end. Maybe a bit of fanciful storytelling?
> First, they had to scour the country to acquire the 250,000 bouncy balls needed to create the critical mass. “They bought every bouncy ball west of the Mississippi,” said Ranahan. “There was not a single bouncy ball in any machine in America for a couple months. I felt so bad for the poor children,” said Fuglsig.
(I didn't follow all the links, but enough to know it wasn't immediately available)
Looks to be from original sources rather than upscaled.
If you want to watch the ad. A couple of friends of mine lived in the city at the time and were watching as they filmed it. We all agreed that it was both amazing and insane all at the same time.
All we need are chaotic surfaces to bounce the balls on. Problem solved :-)
https://youtu.be/GdEtZK3CE2k?si=TtUn_VB8vBd7Eif5
better quality
Hell, Blender just made a movie that won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(2024_film)
> ”[The film commissioner] goes, ‘Here’s two things I never want to see in San Francisco again — air mortars and Barry Conner.’”