Sony Bravia - Reinventing the Zoetrope. Motion.Like.No.Other?
I read about it on Fubiz.net (be sure to bookmark it or something, especially if you love viewing elegantly designed things and lovely photography works from various artists) – the zoetrope, verified as the world’s largest by nothing less than the Guiness Book of Records, was contructed over a 6-week period in a small town of Veneria, located in Turin, Italy. By rapidly spinning HD images of Kaká dribbling a football, the zoetrope brings his skills to live in front of an audience that gathers around the zoetrope.
The song is Underdog by Kasabian, which is yet to be released at the time of publishing. Earliest by April, latest by June/July.
A little search on Flickr brings out even more interest photos of the zoetrope. Oh, and there’s even a Flickr group dedicated to the Bravia Drome!
Sony’s Bravia advertising campaigns never fail to impress me. As a bonus, I have complied some precious information, photos and videos from the Internet for Sony Bravia’s past advertising campaign – after the jump is where they could be found ;)
Here are the five other advertisements that Sony has made for their Bravia series, Colours.Like.No.Other – Balls, Paint, Pyramid, Play-Doh and Domino City. Information is consolidated form this Wikipedia article, images are from Flickr and are copyrighted by their respective owners.
Bouncy Balls, ‘Balls’
What do you get by pouring 50,000 bouncy balls down a steep slope in San Francisco, then collide them with another 50,000 fired from a side-street, and armed with a 50-person team? You get the first advertising campaign for the BRAVIA brand that took 4 days to shoot, and using 250,000 balls in total.
The music used in the advertisement is Heartbeats, written by Swedish duo The Knife and performed by José González
Paint Bombs, ‘Paint’
Shot over a 10-day period in July 2007, this advertisement brought the advertising campaign to a brand new level. Using 70,000 litres of environmentally-friendly paint and 1,400 separate explosions on tower block in Toryglen in Glasgow, with the help of 250 people, they’ve redefined what colourful meant. The tower block was later demolished to make way for a new development.
The music used in the advertisement is the overture from The Thieving Magpie – anyone who’ve watched Rem and Skimpy in the past should’ve find this piece familiar.
Pyramid and Strings – ‘Pyramid’
Filmed in Egypt, the advertisement shows hundreds of cotton reals, with a dizzying range of bright colours, tumbling down the side of a pyramid.
Play-Doh Bunnies – ‘Play-Doh (Rabbit)’
Filmed in New York City, August 2007, 40 animators working over the course of 3 weeks used 2.5 tonnes of plasticine on set. They sculpted 189 2-feet bunnies and 150 1-feet cubes, a 10*20-feet purple wave, a 30-feet giant red bunny (cute!). For every 4 working hours, only 4 seconds of footage is generated and the entire 60-second spot in constructed from nearly 100,000 stills. Oh, imagine the amount of photoshopping needed to remove the supporting wire frames underneath the bunnies *facepalm*
The song is She’s a Rainbow by the Rolling Stones.
Dominoes – ‘Domino City’
Launched in October 2008, this advertisement was shot on location in India’s states of Rajastan and Uttar Pradesh. It takes viewers on a journey on a tumbling journey of color, from a magnificent fort in Jaisalmer through a desert all the way to the Taj Mahal in Agra.
Foam City
This isn’t a BRAVIA advertising campaign but it’s so beautiful that I have to include it in this post. Miami becomes a soapy free-for-all when 120 million gallons of bubbles are unleashed in the streets. The world’s largest foam machine was custom-built for the shoot, and pumped out over 500,000 gallons of foam per minute. The commercial is for Sony’s cameras, and locals got Alpha DSLRs, Cyber-shots, and Handycams to shoot the experience. (Source)
wow….i found the Sony Bravia advertisement is really worth to watch..so far I only have seen two of them, the pyramid and the dominoes while watching EPL…hehe..the first one with Kaka is also cool !
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@|1f34|-|1r3: Oh, I think some of those (especially the first two) are not released in Southeast Asia. I never knew they existed until I watched the YouTube videos, heh. The pyramid one is pretty familiar to me because I think I watched it on TVs a year ago or something. I’m not sure about the dominoes one as it has been a year since I really seriously watched television (my dorm has 100+ people sharing a TV, and the room stinks).
Of course, Kaka’s looking awesome in the zoetrope commercial!
I thought these ads were computer generated! Judging by the clean up (aftermath of the mess), I dont think Pyramid, San Fran and NY could ever approve these notions.
Two thumbs up Bravaria, but I’ll buy a Samsung ;)
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@NoktahHitam: Oh, that’s exactly what Sony wanted to achieve – create something that is so grand and hard to replicate that it makes you think it can only be done via CGI. Looks like they’ve fooled quite a lot of people, heh! It’s indeed unbelievable that in a few short seconds as the balls tumble down the San Francisco street, they can get minutes of footage out of it (in slow-mo, that is).
I don’t know much about HDTV, care to tell me what makes Samsung better than Sony?
Clearly, it’s much cheaper. A Sony HDTV = Samsung HDTV + DVD player + Speakers. Too obvious who trumps the deal here ;)
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wow…great advertising…i have seen the domino on the TV but not the rest ;)
@med: Oh, many of them are not released in SouthEast Asia, such as Balls, Paint and Foam City. It’s a shame that it’s not shown on many other countries but at least we have YouTube to watch them in their full glory :)
This is totally cool. I was in an animation workshop when I was younger and I remember doing animation zootropes. And their whole campaign is quite ambitious.
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@Iva: I’ve heard of the zoetrope before but never got to see a real one, left alone a working one that can demonstrate how it works. It took me a good deal of time at Google search to figure out how it actually works, heh!
Sony doesn’t mind paying big bucks for their advertisements because they wanted their commercials to have a different appeal than their competitors – instead of focusing on the technological aspects of their product, Sony chooses to relate to its target audience on a more personal level.
Beautiful! I love it!
If it was me who had to clean up after all the mess made, I’d probably cry :P Especially the pyramid one. But still, wow. Their creativity rocks! :D
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@Aki: Oh, the cleanup is quite okay for the first two commercials – for Balls, they set up nets along the junctions to keep the balls from flying out of the area, while for Paint, not much cleanup is needed since the apartments blocks are meant to be torn down (they’re slated for redevelopment). The pyramid one is the commercial I’m least familiar with since I’ve got no details on it, but by judging on the scale of the advertisement the cleanup job is nasty!
Amazing in sheer volume, creativity and trouble involved to do everything from the start. Extravagant, but cool!
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@jason: Extravagant indeed! Sony doesn’t mind spending the money to outcompete its competitors’ advertisement, heh. It wants to relate to the audience on a more personal level – which means lots of brand loyalty and coverage if they get it right. And yes, indeed they’ve done it!
I wonder how much effort is spent behind the scenes brainstorming on what to do in the next commercial. Kudos to the brains behind these commercials!
I’m amazed that they’re actually trying to imitate art into life and it worked… imagine the amount of time it takes to clean up, or the range around it is affected. They’re really cool though, I personally don’t know if I would want to be in these types of projects… you break you buy, you mess, you clean!!
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@Destiny: Yea, that’s the way to say it! You took the words out of my mouth – they’re injecting life into inanimate objects like the bouncy rubber balls in Sony Bravia’s first commercial.
Regarding the damages part, I think rubber balls don’t cause much harm (although they do set off car alarms as heard in their ‘the making of’ video), while the Paint commercial was filmed on evacuated and abandoned apartments awaiting for redevelopment. I have no details on the Pyramid one though, while for the Play-Doh commercial they’ve used hundreds of kilograms of plasticine for the shoot. The big red bunny is actually not made up of Play-Doh, but just foam and red paint.
WAHHHH. oh my gosh. ur the dude responsible for making me addicted to bravia advertisments =) eeesh how i wish bravia would come to KL to make an advertisment some time. itd be pretty cool featuring the twin towers or sth =)
but oh gosh imagine how many people are gonna complain about the mess they brought, nevertheless pretty cool ads.
psst: i still dont feel like buying sony products hehe
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@sue: Oh, you like them too! I’m not sure what idea do they have in mind for the next like.no.other commercial, but I hope that they can keep coming up with fantastic ideas regardless of where the commercial is shot. You wish they’ll come to Malaysia because you’ll get to witness the grandeur of the whole preparation process? I have the same sentiments about that as well.
Of course they do cleanup after shooting their advertisement. If they didn’t, a huge uproar would have ensued (imagine the apartment one is living in is splashed over with paint) – anyway, for the Paint commercial, the apartment blocks were slated for demolishing work, that’s why they can do almost whatever they want to it (haha!)
Why not Sony?
ahhh yes, imagine the i get to see the behind the scenes of the commercial if it was done in KL. OH I might actually appear on tv tooo!! Ahhhhh.. Ok, im dreaming too much.
Why need Sony when theres Canon?? Haha. But for tv, I think Id rather buy panasonic or toshiba =) just a personal preference.
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@sue: Ah, I shall not dwell into the brand loyalty debate, teehee! I’m not sure which brand will I prefer for HDTV though, since I don’t watch TV most of the time (YouTube and Vimeo are so much better), I don’t know what’s so exciting about having such a high refresh rate (so fast that the human eyes cannot detect it, probably) and high resolution. Normal cathode ray TVs will suit me just fine, haha!
Hello!
Teddy, I’m also a university undergraduate ! However, my professional class is Mechanical design and manufacturing, but I enjoy the Internet, enjoy marketing. Your designs looks great.
Would like to make friends with me! Badly my english is poor!
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@SEO Make Money: Hi there, nice to meet you! Oh, we’re studying science, so not much difference actually, heh. I’m majoring in biological sciences – and I’m yet to find how relevant is that to my love for web design. Hmmm.
It’s okay! At least I can still understand you :) no worries!
I will graduated soon, But this year’s economic crisis, So I have no work now. It’s badly. In my opinion, biological sciences in my country are not popular.
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