Television – Page 18

Recently, I got hold of the Jonny Quest theme, and while listening to it, I was sent on a nostalgic trip down memory lane-thinking about all those (great) cartoons I used to watch when I was young. Comparing those to the trash they dish out now, I feel so sorry for the present generation of kiddos, who missed out on greats like Jonny Quest, The Centurions, and my personal favourite, Batman: The Animated Series.

Not only did these cartoons incorporate some good animation with innovative ideas, but they also had a soundtrack to die for. Thinking about it now, I think that the these shows were just helped by the innovative intros with the awesome soundtracks they had. Like, in the intro for Batman, the name of the show isn’t mentioned even once, yet you will know that the thing’s about Batman. The series was dark, it was mature, yet it could be watched by kids. Shirley Walker’s music really captured the essence of Batman in just one minute.
As for Jonny Quest, maybe the Wachowski brothers got the idea for things green while watching its opening. The black and green scenes on the Grand Canyon thingie was as innovative as it gets. And then, the ‘Questworld‘, a virtual reality created by Jonny’s father, introduced the cartoon watching public to 3-D animes.
Comparing this innovation and care with which cartoons were drawn up back then, with today’s fare, I can only think, “What the heck happened to the creativity out there??”. I just can’t get the logic behind all that Chinese/Japanese (I don’t know what, I don’t care what) programming on Cartoon Network and other cartoon channels. They all look the same, with the same chinky characters, same pathetic dubbing, crummy storylines and even crummier music. In front of the aforementioned cartoons, they look like cheap candy floss-heck they don’t force you to think, they don’t have edge of the seat action, and on the whole, they JUST AREN’T ANY FUN!!! True, they have taken the world by storm, but at least try exposing the present cartoon watchers to Batman and the likes.
Today, it’s either that Chinese/Japanese trash or the evergreen, ever repeated Tom and Jerry and Scooby Doo. As concepts, they don’t have much wrong with them, but for how long can you watch the same cat and mouse episodes, or the inconsistent animation (on Scooby Doo. Watch carefully, the backgrounds keep changing in close up scenes and wide shots). And then, there’s the inexplicable death lack of new programming from Hannah Barbara and Warner Bros. Maybe, I’m just sore because they pulled off my favourite shows (and am too prejudiced to watch the new ones), or maybe, others too are feeling this crunch, and this really is a genuine problem. I just hope it’s the latter….

A slight introduction first. Mad Ads is the first in a category of posts I plan to do, on various advertisements in popular media – partly because they’re plenty and I can finish it off in 100 words and still call it a review (something I can’t do for movies); but mainly because I like advertisements. Strange, eh?

In the very beginning, I declare that this post is NOT sponsored by Sony – I just love their ad anyway. It’s the bouncing balls ad of Sony Bravia. At first when I’d seen it, I marveled at the fact how far computer-generated animation had progressed – I was fascinated by how they could have accomplished such a realistic effect using computer-generated imagery (CGI).

Then I came across the ad again, and again; each time, more doubt creeped in on how they’d achieved it. I finally ran a Yahoo! Search on it today, and I was stunned to know that they actually let loose 250000 superballs in a San Francisco block for the ad. Hell, the advert is so f**king good it even has a website (an official one, I think) dedicated to it at www.bravia-advert.com. Danish director Nicolai Fuglsig made the ad. Here’s an excerpt on how they did it:

In an age when CGI is commonplace, this makes the commercial all the more extraordinary. Every single frame was shot over two days – with the main sequence involving a 23-man camera crew and only one chance to get it right.

An entire block was closed off and special compressed-air cannons shot the balls into the air, while earth moving equipment poured thousands down the street. Not that you’d know it from the finished product, but these balls can do some damage, so all the cars were props and crew members went so far as to having protective shields and crash helmets.

But when you get it right, you get it right. The goal at the beginning was to deliver a “really simple, visual celebration of colour”. We think you’ll agree the results speak for themselves.

Even the soundtrack, Heartbeats by Jose Gonzalez, is amazing. That’s what I liked about this ad – it didn’t hardsell any features, it just tried to capture the human emotion, of our love for enriching visual experiences.