Cinema Adverts - What are the best and worst?
There's a part of the cinema experience that is often overlooked, a part that we may complain about whenever we head to see a film, and yet can often provide an interesting, entertaining and insightful moment before the film. I am of course talking about the adverts, or commercials if you will.
Some of them can be visually stunning, some hilarious, and some just downright annoying. Either way they are doing their job, but which do you find the best and worst?
Before a film, and even the trailers, you have to sit through the dreaded adverts (or commercials). Once this wasn't too bad because there wasn't that many, but now there's much more to contend with and for a while it was mind numbing.
The adverts would be straight copies of the television ones, or extremely cheap adverts for the local stores. They were a pain to sit through and you would rather try turning up late to avoid them, but then you might miss getting a decent seat.
However something has happened, and for the UK it has definitely been since the introduction of the Orange adverts. Companies and the marketing people they hire have taken the advertising up a notch and we're seeing some superb adverts on the big screen. Visually exciting, dramatic even, and some very funny ones.
So in a break from the serious features that we've been discussing, let's look before the film to the cinema adverts (commercials), and see what you think are the best and worst.
I love the Orange adverts. For those of you who haven't seen them they are hilarious, here's the setup. A big star comes to the Orange Film Production board to pitch their film, usually it's something dramatic. The Orange board pretend to listen and understand and then just rip the entire story apart to fit in something about mobile phones, you see that's what they sell.
They've used stars such as Patrick Swayze, Darth Vader, Spike Lee, and there's always some incredible one liners. Recently they've taken the concept out to the actors on set, and it's equally funny to see them up against Michael Madsen.
Sky Sports have produced some visually wonderful trailers to show off Sports in HD. The skateboarder flying over the incredibly huge jumps is fantastic, or the slow motion cricket. Combined with the music they produce something much more cinematic.
Here are a few of the adverts mentioned so far, just in case you haven't seen them:
Sky Sports Skateboarding
(Note that it takes a few moments before it starts to play)
Orange and Patrick Swayze
Orange and Steven Seagal
Orange and Darth Vader
Orange and Michael Madsen
The Discovery Channel have come up with a couple of great ones too. The gazelle or buck racing across the plains being filmed in slow motion from a helicopter. Then there's the stunning advert which starts off with the lovely birds standing by a pool, one approaches slowly and drinks a little water, the music is soft jazz, and then in a leap inducing moment, a crocodile bursts from the water and grabs the bird in its mouth. Yet the camera remains on the bird, trapped in its jaws and slowly being dragged under the water, and while that music plays there's a final horrifying moment as the water hits the bird's eye and it blinks, trapped in the jaws of the crocodile and still alive.
Now I am aware that you'll have different adverts from different countries so spend a moment describing them too, or better still link to any footage you can find of them. It would also be interesting to hear how long you have to
So what are your favourite cinema adverts (commercials), and what are the ones you hate to see? Do you hate them entirely, and just keep turning up late?
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