Bravo Bravia

The short video I chose to analyze is a Sony Bravia commercial which chronicles a mass of bouncy balls traveling down the streets of San Francisco. It has been posted on youTube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oP5J4W5GQ3w, and along with two other Bravia commercials and one for Schwepps, it is a favorite of mine. The use of color is the main focus and point of the commercial, advertising televisions, comes across very clearly. There are several hundred neon colored bouncy balls featured in the film and they are launched down the hilly streets of San Francisco and the footage simply captures this. The slow, melancholy song that plays in the background, Heartbeats by Jose Gonzales, contrasts the fast action of what one would assume the actual scene looked like. The video is slowed down to fully appreciate the beauty of the orbs of color ricocheting down alleys and off of trashcans. At one point in the two and a half minute film a frog jumps out of a rain pipe and joins the bouncy balls in a slow hop down the street. The character of the vibrant city of San Francisco is shown in this short film with bystanders in awe and the trademark architecture in the background. The fact that this is a commercial works well for my continuing focus in class. This particular company uses a very artistic approaching to selling televisions, and the clay bunnies in New York and paint “fireworks” exemplify the message of “colour” that Bravia televisions apparently possess. Watching each of these advertisements I have wished I could have been there while the creative team was filming them. The use of time in each of them gives the viewer a sense of an almost magical occurrence, something of a dream world. Perhaps that’s what they were going for; dreams and dollar signs.