Adland_ Searching for the Meaning of Life on a Branded Planet - James P. Othmer [51]
The next day we had our preproduction meeting via videocon-ference with the clients and agency folks back in the States. This included the mandatory passionate discussions about quotidian things like how scuffed the work boots should be, how many days of growth construction worker number four should have, and, of course, the many ways in which the product would be filmed.
If my presence in South Africa was at all justified, it was because of the way I coached the director about how to talk yogurt footage with the client. “You cannot spend too much time talking about color, texture, and consistency. The way the spoon dips in, the swirl, the drip, should be discussed with love and a touch of eroticism. To the client this is a ten-second piece of soft-core pornography about a camera making love to a seven-ounce cup of yogurt, book-ended by a logo shot and sixteen seconds of incidental human activity.” He nailed it. The picture quality coming from New York was fuzzy, but I was fairly sure that when the director lovingly described the succulent fruit spooned up from the bottom of the yogurt cup, a tear rolled down the chief marketing officer’s cheek.
Next Stop, Hell
Even in the most exclusive neighborhoods of Southern California, a full-blown commercial television shoot can seem decadent and excessive.
Now imagine taking a set with all the perks and trimmings of the most lavish of American productions—air-conditioned trailers, an on-set masseuse, and a gourmet crafts-service staff that hand-delivers everything to you from fresh smoothies and sushi to wine and lobster tails—and plunking it down on the roof of an abandoned parking garage in a decimated section of downtown Johannesburg.
Now imagine that you’re on just such a set, and from America, circa 2000, and slightly disoriented, and completely hungover, and you’re looking over the edge of said parking garage at thousands of black workers waiting in maddening queues five stories below for buses to take them to low-paying jobs in the white suburbs, and try to keep yourself from feeling like you will soon be going straight to hell.
Hypothetically, of course.
It went on all day, the desolation below and the $350,000 production above. There were arguments, of course, about the level of love and attention given to the swirl shot of the yogurt, or whether or not someone would use silverware on a construction site. Sides were taken. Interventions were made. Entreaties for peace went ignored. The client felt as if I had let him down. The director didn’t want to talk to me anymore. In the eyes of the client I was afraid of the director. In the eyes of the director I had sold my soul to the god Acidophilus.
Between setups I called my wife. As we spoke, I looked across the street at a billboard next to a burned-out building, squatters gathered around a campfire below. The billboard featured a picture of glistening skyscrapers and had this headline: JOHANNESBURG CENTRAL BUSINESS DISTRICT: THE FUTURE IS NOW!
I asked to speak with my daughter, and told her that I’d be home soon. When I hung up, I took out the tiny Instamatic camera I’d purchased at the airport and aimed it over the side of the building, away from our production. I wanted to get the juxtaposition of the squatters and the bullshit billboard. I clicked, even though I knew it wouldn’t come out. I knew it would develop as a vague speck in an undefined space.
From Russia, with NanoabsorbersTM
The greatest problem with communication is the illusion that it has been accomplished.
—George Bernard Shaw
Hello, Kitty
Turd-shrinking cat food.
This was what six relatively sane adults and I were talking about, or getting an education about, at seven o’clock at night, hunkered over a tinny speakerphone as siren wails rose up from the gloomy crevasse of Madison Avenue seven floors below, drowning out the voices of six other presumably sane adults, enlightened turd-shrinking-cat-food