Advert Analysis (Part 2 of 3)

Bouncy balls advert - Song Bravia


The Sony Bravia "Balls" advert is a very simple concept but it takes in the shape of a lage scale event. Sony went to San Francisco and blocked of multiple streets to clear pedestrians and cars from the filing area. They then took 1000's of multicoloured bouncy balls and used a cannon to shoot them into the air and down the street. The balls bounced around the street crashing into others and rolled down into roads. This simple idea of taking bouncy balls and throwing them down the street is good, but when you scale it up it becomes an iconic advert.

The ad starts with some introductory shots of the streets of San Francisco, then cuts to some bouncy balls in slow motion and then back to the empty streets. I think the quick shot of the bouncy balls is to give the audience an idea of that is going on, rather then just watching  empty streets an wondering what's going on. The next shot is of 1000's of the coloured balls all being seeming launched into the air and down the street. Throughout the rest of the advert the video cuts to multiple different shots of the coloured balls bouncing around the streets of San Francisco. At the end the tagline "Colour, like no other"  appears and then the whole video fades to black only showing only the text "Sony Bravia" and the TV itself.

The aim of the advertisement is to convince the audience that the Sony Bravia is the best colour TV available. As with all advertisements you want to convince your audience that your product is the best. The tag line "Colour, like no other" directly relates to the ad itself, all the bouncy balls are different colours making the advert very colourful with 1000's of different colours flying around. What makes this advertisement good is that Sony really did preform this event, and in my opinion it wouldn't look as good  if the balls were animated in either 3D or 2D.

Another thing that makes this ad good is that it's very original, it's never been done before, and even if it has been done before it wasn't on such a great scale as sony's. event. A good piece of editing is the use of slow motion. When the film is sped up or played at normal speed the bouncy balls shoot across the screen and look like deadly projectiles. But with the use of slow motion the balls float through the street looking elegant and weightless. Although the camera seems to be moving at normal speed so it creates the effect that this isn't slow motion, but the balls are gliding through the air.

Like the dancing robot the advert is very simple but thanks to clever camera techniques such as a sped up camera and slow motion the ad creates a very effect piece of film.  In my opinion the advert's success is again, originality, creativity and with the addition of being that this was a large event and really preformed it, rather then just easily animating it with CGI.