Lesson #1 of YouTube captioning: don’t rely on automatic captioning. But the mighty media empire behind The Young Turks couldn’t hire someone from Fiverr to vet the automatic captioning, thus saving Miss Kasparian from the indignity of uttering “balls deep” instead of the Hepatitus C drug Solvaldi?
But it was only one ball, just a single ball, that was deep, you say. Be accurate, man! Yes, yes: one ball only. But whoever heard that?
It’s the type of TV commercial we’ve grown accustomed to: the mock feel-good reality event with actors portraying actual people. In this one for pasta sauce company Prego, my bullshit detector maxed out.
1 – An event crew sets up dinner. It’s well-staged, designed for effect: wood chairs with wicker seats, long wood table, colorful glasses. It feels traditional.
2 – Establishing shot of an unnamed East L.A.-type location.
3 – The previous shot featured street vendors in a vibrant community. Interesting to note that one version of the commercial says “San Diego” in the lower left; another version has “San Diego” stripped from it, or perhaps never added in the first place.
4 – Skateboarding student talks about how kids in his area don’t usually go to college.
5 – Another student talks about his anxieties in going to college: he’s feeling pressure because he doesn’t want to let people down.
6 – Students gradually begin arriving at the campus. We get a brief glimpse of a sign reading “UC San Diego International Faculty & Scholar Office.”
7 – Dinner being made.
8 – Students settle into meal. A giveaway statement when student says that he learns “at every meal,” as if this were an on-going event.
9 – End: point made that you can make family in many ways. The family here is connected by the fact that all are the first in their families to go to college.
Only after some digging did I discover that these are real high school students bound for college and, interestingly enough, it is a real event. Or at least a simulation of a real event.
Campbell’s (owner of Prego brand) press release says that the students come from San Diego-based Reality Changers, a charitable organization with a “mission to provide youth with academic support, financial assistance and leadership training to become college graduates.”
Reality Changers has done immense good work. Lately, though, its founder, Christopher Yanov, is being accused of running Reality Changers as his personal fiefdom–and a poorly run fiefdom at that. On July 14, 2017, four board members resigned, saying, of the founder, “…you have resisted our efforts to put the plans, processes and people in place to avoid the near-disasters of the recent past.” (emphasis added) My take: Reality Changers is a fantastically worthy organization, but it needs serious oversight before it goes over the precipice. Whatever the case, this article is not about Reality Changers.
Yin Rani, a Campbell’s marketing exec, says in the press release that it’s hard to be anxious when you’re “spilling crumbs or a little pasta-sauce splatter. Bringing people together more often to share a family meal is at the heart of Prego’s purpose.” I thought the heart of Prego’s purpose was to increase market share and return profits to Campbell’s, but I guess I was mistaken. The hashtag is #LoveTheSplatter.
The filmed event is based on real dinners that Reality Changers conducts on a regular basis.
The truly head-scratching thing about this commercial is its lack of context. Slathering your ad with too much information about the charitable partner reeks of astroturfing and can backfire on you. Viewers call instant bullshit on ads that cloak themselves in just a little bit too much of the charitable group. But this ad tips so far in the opposite direction that it looks fake. And the first shot, juxtaposing the Tuscany-worthy wood table with UCSC’s Brutalist architecture campus, does not help the viewer get off on the right foot.
The concept of “Welcome to the Family” is novel and refreshing: families aren’t just bound by blood but by shared experiences. Will Campbell’s explore other “families”?
Ad Drops: July 17, 2017
Ad Hits YouTube: July 23, 2017
Client: Campbell’s Soup
Brand: Prego
The evolution of the TV talk show set only lightly mirrors design changes that were going on in the rest of the world at the time. Plaids, bold colors, African tribal prints, rubber plants–whatever was happening at the world outside migrated into the studio set. But for the most part, these are not meant to be real. They are surreal environments, where everyone sits facing one direction. Where one man has a desk yet no one else does. Where the person in the chair closest to that man’s desk is the favored one, and everyone else is pretty much ignored. This is the world of the TV talk show.
Large scale models are simply diabolical. Models of any scale can play with your imagination, but you always know what’s real and what’s fake. When that train, plane, or car model is, say, 14 inches long–normal scale model size, more or less–your mind quickly adapts to the concept because it knows this is a model. And your mind deposits what you’re seeing into its familiar, convenient file folder called “scale models.”
But when the scale is large, your cognition wavers on the real vs. fake question. When your logical mind and eye look at a 1:2 (or 1/2, half) scale model, it will register the model as fake–but not as rapidly as with smaller scale models. It takes a second, and in that second your mind falls into an uncanny valley of questioning.
Half scale models of large objects like tanks, trucks, and cars are not common, as Fred Heim himself admits. Full scale (1:1) is common, but only with small items like guns.
This half-scale Peterbilt truck was Fred Heim’s first large scale model. Frame is aluminum, sides are powder coated mahogany. Since half-sized truck parts are in short supply (as in: non-existent), Heim had to make practically everything by scratch.
Without Heim and the garage acting as measuring devices, this Peterbilt could easily be mistaken for the real thing.
Like Fred Heim, Ernie Adams is amazingly prolific. For the rest of us, if we were inclined to build a large scale model, it might take us a lifetime. For kick-ass modelers like Ernie Adams, it’s all in a day’s work. His Dwarf Car Museum in Maricopa, AZ displays working 5/8 scale models of hot rods and sedans and all sorts of other working vehicular transport.
According to Model Airplane News:
[From] Dave and Greg Hayfield, this monster 300+ (!) pound aircraft is powered by a 650cc Hirth engine spinning a 68-inch, 3-blade carbon-fiber prop.
At 87% of the scale of the original, it begs the question: is this a model or a drone?
Movie makers have long used large scale models to substitute for the real thing, and they are perfect for the job because scale is more difficult to detect in the skies.
In the Bond film Man With the Golden Gun, an RC scale model substitutes for the “real” AMC Gremlin flying car driven (or flown?) by Scaramanga and Knicknack.
Fake cities exist for many reasons: training, propaganda, subterfuge, filming, tourism. Few are meant to be 100% realistic, but some are definitely more realistic than others. Here are our top most realistic fake cities, current and past. Fake cities designed to pull in tourists are left off this list (except for one notable exception in Wales).
It’s Faking: Any generic small town in the U.S.
It’s Really: A tactical training facility located at the FBI Academy, Quantico, VA
How Realistic? Very realistic, though a bit outdated now, with movie theaters and phone booths a rarity on the American landscape now.
Details: Tactical training fake cities tend to be light on realism and details. Trainees just need the basic physical elements blocked out for them–streets, storefronts, doors, halls, and alleys. Realistic signage and other real-world details tend to go by the wayside. Surprisingly, the FBI’s Hogan’s Alley training facility is heavy on detail, with small-town features like a coin-op laundry, bank (Bank of Hogan), hotel (Dogwood Inn), movie theater (Biograph Theater, where John Dillinger was taken down by the FBI in 1934), and row houses.
More: Hogan’s Alley Turns 30 (FBI Official Site)
It’s Faking: A quiet, peaceful, orderly North Korean village.
It’s Really: An unoccupied set of buildings located in North Korea, within the DMZ, apparently meant to spread propaganda and to create an illusion of North Korean prosperity.
How Realistic? Very realistic in the sense that these are real buildings that could be occupied. Unrealistic in the sense that they are occupied by only 200 people (if that).
Details: Controlled by North Korea, Kijong-dong is marooned within the DMZ between South and North Korea. In a U.S. Army publication, Susan Silpasornprasit says
The village maintained by the North (“Propaganda Village”) appears to be merely a facade–mirage of prosperity. No residents have been spotted in its streets. People periodically turn the lights on and off in the buildings and sweep the sidewalks to keep up the ruse. Although, the village keepers apparently forgot to install glass in the windows.
It’s Faking: “An ordinary California suburb,” according to Lockheed’s official statement. More accurately, tiny hamlets spread out across an American rural landscape.
It’s Really: Lockheed’s Burbank, CA airplane manufacturing plant.
How Realistic? Realistic enough from a 5,000 ft. altitude to pass. From the ground, not realistic at all.
Details: In a departure from the usual city-built-on-ground type of thing, which is the way most cities–real or fake–are built, is one of the more extraordinary World War II camouflage efforts. After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941 and Lockheed went into full production, they also needed to hide their extensive Los Angeles area facilities from enemy attack. Col. John F. Ohmer, stationed at March Field, near Moreno Valley, CA, was asked to oversee camouflaging of the entire Burbank plant. Giant expanses of camouflage netting was nothing new, but acres of it certainly was. To add to the realism, fences, fake trees, barns, meandering country roads, and even clotheslines were added to the top of the netting.
More: Lockheed During WWII: Operation Camouflage (Lockheed Official Site)
It’s Faking: A village in Netherlands.
It’s Really: A “dementia village” in Weesp, Netherlands.
How Realistic? Very realistic, since it is a functioning “town” for Alzheimer’s patients.
Details: In Dutch, A weyk or wijk being a group of houses, similar to a village. Hogewyck has, according to its site, “streets, squares, gardens and a park where the residents can safely roam free. Just like any other village Hogeweyk offers a selection of facilities, like a restaurant, a bar and a theatre.”
More: Hogewyck (Official Site)
It’s Faking: An urban street with three story buildings and a replica White House
It’s Really: A training facility for Secret Service in the Beltsville/Laurel area of Southern Maryland.
How Realistic? The White House replica portion is hardly realistic at all, plus it only covers the southern side of the White House. The urban street is not highly detailed.
Details: This replica was built in 1982 at a cost of $381,000, roughly the same as it cost to build the original White House. Plans included a Blair House, too. But judging from the photographs, this was never built.
More: James. J. Rowley Training Center and White House and Secret Service Official Site
