Art & Copy

The opening maked it seem like it's going to be a discovery channel show focusing on ants building their hill. Different from the quirky cover of the DVD. When it gets into it, getting into the credit sequence with the superimposed titles and everything, you can tell this is going to be a pretty tight doc.

It's actually pretty funny that I watched this the day after watching Mad Men. I felt like I was doing after school homework to prepare myself for next week's episode. This one was about the ads we see everyday, where they come from, and who made them. Sort of. One of the comments for the IMDb page for this movie says "All copy, no art," and that's true. They talked to the copy writers about how they came up the slogans for the ads (I love NY, etc), but they didn't talk to the artists who brought them to life. That was a missing perspective I think.

It's an interesting take to begin it with the guys who put up the billboard sign, then segue into the guys (and gals) behind the signs. I don't know if I like it or not, but it was different. As I got into it, I think it became more distracting. It worked with the shots of the beautifully framed people on the street and sky/city/day shots, and it all added tonally to the film, but I'm still trying to figure out if that's actually what they were going for or if it was mostly used for b-roll to cut the interview footage around. Sometimes the footage was too on the nose (the long shot of the Steelers tattoo while talking about symbols and logos), and sometimes it's not on the nose enough. It's a strange dynamic.

It was very nicely shot. I loved the look and the tone, but I feel like, overall, something was sort of missing. Maybe there wasn't enough explored there and some of what they did explore didn't gel with the rest of the doc. I feel like it's similar to the b-roll from Si, Puedes. It's generic stuff and we needed to fit over the interviews and cut around. I feel like it wasn't full enough. There's so much to explore when it comes to advertising, but I feel like they just scratched the surface content-wise. But maybe it's my problem and I went into it expecting something else.