The visual storytelling of James Cameron’s Avatar

Todd Cherniawsky, supervising art director, could be considered the real storyteller behind Avatar, which opened in 3D this weekend. You could almost turn off the dialogue and not only still understand what’ s happening, but understand it better.

The quickest possible synopsis: wheelchair-bound ex-Marine Jake Scully signs up for a tour on the moon Pandora to run an Avatar—a host body fusing the pilot’s DNA with a native Na’vi body—for a research project bound to the rapacious agenda of a mining company protected by a Marine contingent.

Much of the plotted tension, between the Na’vi, who live completely in harmony with nature in a mysterious biological link, and the forces that would uproot them in search of the valuable mineral “Unobtanium,” happens visually. To work, the film needs you to connect with the Na’vi, but rather than courting your brain with narrative, it courts your eyes, cutting from green, blue, and phosphorescent forests of the moon surface to the dusty green and gray of the mining base. (It’s like stepping out into the lobby after having been inside a really good aquarium).

Whatever your intellectual or moral reaction might be to real-world stories of environmental destruction, your senses revolt in response to any threat to the Na’vi’s forest home.

The art directors deserve a lot of credit, Oscars really, but what they’ve done is directly translate the contents of film director James Cameron’s imagination. As a London Globe and Mail interview reveals, Cameron, whose past films include Terminator, The Abyss, and Titanic, has a historical ambivalence for technology going back to his first screenplay, as well as a personal passion for diving and the sea. You don’t have to look to hard for those influences in the imagery of Avatar. Cameron is himself an artist, if not a trained one. According to Globe and Mail he started his creative life sketching fantasy creatures in his school notebooks and later went on, after dropping his Physics education for English, to create special effects for director John Carpenter.

Cameron at work. James Cameron’s Avatar: A symphony in blue and green.

To express affection, the Na’vi say, “I see you.” This means a lot for them, a species who relies upon and values the wisdom of the senses. Advice to you, see this movie.

-Eric Hayward

Other pictures credited to Twentieth Century Fox Corporation, 2009.

Worst stock photos of the decade. 1: Business Images

"I'm just thinking through this... Business Problem."

Thinking man. -iStockphoto

"Gather around this spreadsheet, Team, so we can have a Business Discussion. You too, Prince William. And Asian-Girl-Smiling for that matter."

Business people working together in the office. -iStockphoto

It's called "Headset Head..."

...And it's real.

Both from Customer Service: Diptych. -Fotosearch

"With my cellular phone and Business Computer, I am ready for a Business Meeting."

Businessman with laptop. -iStockphoto

Twitter as Counter-Propaganda – #doyoufollowme?

From Cool Twitter Conference, Minneapolis on 12/3.

No Sympathy: Gillette Children’s Unflinching Campaign Against Pity

One of the most common reactions to someone else’s bad news is not knowing what to say. The first instinct is to give comfort, to be positive, to offer advice. Without thinking, we take full responsibility for taking away someone’s pain, someone we perceive as helpless. With only two words Gillette Children’s brand campaign cuts through those assumptions decisively: “Cure Pity.”

Gillette Children’s Specialty Healthcare is a world-renowned, non-profit hospital in Minnesota’s Twin Cities. The integrated campaign, which uses local broadcast, web, and out-of-home advertising to feature stories like Noah’s, inspires a new way of thinking—going from great to greater; from achievement to lasting achievement—as an alternative to our habitual response, which is to go from what we think of as “bad” to slightly better. From disabled to merely able. As a message, Cure Pity is powerful enough to help people start looking at their fellow humans a little differently.

The campaign is as smart and strategic as it is inspired.

Campaigns that cultivate pity induce a feeling of hopelessness that your one, meager contribution can make any difference. Perhaps you make one donation, one time, to shake off the uncomfortable feeling. Instead of pity, a more positive message invites compassion, which is an invitation to a deeper experience of shared humanity. Cure Pity asserts a call to action based on admiration instead of despair. It also subtly positions Gillette Children’s over an unnamed alternative: other hospitals that focus less on fostering quality of life and more on symptoms.

From a visual perspective, the campaign has one unrealized opportunity. It could do much more to pair up the copy with better design. Without both you wonder if an organization is fully committed to its message.

The strength of Cure Pity is storytelling. As a creative achievement, it asserts a social message that also helps a mission-driven organization continue to do great work. Advertising becomes culturally relevant when it can do either one of those things; curing pity does both.

- Eric Hayward

Wendy’s – Now serving Canned Tweets.

Is this for real?

It’s a funny ad with a good song (not so much a jingle, but a “jindle,” that is, an understated indy pop riff, used as background to a concept, instead of the usual maddeningly catchy series of three or four notes) that takes good-natured shots at fast food competitors. There’s also some real intelligence behind the theme itself: “You know when it’s real.”

Authenticity is said to be in high demand, and what makes something seem real is not just the thing itself but the way that it’s packaged. “You know when it’s real” contains both, in a triple meaning (with bacon):

(1) Wendy’s uses real food

“We never freeze em like a hockey puck, or / keep em stuck / like some others may / in a warming tray.” It’s probably safe to take these claims at face value, given the popular understanding that advertisers are not allowed to lie outright. Wendy’s philosophy, the song says, is good old honesty. True or not, the claims are Wendy’s way of setting up the field in its favor, creating its own definition of “real” that it can’t fail to fulfill: real means serving food that’s been recently cooked, using “fresh,” and not frozen, beef. I doubt we take time much time to question what fresh means, either.

(2) And you know it

Including “you” is one of the most inspired strategies in Wendy’s campaign. The desire to find things out for ourselves instead of from authority is a distinctly American quality; intentionally or not, the close-up of a timeworn “Declaration of Real,” the actor dressed as a craggy Abe Lincoln, and the fake Statue of Liberty featured in the spot are echoes of this fierce independence. Social networking has given this quality a shot of steroids. People have banded together against crappy products and their promises. Smart advertising has become more like a petition and less like propaganda in response. By putting You in the picture, Wendy’s syncs itself up with this cultural shift. It also frees itself from the burden of proof, introducing a completely subjective definition for what’s real.

3) People really like Wendy’s

How to bring up the next point without trotting out the overwrought but ever true McLuhanism… it’s impossible. The medium is the message, and in the online arm of this integrated campaign, a Wendy’s Real Time microsite features what appear to be live Tweets popping up in little dialogue boxes. It’s a long time coming; somebody has invented a bot that mines Tweets for certain keywords and re-Tweets them. “Hungry” appears to be one of those words. Not necessarily hungry for Wendy’s, although the restaurant is occasionally mentioned.  Perhaps there are canned Tweets mixed in among the authentic ones.

Wendy’s retweets – real or canned?

Some of the Tweets have nothing to do with food or Wendy’s at all. They just reflect online chatter, a discussion Wendy’s wants you to believe it’s a part of. But are these actually authentic Twitter accounts?

You’re skeptical at first. The Tweets really do look engineered (some of them must be; stay long enough on the sight and you will see some repeats). But if you click on any one of them, you do end up on someone’s Twitter profile. I tried it. There was @baby_ge0rge, whose latest update said, “#whatsbetter Booty or Breasts???” It depends I guess. Are they real?

- Eric Hayward

Reflux Everything – The new Pepsi anthem.

In the recent Pepsi “Anthem” spot, clips of Bob Dylan in the ’60s, wearing classic Ray Bans, and present-day clips of “will.i.am,” are spliced together with scraps of historic and contemporary footage.  The soundtrack is Dylan’s Forever Young.  The first airing probably kicked off a big spike in downloads (of the original track; the remix is not so good), and bids for vintage frames on eBay.  Does it add anything to your feelings bout Pepsi?

Pepsi didn’t dig too far to find a concept — people still do things they did in the sixties.  There was music then; there’s music now.  We had a gruesome and unpopular war back then; we also have one now.  In the sixties we had skateboards and watched Gumby. Today we have skateboards and watch Shrek.  Good TV commercials create a good feeling and then give you something to do about it.  It’s hard to find any of that here.

“Refresh Everything” is the new Pepsi Anthem.  Is refreshment what people want from Pepsi?  Pepsi is refreshing when you’ve eaten a lot of salt.  It will also take the edge off a serious migraine.

Targeted at the millenial generation, “refresh” is internet terminology, for the kids, with their texting and such. So it follows that Refresheverything.com mimics the experience of a social utility.  Like a social utility, what appears to be user-posted content takes the lead over design and copy, which don’t come off authentically, but instead, as  afterthoughts.  It’s alleged that millenials are more socially conscious, and the site strategy reaches for that too.  A vague social message is layered somewhat awkwardly on top of what is still, at best, a soft drink brand, not a make-a-difference brand.  Pepsi could start making a difference by paying the dentist bills of a million Americans.

Here’s a classic example of American TV advertising that does something similar, but much better:

You catch yourself humming along to this.  If you’re pre-millenial, it evokes wistful memories of your childhood. Be honest: you get a little choked up.  The song, and the images in the ad (minus the man with sideburns wearing all white, who evokes an association with Jonestown) uplift you to a state of bonhomie for the whole damn world, and while you’re there, you’re thinking “Why not drink a Coke?”

Here’s another ad, this time from Diet Coke:

This ad is just about sparkles that move in an infectious way to create a feeling, that grows, and at the end you think you might as well drink a Diet Coke, because it’s kind of sparkly too.  Rumors say Diet Coke is a nerve toxin.  But it does quench your thirst, and you don’t feel guilty drinking it, because you’d rather be forgetful, slur your speech, or shout curses at people, than get fat.

The Pepsi ad doesn’t do either thing, create a good feeling or make you thirsty.  But it does make me want to look around on eBay for a pair of vintage Ray Bans.  Maybe Pepsi should sell them.  Apparently everything else is for sale, including Bob Dylan.

-Eric Hayward

I’d like to buy the world a Coke – the new Pepsi brand campaign

Photo from Spinsucks.com

Rushing along Southbound 35W in Minneapolis you get a quick look at one of the new Pepsi billboards.

It’s amazing where your mind can go in a single second.  The new brandmark looks a lot like a tailfin logo for a small airline serving former Soviet republics.  The once-iconic red and blue encroach on a squashed version of the classic Pepsi swoosh.  In these ads, the logo is sitting on a flat blue background with the one-word headline Fabulous.  If you’re a person who  notices typefaces this one won’t feel very inspired, and not to get too particular, but there’s something about the width of the characters and the way they are spaced that seems a little off.  You wish you could tell somebody to squoosh them together, just a little.

So what’s fabulous?  A trip to where?  Maybe the bottom of the ocean, minus cash and passport.

This series of ads are part of Pepsi’s global re-branding (you may also have seen the TV spot in early ’09) which is focused on millenials.  It’s part of an effort to respond, as many brands are doing, to the social aesthetic of social media.  You see a better example of the strategy when you visit the Refresh Everything site.  It looks kind of like a generic and impersonal MySpace page, without the personal photos or found images and patterns people use as wallpaper on social utilities.

When the social media aesthetic is pulled off effectively, it evokes an immediate sense that behind what you’re seeing and reading is a poster, vs. a propagandist.  It personalizes brands.  Pixelated doesn’t look unsophisticated anymore, because authenticity has supplanted slickness, and authentic content looks like a post, from a guy or girl out there on the internet, whose posts you read.  Pepsi’s site looks just “designed” enough to appear inauthentic, but not enough to deliver the fashion, awe and electricity you’re looking for in a big brand.  You’ve got to go one way or the other.

Maybe someday, manufacturers and their agencies will figure out how the ads we see can actually be assembled and posted by our friends, and not just look that way.  That would be the essence of social marketing.  Until they can do that, brands, at least soda brands, should go for the look of a blockbuster and not a home video.  I like to see what my friends are doing, but if you know my friends, you probably wouldn’t want them bottling your soft drinks.

Komplexify

- Eric Hayward

Far From the Clank of Crowds

[April 24, 2001] “Starting from fish-shape Paumanok where I was born, Well-begotten, and rais’d by a perfect mother…” Walt Whitman. On my first visit to San Francisco I had such a sense of coming home, of belonging, that I couldn’t help but vow to live there one day. Being prone to melodrama, I’ve made and not kept many such vows: I vowed to move to both LA and New Orleans upon visiting those cities too, feeling both times that I had discovered aspects of myself. But these were mostly bad aspects that, if exercised, would probably result in either prolonged or sudden self-destruction. For people like me, subject to compulsiveness and flights of egotism, these are evil, city-sized Disney Worlds — places where I’d surely end up lingering in inflated shallowness or burning out on too much soul-eating empty fun. The idea of moving to San Francisco stuck though, it stuck past any number of subsequent vows and half-boiled ideas. How couldn’t it? I had some of the best moments of my life on a single afternoon, when I took a cable car trip into North Beach. I remember walking past historic sites like the “hungry i” (a club where Lenny Bruce performed and Jack Kerouac read his poetry — I’m told it’s now a pornographic movie theater) and being hit with a sudden burst of weird, alien energy. It was as if it came from the place itself, rolled in off the bay and wound through the streets, picking up the dead echoes of countless poets and musicians. It descended upon me in a sudden storm, finding me just manic and wired enough to be receptive. Truly it was a sense of being haunted by artists, feverish whisperings of a rich creative past. And it was a summoning. Even the weather was perfect, as if made to suit a taste for temperate climates completely at odds with my otherwise extreme approach to the world. I distinctly remember returning from that day trip to a neighborhood (somewhere off of Dolores St. I think) where I was staying with friends of colleagues. I got off the cable car and turned around to orient myself, not expecting to see anything. Instead, I saw a beautiful site: a steep winding hill, studded with palm trees and life-sized doll houses, eventually leading all the way to the water. And then this breeze blew past me, simultaneously warm and cool and perfect, ruffling the plant life peeking over the pale orange stucco wall surrounding the home I was standing next to. The temperature and cool smell of that late afternoon breeze was a moment in which San Francisco defined itself to me. It was also one of my life’s defining moments. If I wanted to play the Blame Game — one of my favorites — I would fault our tech industry for ruining my chances of ever living in San Francisco. Like New York, and by extension the New York Metro area where I’ve spent my entire life, most of the West Coast has just become way too financially prohibitive to risk now that I have a three-month-old son. Unless, that is, we become one of those toothless stoned hippy families begging for change in Haight Ashbury. Oh I’m sure we could probably make it work somehow, but my point is, for what? It sounds like all the genuine magic is being pushed out anyway, rolled flat by ever increasing traffic while the creative spirit continues to be siphoned off into the towering engines of vaporware. And those quaint and playfully arcane Edwardian homes lining the rolling streets of my memory — homes I’d imagined to be full of special, bright people flushed with good health — are probably now all populated by unappreciative yuppies. Oh lamented dreams of sunlight spilling through the bay window across the table of my breakfast nook! The table where I’d write columns, novels, essays, articles, then step out the door and take dog and kid down to Golden Gate Park, where the great “Be-In” was staged, where Allen Ginsberg once ran around clashing finger cymbals and shouting pseudo-Buddhist aphorisms There’s a point to all this, of course. Finding out that San Francisco was subject to the same qualities I’d hoped some day to escape — not so much the cost but the congestion, the traffic, the exclusivity — was seriously depressing. It was the small death of a secret dream. Perhaps the reason that new places can impact me so fiercely is that I wrongfully assume them to be immune from all the things I’ve grown weary of in a lifetime of moping around various New York Metro suburbs. Is anyone else tired of having to plan their lane changes ten minutes ahead of time? Can anyone relate? Is there some point on your daily commute where you have to get over into a right or left lane for an eventual turn, and if you do it too early you’ll get stuck in the perpetual turning lane, and if you do it too late you have to drive fifteen minutes out of your way just to turn around? Is anyone else troubled by a world in which fifteen minutes even means anything? It shouldn’t, unless you’re trying to resuscitate somebody or reattach their severed limb. It shouldn’t mean anything at all. In response to traffic, my road rage has gotten terrible. Well not that bad, but I regularly blare my horn or flash my brights at idiot drivers only to feel incredibly embarrassed upon getting stuck next to them at a stop light. Then I’m forced into playing the “I don’t see you” game: staring straight ahead, fiddling with some feigned piece of lint on the dashboard, rummaging aimlessly through my CD collection. Most of my righteous indignation at abrupt lane-changers, speeders, etc. is of course expended in the closed cabin of our own car. Like many kids, we’re pretty sure my son’s first word will be a version of “mother” — though it will probably bear an unfortunate two-syllable suffix. I also suffer from “aisle rage” — having to regularly stifle a strong urge to hurl my shopping cart into other consumers at our overpopulated grocery store; and “line rage,” expressed through an agitated huffing and shifting of weight in response to inefficiently handled customer queues. Am I a lunatic? Am I due to pull a Michael Douglas some time soon? (see Falling Down for what could’ve been, if handled right, one of our better filmic representations of modern life). I’m definitely high strung, neurotic, histrionic, whatever. But mostly I’m just crowded. I need to go somewhere where I can experience that curious paradox: more physical space to move around in and yet a simultaneous feeling of more “closeness” with other people, e.g. neighbors. Our current quadruplex apartment in Stamford, Connecticut for example seems to stand about five feet from the aluminum-sided monstrosity right next to it, and yet we’ve shared maybe ten words with our house mates, and none with our neighbors, ever. Even where I grew up on Long Island I couldn’t tell you the names of half the people on our street, much less their professions, whether they kept bodies in the basement, or if they have a hobby. All of this is as opposed to the American Midwest, the simple conclusion to the above, which has really served as a lengthy introduction. In the Midwest, or what I’ve seen of it anyway, people are so mellow that a Long Islander sometimes doesn’t know how to deal with it. An example: having accidentally gotten into the turning lane on a busy street in Sioux Falls, South Dakota recently, I naturally started to freak out. How long would I be stuck there, waving frantically, my other hand gripped to the wheel? Would I pull out into a hellish chorus of blaring horns? Would my car be smashed, would I be dragged from the wreckage and beaten senseless? I was of course shocked to learn from my girlfriend, a native, that people will actually willingly let you back in and without giving you an impatient ushering wave or a reluctant grimace. And then there are the rents. There is actually the potential to realize that “your rent should be one third of your income” adage that’s become so ridiculous by East Coast standards, where your rent is equivalent to or exceeds your income. So it is for a mellower and more affordable lifestyle, for the chance to tap into a rather vast support network of grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins, for a profusion of great primary, secondary, and higher forms of education, and for other reasons too numerous to mention that I will leave everything I’ve ever known for the Midwest — in particular, for the Twin Cities region of Minneapolis/St. Paul, in the state of Minnesota. It’s not San Francisco and it certainly isn’t New Orleans. But it has lots of art, progressive politics, nice people, lots of family, and most importantly, a slower pace — and neighboring states that harbor some of geology’s most exquisite creations. I will be leaving behind a prince of a brother and a perfect mother (though I’m trying to get her to defect along with me), as well as a beautiful set of friends. I will leave the Long Island Sound, which has been a constant presence in my life and perhaps abstractly signifies my entire childhood — being the constant background of my earliest memories. I have never lived more than five to ten minutes from this body of water: The biggest geographical relocation I ever made was only to cross it, moving to Connecticut, and it still faces the back of our current house. So the Sound deserved its own good bye, which I gave it. Last week I went and stood looking out at the water, listening to the gulls, thinking, “I am from there,” feeling sad. As for San Francisco, perhaps one day when I am a wealthy columnist, and given the agreement of my family, I will realize my dream of a great bay window overlooking windy streets and breeze-tousled palms. That may be at a time when the information/communication frenzy has reached a plateau, people are satisfied with the number of available ways they can reach other, and what is now our current wave of technology becomes thoroughly appliance-like, household, and quotidian. Then the real estate will mellow out a little and the entrepreneurs can move somewhere else to set about drafting the next short-lived trend. Until then, perhaps these current residents can at least make sure they are appreciative of their beautiful city. Maybe they can do something suitably San Franciscan once in a while, like light some incense and thank the universe for their good fortune. Eric Hayward welcomes comments and offers of rent-free accommodation at eric@erichayward.com.

it’s about your soul…