The 2005 Sony Bravia ad

https://www.sfgate.com/sf-culture/article/san-francisco-sony-bouncy-ball-ad-20204385.php

by coloneltcb • 1 year ago

281 219 1 year ago

The video in question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spB4ezsQ6II

diggan4• 1 year ago

Absolute travesty to view that video via YouTube though, as the compression destroys the frames when there are hundreds of colorful balls in view.

Anyone know of an alternative source, ideally without the typical internet-friendly/heavy compression?

tantalor• 1 year ago

Here's a 4k "remaster"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UXS6DBD6g0

dredmorbius• 1 year ago

The same problem with confetti and snow in videos, due to compression:

<https://tensorpix.ai/blog/video-compression-snow-confetti>

Video compression functions best where little of the shot changes frame-to-frame. This is also why rapid-cut video performs poorly online.

Synaesthesia• 1 year ago

I watched it, it's not so bad. Anyway, it's not like TV doesn't use compression, and back then it was more primitive MPEG-2.

ginko• 1 year ago

This was a commercial produced for European television in 2005. Barely anyone even had an HDTV back then. I certainly saw it in standard definition when it aired.

Duanemclemore• 1 year ago

I hadn't thought about this in years. It was absolutely dazzling to see at the time, I can't imagine what it was like in person. In retrospect I would also probably chalk this up as the first truly "internet" moment.

zusammen• 1 year ago

I was in San Francisco that week. Ecological issues aside, it was the last time San Francisco felt different in a good way rather than a bad one. The “negative energy” is now too much for me and, when I travel to the Bay Area, I pretty much just stay on-track. I wonder if people who lived in San Francisco from 1965-2005 expected it to last forever.

realityfactchex3• 1 year ago

What city regions have better energy, are good economically, and have natural beauty (ocean, mountain, plants)?

It is easy to find faults with the SF bay area (politics, costs, and derivative issues), but is somewhere actually better?

EDIT: Thanks for the downvotes. It was an honest question, and I badly wanted to be informed, having given the issue in-depth consideration over the years. I wasn't being snarky.

wrs3• 1 year ago

Seattle has those things, IMO. (You didn’t mention weather!)

bombcar2• 1 year ago

Really depends on what you mean by all those. Some would say Sandy Eggo has the beauty, others would contest that Seattle has the economy and mountains.

The people left there are those who like what it has become or are trapped in someway; others have moved.

oofbaroomf• 1 year ago

The Seattle/Bellevue area.

throw8404948k3• 1 year ago

SF is good economicaly? Super expensive, high taxes with no matching infrastructure, hiring people...

Weather is cold and moisty...

There are thousands better places around the world. I would like to hear a pitch, why start company in SF today.

indoordin0saur• 1 year ago

It really is surrounded by amazing natural beauty. However, everything to do with humans has slowly morphed into an unfixable nightmare and it's heartbreaking. I think it's time to throw in the towel, evacuate everyone from the city and let it return to nature as a wildlife preserve.

pj_mukh2• 1 year ago

I'd say Lisbon, Portugal is probably the closest (including Weather, which places like Seattle are lacking), especially because you didn't mention pre-existing tech industry which is probably SF's main differential versus everywhere else. It even has a big red bridge?

P.S: I'm sorry Lisboetas..you are already getting swamped by Digi Nomads, but it's true.

Clamchop4• 1 year ago

I've grown rather fond of San Diego.

sekai• 1 year ago

Munich, Germany. Although, the sea is a bit further away.

basisword6• 1 year ago

I think this is bigger than just SF. After the great recession the generally positive atmosphere in the western world never really recovered. Any time it even got close to recovering some new horrible event happened.

deadbabe• 1 year ago

As the world grows more interconnected, the proliferation of news about horrible events happening spreads faster, and even if you personally ignore the news, other people don’t, and this colors the overall mood of society.

There is horror everywhere, and always will be until the end of our days.

supportengineer• 1 year ago

You hit the nail on the head. It's the repeated traumas, year-after-year, with no break.

dkarl• 1 year ago

Positivity has become politically suspect. It's doubly sad to be unhappy about how things are going in the world generally and also to be nervous about enjoying when something goes right. It's sad that making a positive comment about the weather is something I only do with close friends now, and not even all of them. There are people I've known for years, who know what my politics are, who know who I give money to, yet still, if I say something nice about the weather, they have to say "too bad climate isn't weather" or "yeah, but you know in a few months it's going to be terrible, because global warming is real." And none of this drives political engagement or moves anybody's mind in the slightest; it's just a social fashion that arose spontaneously, for no purpose, and which we will enforce zealously until one day it doesn't seem important anymore.

thatfrenchguy2• 1 year ago

I mean, you mean after the 2003-2004 Iraq war, 9/11 in 2001, the stolen election of 2000 & the crash of 2000, the Kosovo war in 1999? There’s always a lot of reasons why the atmosphere can be negative every year.

ianmcgowan• 1 year ago

I moved to "the city" in 1989 from England, and people were complaining then about yuppies and it wasn't the same as the good ol' days of the 60's.

SF seems to be a lot more in-flux compared to other cities, so if you don't like the scene now just wait a few years and a new one will be along :-)

finnthehuman• 1 year ago

When I visited in the 90's I remember conversations mentioning seeing the signs and trying to delay the inevitable end. Whether someone sees that as dooming or prescient is probably a matter of if they moved in before or after 2005.

keoneflick• 1 year ago

The San Francisco I experience is full of positive energy. Sure, maybe if you're visiting and stay in Union Square, that's not what you see. But if you live in the residential neighborhoods and work somewhere nice (such as in the Presidio), there isn't another city in the world I would rather be.

jf• 1 year ago

It seems to me like working from home has transformed the residential neighborhoods. I recently visited Inner Sunset as was astonished at how many people were out and about.

kemiller• 1 year ago

Things got significantly darker after 9/11.

nsxwolf• 1 year ago

How did this ever get through committee?

basisword6• 1 year ago

It's such a memorable ad. It's like the dream of a child actually brought to life.

I've seen this story discussed around the internet over the last few days and found it interesting how younger generations seemed to only view it negatively (pollution, excess, etc). It's quite sad that something that seems like it could be universally enjoyed at the isn't now.

pjc50• 1 year ago

General thing of the internet, really. We've all become used to being rewarded for negativity and critique.

Clamchop4• 1 year ago

There's some irony in this comment. It's also a textbook ad hominem.

I love the ad and the stunt. I would have been as giddy as a child if I'd seen it in person.

It's also rings true to me that it's rather wasteful and destructive in service of selling TVs.

Shrug, what's done is done so I'm free to enjoy it guilt-free while also thinking we probably shouldn't do stunts like this anymore.

bondarchuk2• 1 year ago

Advertising is a cancer on society, just 'cause it's sometimes nice to look at doesn't really change that. IMHO of course.

basisword6• 1 year ago

I'm quite certain a fun video for a Sony Bravia TV from 20 years ago is not comparable to cancer in any way. It's ok to be happy from time to time :)

amelius• 1 year ago

+1 IMHO too.

encoderer3• 1 year ago

Capitalism has saved billions of people from poverty.

Advertising is part of that trade.

I’m happy it exists.

jgalt212• 1 year ago

Someone has to move the product.

motoxpro4• 1 year ago

There no way to find out about anything if people don't advertise. Make a website? Advertising. Wear a band T-Shirt? Advertising. Make a website called Hacker News as VC firm? Advertising.

JohnFen3• 1 year ago

This is the first time I'd ever heard of or seen that ad. I guess my efforts to avoid advertising work really well, hooray!

It is visually stunning for sure, but I have to not think too hard about the implications of it.

fckgw• 1 year ago

It never aired in the US so that could be one reason.

II2II• 1 year ago

Don't get me wrong: as a piece of advertising, this is one of the few I would be willing to watch again. On the other hand, I am left asking: what is the point? It is not as though there were many venues where you could enjoy the vibrance of it. It certainly looks better on my modern monitors than on my Bravia TV of that era.

As for children, I would be strongly opposed to showing a child that commercial. It isn't hard to imagine them trying to haul buckets of bouncy balls to the roof after being ... inspired.

s1artibartfast5• 1 year ago

Seems like hyperactive concern to me. I would want my child climbing up on the roof with a bucket of bouncy balls. I would even buy them.

pj_mukh2• 1 year ago

“I think our bill was $74,000 on broken windows,” said Ranahan. “And the crazy thing is, everyone loved it. The people, the neighborhood, they still come out to me and talk to me about it.”

"We want to set City Hall on fire, we want to bump a blimp into the Golden Gate Bridge and we want to jump a hook-and-ladder truck over Lefty O’Doul Bridge with Roger Moore on it’ … and they were seriously like, ‘OK.’”

My main question is, where did this San Francisco go? I'd love for the city to create more memorable moments because the city is special. But today, this ad would've been buried in CEQA lawsuits. Hell, parking in the wrong public spot could get your car keyed by some irate millionaire[1].

[1] https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/parking-wars-sf-billion...

kurthr• 1 year ago

First the dotcom boom pushed the artists out to Oakland by 2000, but there were still burners and hipsters in 2005. Then the subprime boom/bust took a lot of the hipsters and older businesses out, but the tech busses brought the Silicon Valley nerds in 2010. Then the rise of Uber startups through 2016 pushed the artists into warehouses until the Ghostship fire, but there were still techbros and crypto in the Mission. When the pandemic finally came for the rest of Frisco there was hardly anyone left who cared or they were so old they wanted everyone else to just leave. If you remember Market street and the Tenderloin from the old days, the tents today are kinda quaint.

I'm sure somebody has a similar timeline for NYC.

Tade0• 1 year ago

I would have so much fun doing various kinds of tit-for-tats with this guy.

That is until he, inevitably, would shoot me with impunity.

asdf69693• 1 year ago

Only boring people can afford to live in SF

jjulius3• 1 year ago

It's quite sad that something that seems like it could be universally enjoyed at the isn't now.

This happens frequently for a good many things. Collective ignorance gets replaced with the lens of hindsight.

xattt3• 1 year ago

Collective ignorance…

… and there it is. People knew but saw through it all to just maybe enjoy the wonder of the event.

officeplant3• 1 year ago

Just a side point from the article

When Conner was checking in to his hotel later that night, a ball bounced by on the sidewalk. He was 4 or 5 miles away.

I have to assume there was so many they never found just left to the ecosystem.

As much as I loved bouncy balls as an 80s kid, anytime I see them now it just reminds me of the sheer amount of useless plastic/rubber waste we produce. Even if bouncy balls in and of themselves are a tiny portion of that overall waste.

For example I live in the South, Mardi Gras is huge here and after every parade it looks like a god damn war zone of trash and waste left behind for prison labor to clean up as best they can. If it was me I would do a ban on plastic beads entirely as throwable parade objects.

It's quite sad that something that seems like it could be universally enjoyed at the isn't now.

IMO at some point we all have to look back at the reality of past actions and be cognizant of our waste and abuse of the planet even if it was a fun time.

timewizard3• 1 year ago

As much as I loved bouncy balls as an 80s kid, anytime I see them now it just reminds me of the sheer amount of useless plastic/rubber waste we produce.

They're not useless. As you've just pointed out you enjoyed them as a kid. For a few cents in plastic how many hours of enjoyment did you get? What was wasted here?

after every parade it looks like a god damn war zone

Yea but when you stack up the tax receipts it suddenly looks very worthwhile.

reality of past actions and be cognizant of our waste and abuse of the planet even if it was a fun time.

Humans are always going to want to have fun. From my point of view have all the plastic beads you want. It's the nuclear weapons and daily war that gives me pause.

losvedir• 1 year ago

Wow, as someone with vivid and fond memories of watching this in college, I'm seeing this in this very thread. Kinda wild, and really makes me feel old and out of touch. And that heartbeats song is a banger and will forever take me back.

Affric• 1 year ago

Yeah, it’s interesting that they have no motivation to separate the art from the commission nor any attempt to understand that it was a very different time. Broadcast television and low bandwidths.

The idea that advertising is a “cancer upon society” fundamentally misunderstands how mass media, telecommunications, and modern society works. It’s about passing and sharing information.

I hate most ads and almost all modern advertising sucks. But this ad ain’t it. It relies on nostalgia, a dream like element. The amount of pollution is, globally, negligible, and they largely cleaned them up. We hear stories of people keeping balls as mementi [1].

Call me cynical but if we are not meant to enjoy even the aesthetically pleasing stuff the neoliberal environmental disaster of the last 40 years creates we are in for a bad time. May as well go back to hunter gathering of subsistence farming.

[1] I know it’s non standard but if “octopi” is cromulent then so is “mementi”

asdf69693• 1 year ago

younger generations seemed to only view it negatively

I’m too young to remember this ad but I’m disgusted by it now. I hate advertising to begin with but this one floods the street with plastic which destroys private property and will never get cleaned up. What is there to like about it? How was this ever allowed? Imagine today I make an ad about dumping red 40 into the Mississippi River for a Netflix show. It’s evil and everyone knows it.

scotty79• 1 year ago

When it first came out I just assumed it's cgi. Because that's how any sane person would do it.

jeffbee• 1 year ago

A dump truck full of bouncy balls sounds a lot easier.

sammcgrail• 1 year ago

Does it? Think about the permits, cleanup cost, ball cost (lol)

kimos• 1 year ago

As the article explains, that’s because the truck of balls is the easy part.

dekhn• 1 year ago

only if you externalize all the costs

adzm• 1 year ago

The cover of Heartbeats by Jose Gonzalez is truly beautiful as well. I can't imagine this video without it.

macNchz• 1 year ago

The ad actually sticks out in my mind not only for the visuals but because it introduced me to both Jose Gonzalez and The Knife.

kenjackson• 1 year ago

Totally looks like an AI generated video.

etrautmann• 1 year ago

I lived in SF then and picked up a 5 gallon bucket of bouncy balls at a garage sale. I didn't realize until now that this is where they almost certainly came from.

tristor• 1 year ago

This advertisement was the first time I ever saw an ad that made me think there could be something more to advertisement than being utterly soulless. It literally brings me to tears seeing it because of how beautiful the composition is and how well it works with the musical arrangement. There have been a few other ads throughout the years that are on a similar level, but they are few and far between. It's not just an effective advertisement, it's a cinematic masterpiece.

joezydeco• 1 year ago

The follow up ad was impressive, too. Although I'm not sure what why there's a clown in the middle of it.

https://youtu.be/G5tLqb8T5xU

maaarghk• 1 year ago

Same guy who made the remaster linked in the article also remastered this one - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MY0bxhbPi3Q - seems he had a retail DVD from Sony with a better original source on it

anigbrowl• 1 year ago

At the opposite end we have excess CG, like that iPad ad last year which everyone hated because it depicted real art tools being crushed into a digital substrate.

tromp• 1 year ago

Sure beats lava lamps as a source of entropy...

maartenscholl• 1 year ago

Not really, the lava lamp's fluid dynamics are very sensitive to initial conditions and the fluids behave chaotically, whereas the bouncy balls have highly predictable trajectories.

MisterTea• 1 year ago

whereas the bouncy balls have highly predictable trajectories.

All we need are chaotic surfaces to bounce the balls on. Problem solved :-)

fractallyte• 1 year ago

There was this too, for Sony's Bravia: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-68904040

"The day explosions of colour painted a Glasgow estate: In 2006, Sony set out to create 'Paint', widely regarded as one of the most technically complex adverts ever made..."

vincnetas2• 1 year ago

related ad with exploding paint

https://youtu.be/GdEtZK3CE2k?si=TtUn_VB8vBd7Eif5

better quality

https://youtu.be/G5tLqb8T5xU?si=hOTULgz71ilv2nS9

n1b0m• 1 year ago

So many iconic adverts from the 2000s. One of my favourite is the Honda Cog: https://youtu.be/bl2U1p3fVRk?si=Z1Oqz8SAMjIAg7Mn

MobileVet2• 1 year ago

I LOVED the Honda Cog video and the story [1] about how they made it along with the purported 100+ takes is craziness. I can't imagine resetting it so many times... especially since the offending item that kept killing it was so late in the chain.

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cog_%28advertisement%29

Angostura• 1 year ago

It's very classy. I personally, still have a soft-spot for the Tango Blackcurrent that nonchalantly slips in three Harrier jump-jets right at the end

https://youtu.be/odCBml5TuNI?si=-pXipIDTLImrFNDo

nailer3• 1 year ago

4K remaster: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UXS6DBD6g0

Looks to be from original sources rather than upscaled.

LeoPanthera3• 1 year ago

No, it's upscaled. The cars have that distinctive smeary look, and the "text" on the road signs is nonsense.

nailer3• 1 year ago

I thought the opposite - the 'lost cat' sign at https://youtu.be/2UXS6DBD6g0?t=94 is incredibly legible and definitely better than an upscaled 1080p image.

red369• 1 year ago

Also, I took this line in the description to mean that it was upscaled: "4K professional remaster and re-grade by Mat Van Rhoon from HD to UHD"

abridgett• 1 year ago

Their "paint" advert wasn't bad either: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-ut_2GWIm4 though it can't compete with the music.

LeoPanthera3• 1 year ago

Tango, a British fruit soda, made their own version in Swansea, Wales, which is delightfully funny:

https://youtu.be/ac_g4opW-UI

residentraspber• 1 year ago

Love that they kept the frog in this one! That part really surprised me about the original.

jahnu• 1 year ago

They also made one of the greatest British ads of all time:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=odCBml5TuNI

alkonaut• 1 year ago

It’s such a simple setup that you could make it in CGI in 2005 far cheaper than this. The balls barely affect the environment and the physics is really simple. I thought for 20 years that it was CGI because obviously ”who would do that cleanup?”. TIL. Really cool that they did this in real life.

dwighttk• 1 year ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_bx8bnCoiU in case anyone wants to see the ad

(I didn't follow all the links, but enough to know it wasn't immediately available)

Nition2• 1 year ago

"There was not a single bouncy ball in any machine in America for a couple months. I felt so bad for the poor children," said Fuglsig.

I find it hard to believe that they really went around for months buying maybe 100 balls each from random dispensers until they had 250,000 - especially considering the design of the balls is mostly consistent in the end. Maybe a bit of fanciful storytelling?

Kkoala• 1 year ago

Yeah, it might also mean that the suppliers just didn't have balls to restock into those machines

Nition2• 1 year ago

Good point, I guess they probably did mean scour the country for suppliers, rather than ball machines! Even in context you could read it both ways:

First, they had to scour the country to acquire the 250,000 bouncy balls needed to create the critical mass. “They bought every bouncy ball west of the Mississippi,” said Ranahan. “There was not a single bouncy ball in any machine in America for a couple months. I felt so bad for the poor children,” said Fuglsig.

keane2• 1 year ago

A 2010 upload to Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/14504562

Sony's 2005 website for the ad: https://web.archive.org/web/20051124203345/http://www.bravia...

Sony's 2005 behind-the-scenes page: https://web.archive.org/web/20051028021817/http://www.bravia...

Fallon's (ad agency) materials: https://www.fallon.com/?s=Bravia

One of the making-of videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOpq2aD5btA

A resident point of view: https://archive.org/details/BouncyBall

yazantapuz• 1 year ago

I had a Bravia 40BX425 (latam model) for several years. I bought it used and after many years I had to sell (needed the money). An astounding TV, much better than some of the new smart cr*p out there.

ChuckMcM• 1 year ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_bx8bnCoiU

If you want to watch the ad. A couple of friends of mine lived in the city at the time and were watching as they filmed it. We all agreed that it was both amazing and insane all at the same time.

pas• 1 year ago

there's a 4K remaster too https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UXS6DBD6g0

thih92• 1 year ago

Honorable mention goes to the Old Spice 2010 ad, where a lot was done in camera too, including the horse.

The Man Your Man Could Smell Like: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=owGykVbfgUE

Pitch presentation: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/britton-taylor-7829292a_for-y...

Behind the scenes interview: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VDk9jjdiXJQ&t=11m40s

It was a big success and a series of similar clips followed; this one has an actual “behind the scenes” video:

Scent vacation: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PJKAr1r5zlA

Behind the scenes: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=32TZSXG2y7E

breppp• 1 year ago

Ads, where excess money made in Capitalism is ritually burned

MobileVet2• 1 year ago

While I also detest commercials as a whole, I think it is worth stepping back and viewing this as art. The concept, the visuals, the original song (not the one you find on most videos due to licensing)... it is beautiful and should evoke childhood joy and wonder. Yes it was wasteful, but if we only do things because they are efficient, I think our humanity suffers.

They made at least one more commercial [1] during the same time period and it was also inspired by awe and wonder. While it did waste paint and likely pollute the local groundwater temporarily, it was conducted in a building that was scheduled for demolition.

Paint

(1) https://youtu.be/GURvHJNmGrc?si=syS1ImP0Z2oM1btO

stavros• 1 year ago

Does anyone have a link to the ad? I couldn't find one in the article, which is a huge shame.

kylecazar• 1 year ago

First thing I thought of was the Balloonfest '86 fiasco.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balloonfest_%2786

moribvndvs• 1 year ago

Same. Stemming from my experience growing up in Cleveland, I have zero patience when ad/PR outfits throw garbage everywhere for the spectacle. We’ve already got enough problems with trash everywhere.

bigmattystyles• 1 year ago

Cool article - I was sad to see 'View to a Kill' called the worst Bond film as I must have seen 500 times as a child, it was always on TV.

BonoboIO• 1 year ago

That … wow that was 20years ago, seamed like 7-9 years.

TwoNineFive• 1 year ago

Too many marketing and advert goons on HN, not enough engineers and actual hackers.

mediumsmart• 1 year ago

Here is the comparison with the cryengine2 version. https://youtu.be/WCeuzVy9BgA

ece• 1 year ago

TIL

The 2005 Sony Bravia ad

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