Fun

Somewhere on YouTube there is a video of a horse making a sound. Presumably a normal sound, as far as horses go. But to my ear it came out as yodeling, clean and tuneful and faintly alpine, and once I had heard it that way there was no hearing it any other way.

So here is the result. The original clip, the horse, and the yodel I could not stop hearing in it. No larger point, no lesson about sound or perception or anything else. A horse sounded like it was yodeling and that seemed worth doing something about.

Third in the 650-GOLD series. Thirty seconds of local television advertising, kept here because nobody else was going to keep it: the phone number sung twice, the cheerful insistence that everybody is buying gold, and the unstated suggestion that you ought to be selling.

No commentary, no analysis, just the tape and the jingle. If these ads ran during the late movie where you grew up, the melody will arrive fully assembled and you will not be able to put it back. This is the third one I have posted, and probably not the last.

Second of the spots for 650-Gold. The premise is not subtle, and it isn't meant to be: everybody is buying gold, gold is worth more than it used to be, and here is the number to call. A commercial this short leaves no room for nuance, so the pitch is the whole thing.

What I like about making these is the constraint. One idea, one line worth repeating, a hard cutoff, and anything that doesn't serve the sell has to go. Below is the finished commercial, with a few notes on what changed between the first one and this one.

Local television advertising has a way of lodging itself in your memory and staying there long after you have any reason to think about it. 650-Gold ran spots like this one during the height of the cash-for-gold boom, when the price kept climbing and every other strip mall had somebody willing to weigh your old jewelry.

This is the first of them. There is not much to say about the ad itself, which is short and does exactly what it sets out to do. I am putting it here because nobody else seemed to be, and because I would rather it exist somewhere other than in my head.

Some stuff I shot ages ago on my HV20. Lots of goofiness etc.

A ride on Revolution with the Zi6 in hand, and the whole clip run through Smoothcam afterward to see what a camera under $200 can manage. The answer is pretty well, all things considered, though the stabilization takes the rolling shutter and makes it worse, until the frame is wobbling like jello on every turn. Skewing the footage probably would have straightened most of that out.

As for the silliness at the end, there is no defending it. Apologies in advance.

Times are tough enough that Santa kicks the cinder blocks out from under the sleigh, throws some extra feed to the reindeer, and flies down to Cleveland to hock the old lady's jewelry and candlesticks. That's the premise of a spot my buddy Don and I put together for Coin & Jewelry Buyers of America on next to nothing, and it wound up getting more traction and notice than either of us expected.

The video is below, with Don Pavlish dishing on how it came together afterward.

Part three of the Super Console Wars saga has arrived, and this time it comes at you in three dimensions. Same console-rivalry nonsense as the first two, only now with things flying out of the screen at your face.

You'll need a pair of red and blue glasses for the full effect. If you don't have any lying around, there's a guide to building a low-rent pair out of things you probably already own, plus a link for getting a free pair if you'd rather let someone else do the work. Either way, it's worth the small amount of effort. Enjoy.

The saga continues, and no, the naming conventions have not improved. GC-PU and VM-U2 slip past the henchmen of the Gamepire and end up stranded on the desert planet Nintendooine, secret plans still in hand. There they fall in with Lukeegi Pipewalker and go looking for Obi-Wan Shinobi, one of the legendary Mascot Knights, who kept the peace in the old Gaming Republic back when they weren't busy being ninjas.

Meanwhile Darth Mario returns to the Gamecube, determined to find the hidden easter egg and put an end to the Mascot Rebellion once and for all.

It is a period of console war. The rebel mascots, striking from an Easter egg, have won their first victory against the evil Gamepire, and the Gamepire has answered with a weapon of terrible power: an armored play station capable of rendering an entire planet in real time.

The stolen plans are aboard Princess Zeia's starship, pursued across the dark by sinister agents, and with them rides the fate of her console and the freedom of gamers everywhere. Part one of a saga nobody demanded, told in the only format the subject deserves.