Still from "Pop Quiz" spot.
Posted on 02/04/2004 10:04:38 AM PST by avg_freeper
For Scott Stowell of New York City, it was the freedom to express a passion.
"I think the message we tried to deliver is something we really believed in. We were passionate in our beliefs and everyone has a right in our democracy to do that."
Mr. Stowell was part of a team that produced one of 26 political commercials in a recent online contest soliciting political ads critical of President Bush. Entitled the 'Bush in 30 seconds' TV ad contest and sponsored by the Washington, DC-based public policy advocacy group MoveOn.org, Stowell's spot - entitled "Pop Quiz" - was produced and edited on a Mac.
In fact, the majority of the finalist spots were produced using Macs. From medium to large design studios and often someone's home basement, the commercials came from a variety of people who had an idea, a passion to speak their mind and often a Mac on their desktop.
"Here was the first time I ever saw this kind of idea of people using the freedom that comes from technology for a political purpose to speak their minds," said Mr. Stowell, founder of the New York City graphic design studio, Open.
Still from "Pop Quiz" spot.
Co-produced with colleagues Susan Barber, Cara Brower and Kate Kittredge, the spot quickly asks the viewer to answer rapid fire questions on a variety of political issues and attributes the answers to various news sources. In every instance, the critical answer is "George W. Bush." The spot ends with the question, "What's wrong with this picture?"
All of the spot are similar to "Pop Quiz" in that they criticize the president on a variety of fronts, from the controversial war in Iraq to the national debt and even educational funding.
The spot voted best overall, entitled "Child's Pay," made news headlines in late January after the CBS television network decided not to broadcast it during last Sunday's Super Bowl XXXVIII because of its long-standing policy not to air advocacy ads. Instead, the spot ran during the half-time of the NFL championship game, but on CNN, rather than on CBS's Super Bowl broadcast itself. The 30-second, dialogue-free spot featured children working as janitors, dishwashers and garbage collectors and ended with the caption, "Guess who's going to pay off President Bush's $1 trillion deficit?"
For many of the ad's producers, a Mac was the platform of choice that often made the difference between tedious editing over dozens of hours or days and producing a spot sometimes in just one afternoon.
Mr. Stowell and his team used a 1.25 MHz dual processor Power Mac G4 to produce "Pop Quiz," together with Adobe Illustrator to do the graphics and After Effects for the animation. One of the reasons Stowell and his team used simple type for their spot was to not only be different from the majority of other spots, but because they had decided to enter the competition very close to the deadline. "After we came up with the concept, we cranked it out in no time and the Mac made a big difference."
The runner-up for best overall ad was also produced on a Mac. Entitled "What Are We Teaching Our Children?", Fred Surr together with Ted Page and Janet Tashjian of Needham, Mass., produced a tongue in cheek spot that hit home their message.
The ad features six young kids, each delivering a speech to adults on what they would do if they were elected president - from, "If elected, I'll lie about weapons of mass destruction as a pretext to invade another country," to "I'll leave no child behind, unless they can't afford it."
Still from "What Are We Teaching Our Children?"
Mr. Surr, an independent producer and founder of the production company Captains of Industry, used a Media 100 editing system on a Power Mac 9600 to edit the spot in no more than "six to eight hours."
A Mac user since 1988, Mr. Surr was just as passionate about his Macs as he was about his political spot. "I don't like Windows, honestly. I think it's a kludge format and always has been."
Because all of the talent and production workers donated their time, Mr. Surr was able to produce the spot for less than US$100 after renting one single item - a professional microphone. "Everyone donated their time," he said. "We had six kids, about 10 adults together with extras and four others at the shoot."
Reaction to the spot has been overwhelmingly positive, according to Mr. Surr. "Even friends and colleagues that are Republicans look at the spot chuckling and say, 'Well, you can't argue with the premise.' "
Most of the spots were inexpensive to make, except for one produced on film by Adam Feinstein, an independent film maker from New York City. Entitled "Polygraph," the spot was shot on Super 16mm film and then transferred using the Telecine process of converting a film negative to video tape. It was then edited on a 533MHz-dual processor Power Mac G4 with Final Cut Pro.
Still from "Polygraph" spot.
About US$1,000 to shoot and produce, Mr. Feinstein turned to some 30 friends to donate money toward the cost of making the commercial. "I'm a filmmaker who has had my political soul stirred to life in the last three years," Mr. Feinstein told The Mac Observer. "If I can credit Mr. Bush with anything, it's making me realize how important it is for me as a media maker to say and do something that can make a difference."
The spot shows an actual polygraph machine registering responses to comments made by President Bush during his State of the Union speech in January of 2003. As Mr. Bush utters certain facts, the polygraph is shown violently moving, as if to convince the viewer that his comments are all lies.
But it was the parody piece "Desktop" that hits closest to home for Mac users, regardless of their political beliefs.
David Haynes is a filmmaker, writer and director making independent films under his small production company Tanglewood Films in Dallas, Texas. Having entered the competition later than most, Mr. Haynes had little time to devise a concept, shoot it and edit it.
For him, the star of his spot was his Mac. Mr. Haynes used his Sony VX-2000 digital camera to shoot his OS 9 desktop. "I sort of brainstormed the idea of using the Mac and having the file folders represent different components of our government and different programs that have happened over the last few years that in my opinion were not so great," he said.
Still from "Desktop" spot.
The spot shows a desktop pointer moving folders marked 'Social Security, 'Environment', 'Civil Liberties' and more over the seal of the president to the Trash. Only after a message warns that the folders will be permanently deleted and a bloated trash icon erases the folders does the spot end with the words, "What's next?"
"I've never really been a political person and followed politics," Mr. Haynes responded when asked what was the catalyst for him to produce the political spot. "There was a point during the build up to the Iraq war that the Bush Administration seemed to want to go to war really, really badly. Something about that raised a red flag in my head and it didn't seem very American and didn't feel right."
Mr. Haynes used an 867 MHz Power Mac G4 with Final Cut Pro to edit his 30-second spot, which took about a day to shoot and produce.
All the producers were convinced their Macs made a difference in being able to focus on making the best ad, instead of worrying about the technical aspects.
"My Mac allowed me to focus on the message," said Mr. Surr. "I just find it to be really, really dependable. There's not a lot of surprises on a Mac. It doesn't crash on me and it's just a solid work station."
"If you subtracted all the Macs in my life, I would be paralyzed," said Mr. Feinstein. "Every project I haven't edited on film, I've edited on a Mac."
When Mr. Stowell was asked why his studio only uses Mac, his response was short and sweet. "Why? I can't think of any reason why not."
I have to agree with you.
I have three active PC's, and without 'Boot Disks' [3 1/2" Floppies], the rebuilding of my P II 450 Gateway [Windows 98 Svp #1], P III 800 E-Machine [Windows ME], and even the P4 1.7 GHz SONY Vaio Digital Studio [Windows XP] would be impossible!
That having been said, I will ask at the class being held this Saturday at the Mac Resellers what to do about interfacing the Floppies with the G5 I hope to acquire in the near future!!
The cost, both in Software,
Please pardon the Gateway crash!
The cost, both in Software and time, has become prohibitive.
I hope to migrate to the G5 at some point!
Jobs is both a genius and idiot at the same time. He's the reason Macs are great and the reason they will never have more than 4% market share.
Just sign us both amazed, then!
PS, below is my first 'computer'..... a Friden
I have pretty much given up on 3 1/2 inch floppies. I carry a usb drive on my keychain with 128 megs of repair utilities. That and an assortment of bootable CDs make up 95% of my emergency recovery kit.
To be a traveling PC doctor you need a copy of each version of Windows since '98, a bootable Norton CD and a copy of the latest virus definitions (this is most conveniently done on floppies), a couple of spyware removers, Winzip, a USB ethernet adapter with drivers, and some other stuff.
I have a bootable TuffTest disk which will find memory and disk problems, and a bootable disk repair utility from each of the drive manufacturers. All this is pretty much free software if you assume the installed copies of Windows and Norton antivirus are legal.
Many PCs are being sold without floppy drives. You can usually get to a DOS prompt from a bootable CD of Windows. It helps to have a CD of the utilities and drivers.
Displaying ignorance of the subject does not get you anywhere, Discostu. However, ignorance is curable. Go out and learn!
Discostu, I have never been insulting to you. I am not the only one on this thread that is pointing out your errors about the Macintosh.
You have made flat statements about the Macintosh that demonstrate that you are completely unfamiliar with the platform. You pontificate on the subject and continue to demostrate you are ignorant of Macintosh history, modern Macs, or its operating system. That is curable. Go get a Mac and use it for a while. I have pointed out your errors because someone might believe your incorrect information.
The fact that YOU saw a two button mouse for a DOS computer in 1982 is an assertion on your part. It probably is true. One was shown at the Fall Comdex in 1982. But it was certainly not a common piece of equipment shipped with every DOS computer. The Macintosh was not even the first Apple computer that had a mouse as an included input device... the LISA (January 1983) gets that nod.
I don't have the money to buy a MAC, so I use LINUX instead and am typing this on a machine i built from the ground up (a dual processor Celeron with 360 MHz CPUS overclocked to 550MH. I built this machine over two years ago -- it runs 24/7 but occasionally hickups under heavy load from a badly sized capacitor -- a well know BP6 flaw! -- from the ground up (well, I didn't actually smelt the silicon from fine sand, etch the chips, or wavesolder the ABIT BP6 motherboard, i must admit ;) With a MAC, you don't have the same hardware options and pretty much must take whatever steve jobs in his infinite wisdom doles out to you, even more so than what bill gates in his infinite lawyerly wisdom decides where you want to go today if you are enslaved by Micro$oft...
I must also say that of everyone I know who has a MAC (about 6 or so) NONE had to pay for their own machine, and every one of them (sorry, MAC fans, i'm just describing the MAC owners I happen to know!) is a bit of an elitist.
Now, if I had to actually use Windows caca-ware and didn't have enough computer skills to use Linux to do my work, i have no doubt i'd be using a MAC as a soothing alternative to M$ idiot-ware
(whoops -- i'm transforming into a LINUX elitist!!!)
ROTFLMAO!!!
Look at the cover of "TRANCE-formations" by Grinder and Bandler [now sadly out of print].
SHOW ME ONE POST WHERE I USED THE WORD "IDIOT"! You will not find it, Discostu, because there is not one. None.
I have said that you were ignorant of the Macintosh... and every reply you made just confirmed that. But ignorance is not a slur. It just means that you don't know something. It is not an insult.
Just one example:
You said: . . . the fact that it took them (Apple) to the mid 90s to finally stick a print buffer in the OS shows how entirely non-revolutionary they always have been and always will be.
You claimed that the Macintosh computers did not have a print buffer in the operating system until the mid 1990s. You offered this as "proof" of Apple's lack of innovation. I pointed out your claim was wrong! Apple included "background printing" in their OS since they introduced the Multifinder, far earlier than the mid 1990s.
You dismissively replied: There was no print buffer in System 7, at least not one that would be remotely useful.
You tried to defend your stance with an anecdote about your experience printing a large document in a library and your dissatisfaction with the Macintosh. This merely demonstrated how your limited experience with a public Macintosh computer running OS7.x in a Library lead you to erroneously believe that the Macintosh did not have a print buffer. You then extended that erroneous assumption to claim that System 7 did not have a print buffer AND that Apple did not see fit to include a print buffer in the OS until the mid 1990s. You then uttered your erroneous OPINION, based on extremely limited experience, as fact, and used it as an example of proof of something entirely different.
I then, again, provided MY professional experience as Mac network administrator to demonstrate that your claim was wrong... and ignorant of the facts. Discostu, the reason you could not use the print buffer in the library computer was that SOMEONE TURNED IT OFF! That, my friend, is ignorance. It is not stupidity, it's just not knowing.
You, however, extended your error by claiming it as a "truth" even when presented with the actual facts. There is no insult in pointing out that someone, claiming knowledge and pontificating as an "expert," making claims that are patently untrue, is ignorant of the true facts. Why should you be allowed to base your arguments on erroroneous, mis-informed opinions?
When you could not acknowledge that perhaps you were wrong about your "facts" you became dismissive and claimed insult. It doesn't wash, Discostu.
Admit it, Discostu, you really don't know much about the Macintosh operating systems... especially OS-X. The real point is that you CAN learn. . . if you want to.
As for OS X I really don't care what I'm missing.
Perhaps you don't want to.
The first step in learning is to realize you do not know something.
George W. Bush will be reelected by a margin of at least ten per cent
"I'm always amazed at how Mac and Unix users classify all Windows users as brain-dead idiots blindly worshipping at the altar of Bill Gates and who shouldn't be allowed anywhere near any computer."I'd estimate that the number of Windows users who are brain-dead idiots blindly worshiping at the altar of Bill Gates is well under one per cent. :') Hmm. Wonder why that number is so low? [rimshot!]
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