Macs A Key Part Of Controversial Anti-Bush Ads (some mac users all tingly about socialism)

The Mac Observer ^ | February 4th, 2004 | Brad Gibson

[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."

[discostu]

Trade associations setting standards are highly overrated. And a lot of the standards that get set are pretty open even if proprietary. Everybody making word processing software can get a hold of the Word doc standard and can open and save Word docs if they really want to.

It might be easier (it usually takes more than just compiler options, you've got to do some heavy rewriting to port something to another system) but there's not reason to think they would do it. Look at how few pieces of software are available for both the Mac and PC, how many for either platform are written for Linux, there's no reason to think that if we had a wide open space with 3 or 4 standards like in the crazy old days more companies would write to all the standards than did before or do now.

I'm not into open source. I see why it's attractive from some standpoints but I believe in propieretary closed off systems. I would never work for a company that did open source, the software might be better but if you don't own the keys you don't own the house.

There's still competition even with winners. Netscape came 2 bad decisions away from making the desktop OS immaterial. Linux is coming on strong as serious competition for the desktop OS. That's the great part about business, no victory is permanent, there's always somebody else willing to go against you and they might even win.

[D Rider]

The best part is that Linux and OSX are very similar. Software for these two compile about the same. Linux just lacks a really sexy GUI. But that will come too. Unix based OS's may have potential in opening the market up to improved hardware, (hopefully.)

[In_25_words_or_less]

But even from this remove it was possible to glean certain patterns, and one that recurred as regularly as an urban legend was the one about how someone would move into a commune populated by sandal-wearing, peace-sign flashing flower children, and eventually discover that, underneath this facade, the guys who ran it were actually control freaks; and that, as living in a commune, where much lip service was paid to ideals of peace, love and harmony, had deprived them of normal, socially approved outlets for their control-freakdom, it tended to come out in other, invariably more sinister, ways.

I used to have Macs. My gut tells me that nails it.

[SengirV]

If as many people ran Macs as they do Windows, Mac viruses would be as common as dirt

The FBI doesn't agree with you - http://www.securityfocus.com/cgi-bin/sfonline/columnists-item.pl?id=215

[cinFLA]

Apple is in business to make a profit, but it's still a better value for the customer than Wintel products.

Apparently the customers feel otherwise ...

[Swordmaker]

And linking Mac-to-socialism is quiet a stretch, but if you want to go down this road I'll refer you back to the original 1984 Macintosh Superbowl commercial. Macs and America rule!

In a true socialist command economy, the central government would have long ago established a microcomputer operating system standard and required all computer manufacturers to produce computers to that adhere to that standard... DOS.

If socialism is established now, when Windows has 95% of the market, the command economy would select THAT as the standard... and again, everyone would lose.

The Mac is for those of us who refuse to march to Gates drumbeat.

I would bet if the Republicans sponsored a similar ad contest, as many or more people would produce excellent conservative ads on their favorite platforms. The Mac produced conservative ads would shine because Macs make the job easier to allow the creative juices to flow.

[Tribune7]

Macs are pretty popular with the graphic design and video editing set.

That's true and that explains a lot of lefty image. OTOH, Gates is a big Dem supporter.

[Swordmaker]

PC became popular because IBM released its design to the masses for free.

That's funny. IBM fought tooth and nail to prevent the reverse engineering of the BIOS that was the heart of the PC. They lost. There was nothing "free" about it.

The originators of the PC in IBM were FIRED because they broke the primary at IBM: everything MUST be invented here. The Boca Raton group (The typewriter group) used off the shelf hardware and bought a 3rd party OS to install in their PC... and those were cardinal sins at IBM.

It was these "sins" that made the PC easy to clone... and courts ruled that if someone reverse engineered the BIOS, that was OK, so long as the code was not identical.

Apple did not make these mistakes. And mistakes they were... where is IBM's ranking among PC makers today?

[armymarinemom]

Well they polygraph presentation still bugs me. That was an EEG machine not a polygraph machine.

[bwteim]

Pinging CC, I think you posted that pic more than once!

[VOA]

Macs A Key Part Of Controversial Anti-Bush Ads (some mac users all tingly about socialism)

Not suprising, seeing how Jobs, Wozniak and all the Apple crew gave away all
their money.
What? They didn't give away millions of their earned dollars?

Hey, those guys are CAPITALISTS!

[Swordmaker]

. . . and the default decisions of Jobs (no floppy, 1 button mouse) are idiotic. And the fact that it took them 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.

While there might be some argument in the "one button" argument, your "no floppy" does not fly. Apple stopped including built in floppy drives when CD writing became feasible and most small files were transfered over networks or the internet... Jobs was not even at Apple at that time. I had one of the last Macs that had a floppy and I can count on the fingers of one hand how many times I used it. For those who needed a floppy, Apple and 3rd party manufacturers were already producing USB externals that worked fine. . . but few were sold.

As for your "print buffer" claim. Your ignorance of the Macintosh is showing.

The Macintosh OS has had a print buffer since OS 3 or 4, sometime around '87 or '88, it was just called something different: background printing. The buffer was in the System folder called Print Cache and later Print Monitor Documents.

[bwteim]

Glenn to discostu:What sort of economic basis do you have for marginalizing a successful product like this one?

I am continually amazed at the bile that people spew at those who use a dissimilar OS. It's almost as if they are afraid. If you are not part of the Borg, you must be assimilated.

- Unix User

[socal_parrot]

+

+

=

GEEK!

Thank God I'm a PC user.

[Swordmaker]

PINGeroonie!

Sorry if you are already here on this thread.

Have at it!

[discostu]

The first Mac to go floppyless was the iMac, Jobs baby after he returned. Floppies are no longer a frequent use item, but they can be necessary and given how dirt cheap they are there's no reason not to include. At home when I use a floppy there is no other option, for about $15 of hardware it's a nice safety net.

There was no print buffer in System 7, at least not one that would be remotely useful. I remember very well working in the library on their Macs going to print my first large document and WHAMMO a system modal dialog box pops and the computer can do NOTHING until there's less than a page and a half left to print, and given that pathetically slow Applewrite printer that was a loooooong time coming. Maybe there was some hidden option but that's just proof of poor design, Word Perfect 5.1 for DOS could be used while printing by default. Not having all printing running as a background process in a suposedly multi-tasking OS was simply stupid.

[avg_freeper]

I'd agree that Jobs, Wozniak, and the rest of the Apple employees are capitalists. I'd also agree that most mac owners are not dyed in the wool socialists. That quite a few of them, my self included are conservatives. My last three computer purchases have been Apples. I'm using one right now.

But I've noticed a tendency over the past 3-4 years for Apple and Apple related organizations to be visibly political; always with a liberal slant. Little things here and there but the first time I noticed it was when the Apple home site made a big deal about colored imacs being used at the DNC convention before the 2000 election. Then there was the big fan-fare over Carter on their home page and electing Gore to their board.

As this was going on with the corporation a parallel transformation was going on with the various Apple news/rumors/support websites. Many completely unpolitical topics posted at mac sites would turn into conservative-bashing leftist spouting threads. I didn't see any behavior like this during most of the nineties.

So this article prominently featured on one of the more mainstream Macintosh websites caught my attention. Macs are used by lots of people who do a whole bunch of neat things. Why concentrate on a bunch of leftist weenies whose alternative to Bush would be world socialism?

Now I fully admit that this might simply be a side effect of the "new tone" in Washington. Where Republicans are supposed to reach out and understand the concerns of leftist nut-jobs. And leftist nut-jobs are supposed to reach out and bash conservatives over the head with protest signs from atop their 4 foot tall stilts while banging a drum and yelling incoherent marxist dogma. Obviously, in the past three years we have seen an increase in the volume of the leftists in all walks of life. Music, TV, literature, colleges, churches, what-have-you.

So I guess it could be that there aren't really more socialists/leftists/democrats using macs nowadays, they're just louder. And I'm just foolishly getting distracted by it.

[joonbug]

I just read that the TV show "Scrubs" was produced on a Mac using Final Cut Pro. Haven't seen the show though. If the Dems are using Macs to make their ads, good for them. Doesn't make the Macs bad.

[CFC__VRWC]

I am continually amazed at the bile that people spew at those who use a dissimilar OS. It's almost as if they are afraid. If you are not part of the Borg, you must be assimilated.

And 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've been using computers since I bought my first box in '91 or '92, a Packard Bell 20MHz 386SX loaded out with a fully state of the art installation of DOS 5.0. I learned everything I know today on that machine and on a steady procession of PCs running all versions of Windows. If the PC hadn't been available, I would certainly be far behind where I am today in regard to computer knowledge. I simply couldn't afford the 2X to 3X price premium to go Mac.

I am certainly no master code jock or IS guru, but as an engineer I can definitely put a box through a workout if the job demands it. I know Windows has its problems, and if I had a nickel for every time I cursed Bill Gates I could buy him. But the fact is, I know Windows well enough to make it do what I want it to, and if I have a problem with a piece of hardware or software I can almost always figure out what's wrong and how to fix it. And frankly that's all I ask from my PC anymore. If Windows were a total POS I would have switched long ago, but the few gripes I have with it are not enough to make me want to run out and spend thousands on a brand new system, or want to take on learning a whole new OS. I'm content to live with a few warts.

[Zeroisanumber]

Goddamn red commie Mac users, they need to be seriously purged!

/humor