Reading response 2

Make.Believe
http://www.adforum.com/latest/index.asp?AD=34453046&TDA=VDnsgTxx48

This 1:30 promotional commercial for a new product has yet to be released, but will certainly be talked about when it is broadcast and the product is ready for market. The reviews of the product line are just being published this month in trade journals.
The opening perspective of this commercial is from the center of a metropolitan street looking at pedestrians on a sidewalk walking away from the viewer, except for a young teen approaching. We are looking up at the teen from a camera angle of two feet off the pavement. Both the inferior perspective and the approaching teen immediately draw our focus and establish his dominance within the first few seconds.
As the teen reaches the alley, he very clearly reacts to something out of our sight by abruptly stopping and turning to look.
Our focus has been drawn, his dominance has been established, and now our curiosity has been piqued in the first four seconds.
Without allowing our senses time to adjust to the disorienting perspective or process the story, our perspective is shifted to looking out of the alley at the approaching teen from two feet elevation, then a one second flash of a brightly lit “ON” button, and a twenty foot overhead view of the teen approaching the button. We feel the uncertainty, we are in the alley with the teen as he hesitates, looks left, looks right, and reaches down to push the button.
As the cement beneath his feet begins to crack in all directions we are fully involved in a sense of peril as he braces, suddenly falling through the ground.
He lands unhurt in a sterile looking room, with a dozen suspended and swinging flat-screen TV’s. A group of people are gathered at a conference table while several others have a clipboard or a camera appearing to be doing research. Most of the people are wearing lab coats. Everyone is surprisingly oblivious to the teen’s entrance or presence. We are equally bewildered and confused, falling down the rabbit hole, not knowing what’s ahead.
The teen picks himself up from the rubble, brushing the debris from his clothing, looking right, then left, he’s unsure what to think. Again we are compelled to join his curiosity, where are we?
Twenty one seconds into the commercial, if we pay attention, we get our first hint of the product, Sony Bravia NX Series, shown six times in as many seconds and rapidly changing scene changes.
Another “ON” button emerges from one of the suspended flat-screen TV’s and the teen pushes it. The floor rises up to envelope him in a box and we’re now closed inside the dark box along with him, surely designed to elicit a claustrophobic reaction from everyone. Our emotions are being used to bind us to the teen, a stranger in a storm becomes your best friend.
Light breaks through the top of the box as he emerges into the back seat of a limousine being driven through a metropolitan area disaster scene. Buses are crashing, buildings are collapsing, and the limousine narrowly avoids being crushed in a collapsing parking garage, crashing through the side of the building just in time when another “ON” button appears in the limo roof.
The teen pushes the button and dives out the door into a sand dune scene with, trucks, sand rails, and desert buggies nearly killing him as they fly, drift, and race in all directions around. We are there with him, by his side, overhead, looking across the dunes at him as vehicles race and fly between us, then looking into the horizon from over his shoulder as trucks fly through the dunes. He sees another “ON” button, sprinting and diving to push it as trucks fly over him, emerging on the stage of a live concert. Looking around in awe and wonder we’re facing he shows his first overt emotion, a satisfied smile. Looking down he sees another button at his feet and pushes it. The stage spins top for bottom placing him right back at the alley entrance facing out where everything began.
We are watching him from behind and are still comforted by the gentle, satisfied smile. Standing there, slowly scanning the city skyline we hear a voiceover say, “Believe that anything you can imagine, you can make real”. “Make believe”.
Cuts to screen with tagline:
SONY
Make.Believe

This is a story of a teen whose curiosity, intrepid spirit, and vivid imagination takes us on an intense and unexpected adventure. The invincibility of youth is reinforced as he leaves each situation virtually unscathed. We have been down the rabbit hole of imagination with a push to entice us even deeper, “Believe that anything you can imagine, you can make real”. “Make believe”.