Tuesday, February 9, 2010

A whimsical look at advertisements, cartoons and music


I'm rather taken by developments involving an advertisement, a Web cartoon and a catchy tune.

First, Discovery Channel aired an advertisement for itself.





Then, the Web comic XKCD brought out a cartoon entitled 'XKCD Loves The Discovery Channel'. They took the words to the advertisement's 'jingle' and adapted them to their cartoon.




This led Noam Raby and Olga Nunes to produce a video version of the XKCD adaptation of the Discovery Channel advertisement.





Later, Elaine Doyle and Olga Nunes took that video and filmed it with live actors.





Call me soppy, if you like, but I found the whole progression irresistibly cute!



Peter

5 comments:

  1. LOL- Peter, this just proves you have WAY too much time on your hands... :-) And yes, that IS an interesting progression!!!

    WV- sayermuse

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  2. Hah! Old NFO, as I clicked on the "comments" link that is EXACTLY what I was thinking. Waaaaaayy too much time! :-)

    (But aren't we glad he does...)

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  3. This is the digital remix world that Lawrence Lessig keeps talking about. And now, anyone with a computer, and a wacky idea, and, yes, too much time on their hands, can mix up a completely new batch from here. The future, when folks are doing this all the time, will truly be something to see.

    Unless the copyright ogres squash it first. Seriously, all of this is technically illegal, no? I'm sure the Discovery channel licensed the original tune from Hoagy Carmicheal's estate (he's been expired for 29 years, so, it's not out of copyright, yet.) Did xkcd infringe on the Discovery Channel's protectable ideas? I surely don't imagine NoamR re-licensed the tune. And every step from there, more and more infringements, punishable by whatever nefarious doings the copyright police are plotting in those secret meetings to shape the new law around ACTA.

    Don't say no one will ever mess with something like this: the Australian band "Men at Work" are about to cough up 60% of the entire revenue from the song "The Land Down Under" because a flute player on the gig played a twelve-note theme from the nursery rhyme Kookaburra (not even written in the song, just ad-libbed). As long as the legal thicket around the copyrights remain, as long as the lawyers are (intentionally) the only ones who understand what you can and cannot do, anyone trying to cool stuff like this does so at a threat to their entire wealth, present and future.

    So we have less cool things like this than we could have. When did we become a nation run by lawyers, anyway?

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  4. Cool; I had to "do" all versions. Now, how do I get rid of the earworm? Boom de yada, boom...

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  5. Never mind a clever and well done project, I was struck by the fine singing voice of the girl who sang the "kite photography" part.

    Jim

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