That is tooo cool. I threw the swf file on zoner.net for anyone who wants to view or download it also. http://zoner.net/weblog/honda.swf Jim -----Original Message----- From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Greg Reese Sent: Wednesday, June 11, 2003 10:17 AM To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [THIN] OT - Wednesday Humor - Insane people with too much time on their hands Just go to the bottom link to see the commercial. New Honda commercial in the UK. Very important that you understand: There are no computer graphics or digital tricks in the film. Everything you see really happened in real time exactly as you see it. The film took 606 takes. On the first 605 takes, something, usually very minor, didn't work. They would then have to set the whole thing up again. The crew spent weeks shooting night and day. By the time it was over, they were ready to change professions. The film cost six million dollars (holy ----!) and took three months to complete including a full engineering the sequence. In addition, it's two minutes long so every time Honda airs the film on British television, they're shelling out enough dough to keep any one of us in clover for a lifetime. However, it is fast becoming the most downloaded advertisement in Internet history. Honda executives figure the ad will soon pay for itself simply in "free" viewings (Honda isn't paying a dime to have you watch this commercial!). When the ad was pitched to senior executives, they signed off on it immediately without any hesitation -- including the costs. There are six and only six hand-made Accords in the world. To the horror of Honda engineers, the filmmakers disassembled two of them to make the film. Everything you see in the film (aside from the walls, floor, ramp, and complete Honda Accord) are parts from those two cars. The voiceover is Garrison Keillor. When the ad was shown to Honda executives, they liked it and commented on how amazing computer graphics have gotten. They fell off their chairs when they found out it was for real. Oh. And about those funky windshield wipers. On the new Accords, the windshield wipers have water sensors and are designed to start doing their thing automatically as soon as they become wet. It looks a bit weird in the commercial. A s amazing as this is, it's actually based on an earlier film from the seventies called "How Things Move" by two Swiss self-destructing artifacts artists (say that ten times fast). In that film, a similar set-up with household objects goes on for thirty minutes with air jets and fire and chemical reactions. You can get the video on amazon.com. Or not. Spend your twenty bucks on a latte at Starbucks. http://home.attbi.com/~bernhard36/honda-ad.html ******************************************************** This weeks sponsor - Emergent Online 99Point9.com Designed to facilitate efficient resolution of your technical server-based questions, issues and incidents, technical support is a few mouse-clicks away: you submit your incident-specific support requests via our online support helpdesk, our certified engineers resolve them while you monitor the progress, and your systems get back to 99.9% up-time in no time. http://www.99point9.com ********************************************************** Useful Thin Client Computing Links are available at: http://thethin.net/links.cfm For Archives, to Unsubscribe, Subscribe or set Digest or Vacation mode use the below link: http://thethin.net/citrixlist.cfm