Lets talk about: The new VW Golf Ad with Gene Kelly

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http://www.revolutionmagazine.com/News/index.cfm?fuseaction=ViewNewsArticle&ID=233694

LONDON - Gene Kelly is the latest film star to appear in an advertisement from beyond the grave, in the new spot for Volkswagen Golf GTI using his famous scene from the classic musical 'Singin' in the Rain'.

The ad, created by DDB London, gives the scene a modern twist by using body doubles spliced with original footage to make it appear as if Kelly is breakdancing. The spot opens with Kelly walking down the street in the rain, as he does in the original movie, dancing up and down the kerb with his umbrella. But then he does the unthinkable and starts performing modern body-popping moves. It ends with the line "The new Gold GTI. The original, updated." The ad was made by dressing dancers in the same suits as Kelly and then using make-up and CGI techniques to produce Kelly's face on the actors. It was shot on a specially constructed set at Shepperton Studios. The music is also from the original soundtrack and has been updated by dance duo Mint Royale for a contemporary film. Martin Loraine, creative director at DDB London, said: "We looked for things that were icons. We thought about the Golf GTI when it came out. There are not many cars that invent a genre, which is what we thought was the true thing about the GTI, not that it was just a fast car or a nice car, it was an original, which was quite rare." The campaign was written by Loraine and art directed by Steve Jones. It was directed by Jake Knight and Ryoko Tanaka, who work under the name NE-O. Their short film 'salaryman6' has won numerous awards at the Soho Short Film Festival and the London Film Festival. 'Singin' in the Rain' will be Volkswagen's first interactive ad, with the interactive environment launching in late February. Designed and produced by Tribal DDB, it is designed to enable interested viewers to fully experience and interact with the Golf GTI, in addition to learning more about the ad. Content includes a video of the car in action, behind-the-scenes footage of the making of the ad, and the 'Singing in the Rain' club-mix track by Mint Royale. People will also be able to request a brochure or a test drive. Other stars to have their classic movie roles rehashed as ads include Steve McQueen, whose famous car chase from 'Bullitt' was used in an ad for Ford Puma, and Louis Armstrong, who had a scene from the film 'High Society' used in a Diet Coke commercial, along with Humphrey Bogart and the very-much alive Elton John. The new Golf ad breaks on January 27

Watch the Ad here:

http://www.newstoday.com/_tpl/qbn/golfgti.mov

I think it's pretty cool. Not completely flawless, but cool all the same.

― papa november (papa november), Monday, 31 January 2005 07:46 (twenty-one years ago)

Preternatural.

― Autumn Almanac (Autumn Almanac), Monday, 31 January 2005 07:49 (twenty-one years ago)

I guess you could start a new thread: Advertisements to advertise advertisements C/D

― Autumn Almanac (Autumn Almanac), Monday, 31 January 2005 07:50 (twenty-one years ago)

It is bloody amazing ad, that one, I loved it.

― Trayce (trayce), Monday, 31 January 2005 09:28 (twenty-one years ago)

That's insanely awesome. He's like an evil robot assassin from the future, come to fuck shit up. Ahghh, the where bit they focus on his face! Arrrgh!

― Michael Stuchbery (Mikey Bidness), Monday, 31 January 2005 09:32 (twenty-one years ago)

OMG GENE KELLY HARD TECHNO

― Reviewer: Sir Potomus (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews (ex machina), Monday, 31 January 2005 16:51 (twenty-one years ago)

i'm pretty sure the dancer is David Elsewhere.

― gygax! (gygax!), Monday, 31 January 2005 17:20 (twenty-one years ago)

I wonder if it will air in the USA.

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Monday, 31 January 2005 18:52 (twenty-one years ago)

http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B00028F7ZS.03.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Monday, 31 January 2005 19:15 (twenty-one years ago)

i dissapprove of this and also think that it's not very good.

― jed_ (jed), Monday, 31 January 2005 19:31 (twenty-one years ago)

you hate fun?

I hope against hope that that's Elsewhere.

― Forksclovetofu (Forksclovetofu), Monday, 31 January 2005 19:51 (twenty-one years ago)

Xanadu rocks. Livvy even sang a Xanadu song on Sunday night.

― Autumn Almanac (Autumn Almanac), Monday, 31 January 2005 21:34 (twenty-one years ago)

Isn't this now the second time an advertiser has used a reworking of that Singin' in the Rain clip to sell something? I distinctly remember something very similar, maybe for a soft drink, from about 3 or 4 years ago.

― Allyzay Highlights The Fallacy of Radiohead (allyzay), Monday, 31 January 2005 22:08 (twenty-one years ago)

hmm. i think it's creepy.

― lolita corpus (lolitacorpus), Monday, 31 January 2005 22:42 (twenty-one years ago)

more things like this please. ta.

― zappi (joni), Monday, 31 January 2005 22:54 (twenty-one years ago)

i dissapprove of this and also think that it's not very good.

I agree. Even if it was well executed it would be creepy, but it's not even done well.

― Leon the Fatboy (Ex Leon), Monday, 31 January 2005 22:57 (twenty-one years ago)

David Thomson also disapproves of this ad. Can't say I blame him.

― Marcello Carlin, Monday, 7 February 2005 09:03 (twenty-one years ago)

It's like that "Grey Album" beatles thingy...

For what it's worth, I think Gene Kelly would have dug it.

― mark grout (mark grout), Monday, 7 February 2005 09:06 (twenty-one years ago)

No, the Grey Album was a very canny piece of work which forced us to re-evaluate both Jay-Z and the Beatles. Don't know about Gene Kelly digging it, but this advert is a bit like digging up Gene Kelly - necrophilia. That having been said, I do dimly recall GK saying complimentary things about breakdancing back in the '80s, so who knows?

― Marcello Carlin, Monday, 7 February 2005 09:15 (twenty-one years ago)

I was more referencing the Grey Album Video. But yeah.

― mark grout (mark grout), Monday, 7 February 2005 09:27 (twenty-one years ago)

well... i somehow doubt there's too many people who approve of this ad (probably a vw viral, though they insist it's not):

http://www.boreme.com/bm_movies/vw_suicide_bomber.mov

it is in bad taste, just so you know. but it's not real. production value is what makes me think it has vw money behind it.

― firstworldman (firstworldman), Monday, 7 February 2005 09:33 (twenty-one years ago)

i saw this last night tucked between bits of ch4's "best" video evah! 4 hours extravaganza and if you'd've tortured me to within an inch of my life this morning i still wouldn't've been able to tell you what the advert was for...

― koogs (koogs), Monday, 7 February 2005 09:43 (twenty-one years ago)

I feel really uneasy about the ad. It's an 'amazing technical achievement' but not really as amazing as the thing its ripping off. If that's rockist so be, but for fuck's sake it's a *car ad*. The point is not whether GK 'would' approve, because the fact is he *did not* approve, indeed *cannot* approve, being dead. Also I don't really think we need more body-popping -- hasn't this particular revival-meme been doing the rounds for about five years already?

― Miles Finch, Monday, 7 February 2005 10:11 (twenty-one years ago)

I don't entirely agree with DT, and I don't think monkeying around is always bad. 'Singin' in thr Rain' is a filma bout post-sync sound, and 'An American in Paris' monkeys mightily with the canon of Impressionism. But it's the inappropriateness of the use here and its use, repeat, in a car advert.

― Miles Finch, Monday, 7 February 2005 10:16 (twenty-one years ago)

The duddest part is right at the end, where he turns around and goes "oh! a car"

― mark grout (mark grout), Monday, 7 February 2005 17:13 (twenty-one years ago)

Thomson strikes me as ridiculously pompous. To judge adverts as art I find it easy to remove product association. Golf ads are quite consistent in quality however (liked the 'thirty-year old fad' one a lot) and they always have a 'clever' tagline. I don't think the ad is at all insulting to Gene Kelly/Singin' In The Rain, it is simply a tried and trusted device being employed, that of 're-contextualising' for viewing impact - it is used all the time.

― Alienus Quam Reproba (blueski), Monday, 7 February 2005 17:20 (twenty-one years ago)

hey miles, its ok if GK didnt approve, his "estate" did (it says it in little letters at the bottom), so no worries lol ;-)

fwiw i didnt think the grey album was "a very canny piece of work which forced us to re-evaluate both Jay-Z and the Beatles.", i just thought it was a bit boring. niether is this ad a very canny piece of work which forced us to re-evaluate both Singin in the Rain and the electro, and it is a bit creepy. i also thought it was really badly done. it looks totally amateur! the way the legs are sort of squished on to the body, it looks shit.

the last VW ad was much better, the 30 yrs one with Pram on the soundtrack. but their ads are still better than most other car ads, like Saab for example who make fuckin shockers.

sorry whats the deal with the fact thast its a car advert? i dont get it.

also, is this somehow worse than steve mcqueen driving round that ford or whatever that shite was? i dont see the difference. is gene kelly a more sacred figure?

― ambrose (ambrose), Monday, 7 February 2005 18:11 (twenty-one years ago)

It's a great shame that when the coked up brain dead ad exec came up with idea, he couldn't find a good CGI artist or remixer to actually execute the concept.

― Ed (dali), Monday, 7 February 2005 18:26 (twenty-one years ago)

plus yeah eds right, the music shit too. another unfavourable comparison with their last ad

― ambrose (ambrose), Monday, 7 February 2005 20:21 (twenty-one years ago)

the Grey Album was a very canny piece of work which forced us to re-evaluate both Jay-Z and the Beatles
?! it's just a mash-up, and a mediocre one at that, with a catchy name concept. the most impressive thing about it is the work of dangermouse's publicist.

as for the ad, i think bringing up dead people always seems like necrophilia. not just in ads, but in forrest gump, etc. someone gets to feed off their talent, charisma, or caché without them having any say. and by that fact alone i always find it creepy. apart from that it strikes me like the disco remakes of classical music, but not even as good. seems it will be laughable kitsch really fast which i guess is its own reward. that's what ads are good for.

though i doubt gene kelley would mind. he always seemed easy going and decidedly un-rockist. he was in xanadu for fuck sake.

― lolita corpus (lolitacorpus), Monday, 7 February 2005 21:16 (twenty-one years ago)

people are very very cynical about CGI when they know what the trick is. i can't think of many other examples where the original actor and footage is manipulated itself in the way that this is - only big Hollywood 'brush ins' like when Forrest Gump is on Ed Sullivan with Lennon or whatever it was (over ten years ago!). but this seems much more ambitious and perhaps not really attempted to this level before, so considering all that it doesn't seem that bad a job, and i'm not sure how relevant the execution is over the concept (unless it's like REALLY bad) but i need to see it at closer detail.

― Alienus Quam Reproba (blueski), Monday, 7 February 2005 21:27 (twenty-one years ago)

well im not really cynical, it just looks shit. the only person who would think the execution is more relevant than the concept is a critic of some sort, to me, the execution is vital cos otherwise its not a trick. its like a magician trying to do an illusion but doing it really obviously and where you can see how hes doing it, im not really interested in the concept, im inerested in the trick - is it believable. i dont think thats cynical. actually surely the only people that would applaud concepts over execution in an ad is trev0r be@ttie or some ad exec peeps.

― ambrose (ambrose), Monday, 7 February 2005 21:34 (twenty-one years ago)

Thing is i quite like the idea, and we all know, from things like gollum in LotR that you can do some amazing things mapping CGI onto human movement. The problem here seems to be that they have tried to do everything without mapping CGI onto a human dancer or using an insufficiently complex mapping the movement looks unnatural. If you look at the way he dancers there and not enough degrees of freedom in some limbs and too many in others, it looks too much like a ball joint computer model.

The remixer as well has done a half arsed job, not electro enough and hanging on to more of the original than necessary for recognition.

― Ed (dali), Monday, 7 February 2005 21:36 (twenty-one years ago)

That suicide bomber ad is some great shit.

The Gene Kelly remix is pretty nauseating. Between that freakshow and the Mitsubishi ad with that dumb looking girl Chappelle made fun of in his pilot episode I think popping and locking is officially dead, or should be. Back to nodding my head in the corner.

― TOMBOT, Monday, 7 February 2005 22:37 (twenty-one years ago)

The dancing citroën dances better than gene kelly.

― Ed (dali), Tuesday, 8 February 2005 07:14 (twenty-one years ago)

sorry whats the deal with the fact thast its a car advert? i dont get it.

okay then you are a CORPORATE WHORE

also, is this somehow worse than steve mcqueen driving round that ford or whatever that shite was? i dont see the difference. is gene kelly a more sacred figure?

well, indeed: but there are two points: 1) yes kelly *is* more iconic -- 'bullit' is a pretty stupid movie and 2), less subjectively, what they've done here is fuck with kelly's dancing. that's another level than what they did to mcqueen.

i think the idea is shit because it pollutes the original film, it's as simple as that: the original will now have the tang of car advert, and that's fucked up. and it's fucking *body-popping* again.

though i doubt gene kelley would mind. he always seemed easy going and decidedly un-rockist.

point is that's a MAYBE. there's no way of knowing, so leave well alone. 'xanadu' was not an advert that wiped its ass on one of the things he worked hardest on. and having qualms about the freedoms of advertisers to do this isn't all that rockist.

― Miles Finch, Tuesday, 8 February 2005 10:09 (twenty-one years ago)

Didn't Gene Kelly 'admire' MJ's "Beat It" routine at the Grammys? Or am I thinking of Fred Astaire?

― mark grout (mark grout), Tuesday, 8 February 2005 10:14 (twenty-one years ago)

I do know that Gene was 'bored silly' of the original routine, but understood other's appreciation of it. I think he would have dug it, 90% sure. I don't suppose he would have cared about it being a car ad, when was the last time you met a 90 year old that still railled against commercialisation?

Having said all that, the car ad part of it was a clinker at the end, like I said prev.

― mark grout (mark grout), Tuesday, 8 February 2005 10:17 (twenty-one years ago)

Bertrand Russell to thread.

It's not as good as the Morecambe and Wise remake.

― Marcello Carlin, Tuesday, 8 February 2005 10:22 (twenty-one years ago)

i saw it last night, i don't think the execution is problematic enough at all to render the piece as misguided junk (nor the concept). One possibility is that they decided to base the choreography on David Elsewhere's moves which might go some way to explaining the 'unrealistic' elastic limb movements, but i don't think Elsewhere dances as fast as 'Kelly' does in the ad so it doesn't look as good. Oh well, they tried.

the fact that it's a car ad actually seems irrelevant. how many more cars will VW actually sell on the basis of this ad alone? will it actually make much difference? i doubt it.

― Alienus Quam Reproba (blueski), Tuesday, 8 February 2005 10:22 (twenty-one years ago)

the vw suicide bomber ad was done by lee and dan.

― j blount (papa la bas), Tuesday, 8 February 2005 10:25 (twenty-one years ago)

it's not aboput whether it helps vw ornot. it's just that this was an affecting moment in a film which is now part of an advert. it's like a 'fast show' spoof or something. the point i raised about kelly's 'an american in paris' stands, that said, but i think it's the physical manipulation of a dead person that riles me.

― Miles Finch, Tuesday, 8 February 2005 10:25 (twenty-one years ago)

"I'm Wet Through, folks!"

― mark grout (mark grout), Tuesday, 8 February 2005 10:30 (twenty-one years ago)

but i think it's the physical manipulation of a dead person that riles me.

how do you feel about that animated gif of Hitler eating a watermelon? i get your point tho, but it seems it's okay to manipulate some dead people but not others...mind you Hitler could never be used to sell cars, esp. not Volkswagens!

― Alienus Quam Reproba (blueski), Tuesday, 8 February 2005 10:47 (twenty-one years ago)

yeah, it's entirely about who's being manipualted, and why, and in what context. it's *a bit* like the duchamp moustahce on 'mona lisa' but not because that was about epatering the bourgeois, this is not. fuck it, i'm going to be neo-rockist here.

― Miles Finch, Tuesday, 8 February 2005 10:56 (twenty-one years ago)

Then again, Singin' In The Rain is a film whose plot is expressly about manipulation, and in particular about Debbie Reynolds pretending to be the voice of Jean Hagen.

― Marcello Carlin, Tuesday, 8 February 2005 11:09 (twenty-one years ago)

I guess I didn't find it particularly offensive because I'm an Astaire gal myself.

― kate/papa november (papa november), Tuesday, 8 February 2005 11:12 (twenty-one years ago)

yeah, as i said -- but it's against manipulation, it's 'rockist' and 'logocentric' in that it says that reynolds deserves the credit for singing, not the front girl. it's pretty 'rockist' in that respect.

― Miles Finch, Tuesday, 8 February 2005 11:12 (twenty-one years ago)

Is it, though? I remain troubled by the precipitous glee with which Kelly and O'Connor pull back the curtains at the end to expose both of them. It seems as though they're exulting in the humiliation of others.

― Marcello Carlin, Tuesday, 8 February 2005 11:20 (twenty-one years ago)

yeah, that's true, it is a bit cruel, but the moral of the story, to drop some intentionality in your ear, is 'respect the reynolds' -- it definitely doesn't celebrate the artifice or anything like that.

― Miles Finch, Tuesday, 8 February 2005 11:31 (twenty-one years ago)

three weeks pass...

ooh i guessed correctly about David Elsewhere!

― Sven Bastard (blueski), Friday, 4 March 2005 11:12 (twenty-one years ago)

But is it? I thought the glee was more a reaction against how the miming girl had blackmailed Kelly and O'Connor into going along with the scam, and how they were both now "We'll never work again and we don't care"...

― mark grout (mark grout), Friday, 4 March 2005 11:36 (twenty-one years ago)

one year passes...

As per all of the 'unrealistic CGI' objections...I could be wrong, but I don't think CGI was as large a component as people are implying. Three breakdancers were dressed in the same suit, and the faces must have been pasted over. One of the dancers was David Elsewhere, as has been mentioned, and his moves really do look like that. It's extremely impressive, and it's not computer-generated. Check out his work at Kollaberation; it's amazing.

― T M, Saturday, 22 April 2006 13:58 (twenty years ago)

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