250,000 powerballs

You’ve probably seen the recent advert for Sony Bravia TVs - it looks really cool (if you’ve not seen it, here’s a link to a long high-resolution version).

The reason I bring it up is that when I saw it, I assumed it was all done with computer graphics - and I’ve since realised that quite a few other folks thought the same thing. It glows in such an unworldly fashion, I assumed CG was the only way it could have been made.

However, I recently found out that the really cool thing about the advert is that absolutely all of it is real. They really did fire hundreds of thousands of rubber balls down the street. Even the frog’s real…

There are a few pictures from the shoot on flickr, including this one showing them tipping the balls down the street, and a couple showing them hiding behind thier protective barriers (cardboard boxes) while filming. If you’re curious, the site has more behind the scenes info here. I think it took them a while to clean up.

The nice music is by José González, who is touring Europe with zero7 this year. Sadly, the only tour date near here is at T In The Park, which we decided not to get tickets for this year. However, if you live near Manchester, London or Dublin, you might be able to catch them. The new zero7 album (The Garden) is pretty good too.

Extras #

Here’s a few more amusing things.

• Rogue Scientist Has Own Scientific Method from The Onion.
• The Global Mosaic - Have a go at some collaborative tiling.