Commercials and such

I hate the stigma that is an established artist doing a commercial. I see commercials as an interesting and artistic challenge to grab people's attention in a short amount of time. Of course, they use to be about selling the product, but have now evolved into this "Hey, look at me" attitude. For example, here's an ad by David Lynch.
We are not sold on the product, just the video, which I think gives a great opportunity for a really short film. What do you guys think? Is making commercials "selling out to the MAN?"

Hm, when I previewed the post, the video was embedded, but now it is not. Can anyone else see it?

Alas, I can't see it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vor65mNB8Uk
Well, here's the link, don't know why it isn't working

Because this message board sucks and doesn't let you put HTML in your post.

Screw you, and yes it does. HTML is on.

I can see it.
What is it even supposed to be selling?

http://nz.youtube.com/watch?v=ShWp1IbRKQE

This is a good one - it's the "Doing things is what I like to do" Dunkin Donut's commercial. Very catchy tune, and analyzing it aesthetically, the technique they used where it's a continuous focus with a single camera that slowly pans back is really cool, although I think they cheated and used digital editing to splice different elements together.

Still, that's what digital editing is for. Here's an artsy pop-culture/economics question for you: does a piece of art done analog have more worth than a piece of art composed digitally?

Nowadays almost no one works in traditional i.e. non-digital mediums as far as 2D works go - everything that can be done with brushes can be done on Photoshop. Does that lessen the value of the piece? Economists would say from a loss-gain perspective, the amount of work done into learning how to use a program like Photoshop is more effective and cheaper than the amount of work that goes into mastering traditional mediums, so it's better.

Aesthetically, when you can't tell the difference between a digital piece and a traditional piece, then the only mitigating factor is your own internal fetishization of the better-ness of the traditional medium, right?

Personally I'm of the opinion that digital media is a good thing. Firstly, it will never totally replace traditional media; just like there's a market for live theater there too will be a market for hand-drawn paintings and other works. Secondly, take this example:



This is "Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing?" by Richard Hamilton, John McHale and John Voelcker. It was finished in 1956 and is one of the first pieces of the pop art movement.

The technique they used must have involved hundreds of man-hours of finding the images, reproducing them, blowing them up and pasting them onto the canvas. Today in a matter of hours you can do the same on a computer. Does that lessen the value of the piece?

No, why should it? It still takes a vibrant creative imagination to think up a piece like this. How is it selling out (to use Thomas' spiel) when you can make it easier for yourself and everyone to use a more efficient medium?

Whew. All this from a commercial about donuts.

Damn, donuts are tasty.

I have to agree with Clitus. Just because someone makes a piece of work digitally doesn't lessen its value. I was screwin' around on Garage Band and ended up making a piece of music for a friend of mine. It was a minute and thirty seconds long and was using kind of stock arrangements but I created it, didn't I? Just because I cannot play the flute, double bass, drums, mandolin, and electric guitar all together doesn't mean I cannot arrange them in a program and tweak them until I like it. Music is music. If that isn't music then why is the guy on the street banging trashcans music? The digital versus analog argument is bollocks and people just need to accept that there are different types of creativity.

I think the problem people have with digital is that it is taking the control out of the hands of a human and putting them into the cold dead mechanical hands of a machine, thus it is not expressive since it is not coming from a human. The same problem happened with film in the early days, a camera was now being used to capture reality as opposed to that of a human painting. When you take capturing reality out of the hands of human and put them into a machine, people get antsy. This is why film in the early days were not viewed as art. When it was shown that you could take this mechanical tool and use it to express yourself in ways one could not do with other art forms, film started to be taken seriously. The same thing happened with synths in the 70s. The same thing is being said about computer created art. It should blow over, as long as this digital art can prove itself to be a unique and expressive medium. I myself am actually not a fan of digital art protruding onto film, I don't think it is universally right or wrong, I'm just not a big fan of it aesthetically. I think it weakens films as an art form in their ability in capturing a reality. And here's another Dadiv Lynch youtube, cause he's awesome
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKiIroiCvZ0