I was watching Emmerdale the other week when something struck me, why the hell I am watching Emmerdale!!! Only joking what struck me was the comedy moments where you could tell it was fake. OK I'm not surprised as soaps are fake pretending to be real life and therefore will occasionally look fake because, well, it is. I'm not talking fake in the sense of story lines that are beyond belief but the little moments that scream out fakery. The first of these was when a character was picking up some 'heavy suitcases'. His lines and actions where telling me they were extremely heavy, but looking at him you could see that in fact the suitcases weren't heavy at all and in fact he lifted them quite easily on a number of occasions. Another thing you see along these lines in TV programmes is when a character drinks from a mug/cup, sometimes you can instantly tell the cup is empty. As I mentioned though soaps aren't real and only used for entertainment purposes so these moments of fakery and the wildly over the top story lines are necessary as who the hell would watch if it depicted everyday boring life in which nothing much happens (well not in mine anyway!). This got me thinking about adverts and how fakery is used. Firstly adverts are mostly fake, depicting products in a way that makes them appealing in order to increase awareness of that brand and attempt to increase sales. Take for example fast food, where the adverts make the products look great, but have you ever got a burger that looked exactly like the one on the advert, probably not, then theres the whole current debate about the use of photoshop/airbrushing in adverts. But just like soaps if these adverts didn't use over the top storylines or a bit of fakery then the chances are people would be not be interested and therefore not buy the product. However I do have a problem when it comes to adverts that pretend to be real with 'real people'. My current annoyance on this subject is with the t mobile adverts. Before I go on I have nothing against the adverts themselves as they are quite good and the strategy of bringing people together in the 'life is for sharing' strapline is a really good idea. However its the pure fakery of the ads that really does my head in. Take for example the first of their ads with the flashmob dance, OK the flash mob thing is fake because you have to set the whole thing up, that's not the problem (excluding the blatant idea steal from improv everywhere) but what really gets me is the plants stuck around the station with their mobile phones recording it, these aren't 'real people' who just happen to have caught the event by chance but definite plants. Then you have the sing along, another major public event in which you get people to use their mobile to share things. Again its good idea, but once again i'm put off with the fakery of it all. Surely this moment is faked!!
And finally with have their current run of ads on the streets of Manchester asking 'real people' what they would do with free minutes etc.. Again this is ruined by the obvious fakeness of the people on screen. They are trying to make out they just asked random people on the street, but a few scream out actors especially the girl at about 6 secs with her 'boyfriend', don't listen to what he is saying just watch her face, its not normal! Especially in the extended ad for the ad when he goes on about calling his nan the emotions she puts through her face are so false.
Oh and that brings me neatly on to my occasional item people I'd like to punch in adverts. Can you spot who it is. Yes its that gimp in green shouting down his god dam phone!!!
Starting a revolutio..
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