Thursday, March 22, 2007
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Phil de Vellis = John Mark Karr?
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Posted by:
Patrick Ruffini at
4:08 PM
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Did Phil de Vellis just cop to a "crime" he didn't commit, or had only a minor part in committing, to advance his career (it's working) or cover for the real perps?
Buckeye State Blog, a lefty Ohio outfit, is doubtful that de Vellis is the auteur of "Vote Different." They have clashed in the past so there clearly is no love lost between the two: Also, where was De Vellis' "Big Sister" ad of the Brown campaign. Where's that one piece that hinted at Phil's creativity? Where is something - anything - that shows a high level of technical skill with video editing/manipulation. If you're still looking, stop. I couldn't find anything either. In fact, there's nothing, I repeat NOTHING, from Phil's work on that campaign (or any other work he's done elsewhere that I've tracked down) that even leaves one to hope that he is capable of the pure genius that is "Big Sister". I remain skeptical. David All pays close attention and doesn't buy it either: I took a closer examination of the video today, and there’s one scene which really jumps out at me which leads me to believe that there could, in fact, be more to the story.
Watch the video again and look for this scene. Look how perfectly edited the series of videos are in the video. Now look at the admittedly amateur video which the Lamont folks made using this same idea. No one noticed those scenes.
This is precision editing. Not some kid, in his apartment, on a Sunday, with some editing equipment.
He's referring to an early scene in the spot, where the drones are marching to Hillary video placed perfectly in a series of TV screens above. That shows a remarkable attention to detail in the production.
It also conflicts with ParkRidge47's email to Micah Sifry, which clumsily claimed that the ad was a response to the David Geffen spat. Which happened on February 21st. And if so, that's revealing, because it suggests "Vote Different" was in the works for two weeks or more. Chances are there's more to de Vellis' claim that it was done on his apartment on a Sunday afternoon.
I'm not a video editor. I don't own a Mac or Final Cut Pro. But I've worked with video editors. And my strong sense is, like David's, that there is no way this ad was thrown together in six hours. Maybe the cheap responses were, or the Lamont-Lieberman version was, but not this.
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It is very well done, and the attention to detail is excellent, but there are lots of people out there talented enough to do this on their own. You don't need Pixar or Industrial Light & Magic to pull this off--just a person good enough to work at Pixar or IL&M. Whether Phil de Vellis is one of those people is really the question. |
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Patrick,
I think you're right about this. Something's hinky, and in comaprison to the Lieberman/Lamont ad, the detail is simply too fine.
Bringing up the point about this ad following up the David Geffen spat makes the de Vellis' claim even more suspect. Supposedly, if my memory's correct on this, the "Vote Different" ad was supposed to be a surprise; a sort of pre-emptive strike on Hillary's campaign.
The more that comes out about this ad, and the feud between Hillary and Obama, the more I'm begining to see that there are few coincidences in this race for the Dem. nomination.
If I were a conspiracy nut, I might even posit the notion that these two might be working hand-in-hand to present an illusion of animosity so that later, if they run on the same ticket, they can play the "let bygones be bygones" game to an already gullible Dem. base.
Thomas |
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It seems there are a surprising number of people who confess to crimes they didn't commit... |
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Maybe it could be done quickly, but I doubt you could even gather up the various video clips you needed to edit into the commercial in six hours.
It takes time to edit because you have to gather, cull, import, edit, view, edit more, review... repeat several times...
Six hours? no way. |
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"It also conflicts with ParkRidge47's email to Micah Sifry, which clumsily claimed that the ad was a response to the David Geffen spat."
Hmmm, Geffen certainly has plenty of access to first rate video editing equipment, and no doubt people to man it discreetly...
Just a thought |
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That was a parody done by some folks clearly playing up to David Geffen's vanity. Apparently it was a volunteer effort and pretty funny stuff. The quality is excellent, just as good as the Hillary-Obama 1984 ad. The best joke is Steven Seagal ordering the veal in the restaurant. |
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I don't know about this sort of editing, but I know in general that, when it comes to graphics, people can learn and improve rapidly once they put an effort into it. People often underestimate the power of supposedly weak software combined with persistence and attention to detail.
An exponentially large improvement in just one afternoon might be a bit much. But the absence of publicly available work doesn't mean that this fellow wasn't improving his skills steadily. |
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It's nicely done, but it could certainly have been done in one evening. It's just one Hillary clip merged into the Apple ad. There's a little bit of Alpha Channel work in there, but it's all in low resolution which makes it much easier.
The Obama and Lamont ads are so crude I would guess they took more like .6 hours to do...
Heck, I have a buddy who's good at this sort of stuff, in 6 hours he can knock up a really great 'rough' version of an ad, which in YouTube would look exactly like the real thing -- from scratch! |
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Anyone that has ever used Final Cut Pro knows how easy it is to do scenes as shown in the Clinton 1984 video spoof. My first thought after seeing the video (the Clinton gang is going to throw up over this) was that Steve Jobs' genuiuses had made FCP too good and that the 1984 ad had been very effectively stolen and digitally manipulated. Don't believe it? Buy a Mac and see. {In the interests of full disclosure, my IRA portfolio has 300 shares of Apple in it.) |
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If my brother-in-law (a regional sales manager) can take 10 minutes of raw footage of my daughter and her cousin playing, edit it down to a one minute clip, add soundtrack and text and e-mail it to me all in about an hour -- ON A Windoze PC, no less -- ... well I think entirely possible to do this add in 6 hours ...
People seriously underestimate the power of technology.
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This story is not going away. Obama looks like a dingbat and a tool of white socialist extremists.
One thing: Apple is very protective of their intellectual property. I'm a video techie - I try getting a video from Itunes on anything but an IPOD, and I just can't hack past their copy protection. Here we have the theft of Apple's intellectual property for personal gain, and not a peep from Apple. Something stinks in Obamaland. |
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