Reality-Based Advertising?

I recall having found the initial installments of the Dove "real beauty" ad campaign to be mostly annoying, but this video of what goes into producing a billboard image (or, by implication, a magazine cover, etc.) is pretty sweet. This via Ezra who has some additional apposite thoughts.

Part of what's interesting about this stuff is that photo manipulation and the like has the same basic structure as your standard optical illusions -- knowledge and cognition has a very limited impact on perception. No matter how well you "understand" how the Rubin Vase works, you still fall prey to the illusion that the image is "changing" from faces to a vase. Similarly, even if you know the "right answer" to the T-Illusion game, the right solution still looks wrong. Just the same, no matter how well-aware I am that commercial images are heavily manipulated, they still appear authentic to me unless the manipulation is actually sloppily executed. The mere knowledge that manipulation is omnipresent in these contexts has very little impact on how I see them, and whenever I see something like that Dove video I find myself re-surprised by the scale of the manipulation even though I remember having seen these things before and know perfectly well how the world works.

Comments

I guess I don't get it. I haven't seen any of the Dove ad campaign (um, they don't seem to be showing it on ESPN for some reason - what channel is Matthew watching?). But anybody who's watched his wife get ready for some event for an hour knows what kind of transformation can take place in his own bathroom. Add a bunch of professionals doing the makeup and hair and lighting and photography, and then add copious Photoshop manipulation, and what else would you expect?

Posted by Al | October 16, 2006 1:00 PM

> Just the same, no matter how well-aware I
> am that commercial images are heavily
> manipulated, they still appear authentic
> to me unless the manipulation is actually
> sloppily executed.

Really? Having worked with models and actrons from time to time I have essentially trained my brain to respond to any commercial images by flashing "fake" in front of my eyes (so to speak). I don't even bother looking at the NYT Magazine fashion pages/supplements any more - the models look like Martians rather than human beings to me.

Of course, it might help in that process that I am a bit older than Matt...

Cranky

Posted by Cranky Observer | October 16, 2006 1:24 PM

the T-illusion:

part of the problem is simply a semantic ambiguity:
does "the length of the vertical line" mean measuring from the bottom of the vertical line to the *top edge* of the horizontal line, or to the *bottom edge* of the horizontal line?

The horizontal line has a non-trivial thickness, indeed fairly close to the error I got on my first try (116%). I thought I was trying to match the length to the *top* edge of the horizontal line (i.e., the vertical dimension of the T as a whole), but if they meant me to measure to the *bottom edge* of it then this would account for some of my over-length.

Posted by kid bitzer | October 16, 2006 1:43 PM

Whenever I see an ad my tickertape of the unconscious shouts Minutemen lyrics:
"let the products sell themselves
fuck advertising and commercial psychology
psychological methods to sell should be destroyed
because of their own blind involvement
in their own conditioned closed minds
the unit bonded together
morals
ideals
awareness
progress
let yourself be heard"

That's some good agitpop.

I also vaguely remember the indoctrination I got as a kid from an LP called "Free to be you and me" which featured Rosie Grier and Marlo Thomas in skits and songs for kids, pointing out that the lady smiling while using the soap is smiling because she is an actress who is paid to smile. My parents brainwashed me so well that I currently carry no credit card debt.

Posted by John I | October 16, 2006 1:44 PM

the Dove ad:

you guys are getting suckered once again ('you' = MY and Ezra).

That woman is *already* an exceptionally attractive woman, even in the first (before) frames.

This video does *not* show how they can take any old woman, do a lot of things to her, and make her gorgeous.

It shows how they can take a model, put her in a t-shirt and make her face blotchy, and for five seconds or so you don't notice that she has an unusually beautiful face.

Just freeze it on one of the earlier stills, and you'll see: strongly left-right symmetrical; high cheek-bones; good jaw-line; well-marked eyebrows, etc. etc.

This is just the old sitcom gag about the nerdy girl turning into a swan, where they take a very attractive actor, put her in glasses and comb her hair badly at the beginning of the show, and then doll her up at the end.

(I should say that it is still an interesting add for other reasons--who knew that billboards required such extreme lengthening of neck and narrowing of shoulders? I think the final bill-board is less attractive than the original face, but it is still interesting to see the changes mandated by the medium--or at least partly by the medium.)

Posted by kid bitzer | October 16, 2006 1:56 PM

John I (you aren't related to the king of Freedonia, are you?), that's a great song, and its great title deserves immortality too: "Shit from an Old Notebook."

Agreed with kid bitzer, and some commenters at Ezra's; that's an attractive woman, and the picture at the beginning just shows that most people don't look great in mug shots.

Posted by Matt Weiner | October 16, 2006 2:46 PM

I agree with Cranky. Most ommercial photography of human beings screams "fake" to me, the air-brushing and other manipulation is all too obvious.

The photography in men's magazines like Playboy and Maxim inches closer and closer to looking indistinguishable from digitally produced images.

Posted by blah | October 16, 2006 3:13 PM

I think we can all agree with Al on this one. Wihtout makeup, his wife looks awful.

Posted by arthur | October 16, 2006 3:28 PM

Those Dove ads are total bullshit. They are engaging in unabashed and unwarranted fearmongering. Any 'distortion' of the ideal of women's beauty that has occurred with the emergance of high tech photoshopping should have been more than counteracted by the massive profligration of low quality free pornography through the internet. Technology has achieved its own balance and has no need of Dove's aid.

Posted by Nicholas Yglesias | October 16, 2006 3:50 PM

But anybody who's watched his wife get ready for some event for an hour knows what kind of transformation can take place in his own bathroom.

I guess, sort of. But I always found that the more familiar with someone I am, the less I notice routine changes in their appearance (like made-up-to-go-out vs. ready-for-bed).

Posted by Christopher M | October 16, 2006 4:43 PM

Just the same, no matter how well-aware I am that commercial images are heavily manipulated, they still appear authentic to me unless the manipulation is actually sloppily executed.

Cranky is right, Matthew. This is an age thing; the more you watch the more obvious visual illusions become, much like the 'writer's tricks' scripts use become obvious if you pay attention to writing in the first place. Part of that is simply the advance of technology, the new illusions look NEW, making them distinguishable from more realistic shots. NOTHING on TV or in the movies is realistic or more correctly, accurately representive of the actual conditions that would pertain in a similar real situation, or even on a set.

The real trick is to pull out (or approximate) the accurate representations that can't be disguised. (Such as with Playboy models.)

Enjoy it will it lasts, about the time you hit thirty (if you're a dedicated enough TV or movie watcher and you start looking for these things) you won't really much LIKE TV or movies anymore.

max
['Do dah.']

Posted by max | October 16, 2006 5:50 PM