Six hundred and six takes it took, and if they had
been forced to do a 607th it is probable, if not downright certain,
that one of the film crew would have snapped and gone mad. On
the first 605 occasions something small, usually infuriatingly
minute, went just slightly awry and the whole delicate arrangement
was wrecked. A drop too much oil there, or here maybe one
ball-bearing too many giving a fraction too much impetus to the
movement. Whirr, creak, crash, the entire, card-house of
consequences was a write-off and they had to start again. Honda's latest television advertisement, a two-minute film
called "Cog", is like a fine-lubricated line of dominoes.
It begins with a transmission bearing which rolls into a synchro hub
which in turn rolls into a gear wheel cog and plummets off a table
on to a camshaft and pulley wheel. All the parts are from the new
Honda Accord - £16,495 to you, guv'nor, or £6 million if you
want to pay for the advertising campaign. And what an amazing ad
campaign it is, too. Back on Cog, things are still moving, in
a what-happened-next manner redolent of "there was an old woman
who swallowed a fly". With a ting and a ding of metal on metal,
a thud of contact and the occasional thwock, plop and extended
scraping sound, the viewer watches as individual, stripped-down
parts of car roll into one another and set off more reactions. Three valve stems roll down a sloped bonnet. An exhaust box is
pushed with just enough energy into a rear suspension link which
nudges a transmission selector arm which releases the brake pedal
loaded with a small rubber brake grommit. Catapult! Boing! On goes
the beautiful dance, everything intricately balanced and poised.
Nothing must be even a sixteenth of an inch off course or the
momentum will be lost. At one point three tyres, amazingly,
roll uphill. They do so because inside they have been weighted with
bolts and screws which have been positioned with fingertip care so
that the slightest kiss of kinetic energy pushes them over, onward
and, yes, upward. During the pre-shoot set-ups, film assistants had
to tiptoe round the set so as not to disturb the feather-sensitive
superstructure of the arranged metalwork. The slightest tremor of an
ill-judged hand could have undone hours of work. |