Jump to content

Recommended Posts

There may be a cinema opening in East Dulwich. Whatever.


Will there be, enquiring minds want to know, local ads?


As a youth I would occasionally be dragged along to the local independent's showing of the latest Merchant Ivory for two hours' sleep. By far the best bit of the experience was the local ads: such richness of visual expression and hammer-subtle sloganeering, the audience craning for a glimpse of someone they recognised in the photography. I loved it.


I suspect these ads were a common cultural language across the UK. Could they work now, in East Dulwich? I think they could.


What we are after is an obsession with exactly how many metres from the cinema the advertised business is and, if possible, a slightly wobbly map with red footprint tracks showing the way from the cinema to said business.


Ads to look for:

Used car dealerships: Must have rows of gleaming cars on forecourt. Someone from the sex offenders' register (usually the garage owner himself) filmed taking a model of sports car not available at the dealership out for a drive to local beauty spots.


Indian restaurants: Lots of stills of interior and exterior and of murky plates of food. Every single transition effect should be employed between stills. Music: generic plinky sitar. Voiceover: local (not Indian) accent.


Pizza House/Cottage/Land/World: Chef should be shown maniacally lofting 12 inches of dough frisbee above his head. A lingering shot of the oven's gaping maw swallowing one of those long wooden paddles. Optional extra - over-long still of office Christmas party festooned in streamers holding up triangles of pizza to catastrophic dental arrangements. Voiceover style: near-bankruptcy frantic.


Local fashions: Elegant women having elegant tea and elegant lunch dressed in the finest stylings of the provincial boutique. Marine/ yachting regalia if possible. Music: Vivaldi Four Seasons (Spring).


Local family law firm: You, the couple in the back having the seething silent row over your kids' heads. This pathetic attempt to do something together as a family is fooling nobody. Pop along to Slaughter & Co for your divorce, will, school fees consultation after the show. Don't leave it until it's too late. Enjoy the main feature.

Link to comment
https://www.eastdulwichforum.co.uk/topic/42061-local-cinema-local-cinema-ads/
Share on other sites

Yes. There was something cool but also amusing about seeing businesses and people you knew up on the big screen sandwiched between glossy national campaigns for things like milk tray and lilt.


Milk tray multi million campaign.


Allan's lawn-mower sharpening service.


Lilt.

Ted Max are you my friend James IRL? We used to have a giggle about the different regional accents in cinema advertising and this thread has just reminded me about it.


Why were the ads always for the most mundane of local shops?


Dodgy second-hand car dealership a must.

Electricity "showroom". No, not the trendy bar in Hoxton.

Local independent chemist.


If you were lucky you may have seen ads for more exotic places such as:

Antonio's chip shop & family run ice cream parlour.

Pizza place that only lasted a year before going out of business.

Lingerie shop. That no-one dared go in. Or be seen.

Hairdresser's shop with all the 'latest' styles/products/techniques that would transform your life.

Just found this on The Guardian website


... and then slap a Bad Regional Ad in here like this ...


"You haven't had any accounts of bad regional ads from the south," writes Tom Morton. "Please allow me to redress the balance. I'm still haunted by an ad for the Yeovil Sheepskin Shop, a sheepskin shop in, um, Yeovil, which ran on TVS in the 1980s. There was no action in the commercial, merely a series of photos of the exterior and interior of the shop, and an inexplicably jolly voiceover detailing the parking facilities. The ad ended on a high note with the endline: The Yeovil Sheepskin Shop. It's Well Worth A Visit."


... but let's hope that never happens, though, because that would be shoddy.

We had one for a local firm of solicitors; a selection of mundane stills taken in the office accompanied by a dry voiceover.


The final shot - a last-ditch attempt to 'bring the fun', featured a shot of a judge peering over the top of his spectacles with a face of mock outrage - with a scantily-clad woman sitting on his lap.

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Latest Discussions

    • This is a remarkable interpretation of history. Wikipedia (with more footnotes and citations than you could shake a shitty stick at sez: The austerity programme was initiated in 2010 by the Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition government. In his June 2010 budget speech, Osborne identified two goals. The first was that the structural current budget deficit would be eliminated to "achieve [a] cyclically-adjusted current balance by the end of the rolling, five-year forecast period". The second was that national debt as a percentage of GDP would fall. The government intended to achieve both of its goals through substantial reductions in public expenditure.[21] This was to be achieved by a combination of public spending cuts and tax increases amounting to £110 billion.[26] Between 2010 and 2013, the Coalition government said that it had reduced public spending by £14.3 billion compared with 2009–10.[27] Growth remained low, while unemployment rose. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_government_austerity_programme From memory, last time around they were against the LTNs and competing with the Tories to pick up backlash votes - both failed. They had no counterproposals or ideas about how to manage congestion or pollution. This time around they're simply silent on the matter: https://www.southwark-libdems.org.uk/your-local-lib-dem-team/goosegreen Also, as we have seen from Mr Barber's comments on the new development on the old Jewsons yard, "leading campaigns to protect the character of East Dulwich and Goose Green" is code for "blocking new housing".
    • @Insuflo NO, please no, please don't encourage him to post more often! 😒
    • Revealing of what, exactly? I resurrected this thread, after a year, to highlight the foolishness of the OP’s op. And how posturing would be sagacity is quickly undermined by events, dear boy, events. The thread is about Mandelson. I knew he was a wrong ‘un all along, we all did; the Epstein shit just proves it. In reality, Kinnock, Blair, Brown, Starmer et all knew as well but accepted it, because they found him useful. As did a large proportion of the 2024 intake of Labour MPs who were personally vetted and approved by Mandelson.
    • I used Aria recently to replace the basin waste for my bathroom sink. He was super friendly, communicative and helpful - including changing the washer on the new replacement I bought to ensure longevity. Would highly recommend. 
Home
Events
Sign In

Sign In



Or sign in with one of these services

Search
×
    Search In
×
×
  • Create New...