Cog (television commercial)
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The Cog television commercial was a dramatic commercial for the Honda Accord, made (almost completely) without any CGI or trick photography.
The two minute commercial appears as a single, long camera pan (although it is in fact two stitched together because the contraption wouldn't fit in a room: the join is at the moment where the exhaust pipe rolls across the floor) along a Heath Robinson/Rube Goldberg-like arrangement of parts from the car.
The sequence starts with a transmission bearing rolling into a synchro hub. This sets off a cascade of movement; windscreen wipers 'walk' across the floor, valve stems roll down a bonnet and carefully weighted tires roll uphill. The commercial ends when the central locking on a complete Accord is triggered, causing the tailgate to close, tipping the car off a balanced trailer and into a final pose in front of the camera. The voice of US author Garrison Keillor announces "Isn't it nice when things just work?" This commercial took 606 different takes to complete.
Parodies
A parody of this advert was recently created by the BBC to promote sport on the BBC Local Radio, by using bits found in a football locker room. It finalizes with a kick of a football into a goal.
Others to parody the popular commercial include The Number, a directory enquiries service.
External links
- The commercial (http://multimedia.honda-eu.com/multimedia/video/clips/cars/thecog.zip)
- Lights! Camera! Retake! (http://www.dailytelegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/04/13/nhonda13.xml&sSheet=/news/2003/04/13/ixhome.html)
- TAKE 606 (http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/page.cfm?objectid=12844132&method=full&siteid=89488&headline=TAKE%20606)
- The Number parody (http://www.thenumber.com/ads/files/viral_honda_spoof.mpg)