otaku-house, December 4, 2005 12:24:23 PM CET
Spike Jonze - Gap ad "Pardon Our Dust"


This ad has been making the rounds, popping up on boingboing.net and so on, but Jeffrey Wells at www.hollywood-elsewhere.com has scored an original version of the ad with Peer Gynt's music. Seems someone changed the final edit to have wacky, this isn't meant to be that serious music... Trying to downplay the subversion. Here's the original, which went a long way to washing the Levy out of my brain and is one of the better ads I've seen in a long awhile. Especially the minivan bit.

jason.heiser.org

Here's the retooled version where it's just ironic or something...

www.ad-awards.com
         
excellent!
         
great ad! I see what you mean about the music. With the Peer Gynt it's a different (and better) watch
         
Yep, less obvious. Spike Jonze's ironic take travels so well between his features, music videos, and even survives into the commercials!
         
The really bizarre thing is this: they digitally removed the little girl in the Mickey Mouse cap. In the original, she appears in the foreground when the motorcycle drives by behind her, just after the car spins its wheels in the pile of clothes. In the edited version, she has turned into a half-dressed mannequin and some boxes.
         
You know to be honest, I think that's just a young black girl with princess lea like pigtails. No mickey mouse hat at all. Maybe the reason they removed her was exactly that - someone thought her hair style was reminiscent to things walt disney. Funny.
         
call me a chump, but i enjoyed the second piece more. anyone know whether it was composed for the ad or whether it's an existing piece?
         
yeah the 1st (symphony) track is so predictable and reminds me Home Alone. The second version is better but not perfect.

Great commercial; though. It almost seems like ad agencies are writing spots for Spike Jonze; hoping they can lure him to do a commercial. Wonder how much he got for this- I'd guess half a million.
         
Spike's rate (3 years ago anyway) was 25k a day. As far as writing for spike, they are. This happens all the time.

The guys who made this one, CPB (crispin porter bogusky), did exactly that. The creative director (Alex Bogusky) worked with him on the Ikea Lamp spot.
         
spike jonze has all the fun.
         
I work at stimmung, the company that did the music. The original music direction was a Clockwork Orange vibe - sped up synth versions of classical music. That worked the best in my opinion, but as always, it's up to the "creatives"... The piece that's in the 2nd version was created for the ad (after many, many revisions), composed by Dave Winer.
         
i wan't to go to the gap now. too bad i'll just get arrested. sometimes clever commercials piss me off even when they are made by do no wrong make everybody happy Jonze
         
speaking to that phantom, what i want is for spike jonze to shock me. to do something really shocking where i just can't beleive it. where i'm all like "no he didnt!"