Studio aka’s Marc Craste with “The Big Win” For the UK National Lottery.

Quicktime at ‘boards magazine.

Wasn’t that lovely? Something funny about it though, hmm…

Fish Barrel Bang

The design is great, spot on. Especially the sets — whimsical, chirpy, somebody said “judicious” and I agree. The animation is cute, the characters sympathetic if a bit manic — they’re very like marionettes, or Punch and Judy, which adds to the feeling of slightly unstable capriciousness… and those smiles are awfully wide. Forcibly cheering up the homeless Captain Caveman is a bit odd. And what’s that in the lyrics? “The louder I say I’m happy, the more I believe it’s so!”

In a lottery ad! Amazing. Kudos to Marc Craste for sticking it to his own client, through this sly commentary on the philosophically troubling matter of selling the lower-middle-class million-to-one odds on their own money in the guise of blind faith, through sheer willpower alone. Most ads implying happiness through consumption at least give you a product. Craste has out-done the likes of such mere craftsmen as Nike and Coke, by ignoring a value proposition entirely and forthrightly selling hope itself.

The song, “A Smile and a Ribbon” by Patience and Prudence from 1956, is brilliant, and tragically naïve, just like every other unabashedly optimistic cultural artifact from that era. Not long after the song’s release came Valium, and after a few more years, Valley of the Dolls. Craste’s subtle nods to history make this ad the Candide of our generation, reminding us once again why Leibnizian Optimism first fell, all without destroying Lisbon to get the point across. Bravo, sir.

Means, Motive, and Opportunity

Craste has been quietly tacking such manifestos to our doors for some time now: his “Pica Towers” series, culimating with JoJo in the Stars, was a beautiful and vicious noir critique of the vacuousness of modern popular drama, where pointlessness equates to poignancy, achieved by a daring poker-faced pastiche of the genre.

In this interview, Craste relates how the cruel and plotless series was originally intended for television, with a cast he describes as:

…prone to psychotic behaviour and sudden acts of completely gratuitous violence. Guaranteed ratings winner one would have thought. […] inexplicably, the broadcaster in question seemed to lose interest […] and the project was scuppered. So we were left with a cast of characters and no show to put on.

Months passed and eventually my festering resentment had to be redirected into something productive. I had a tall building, some stereotyped characters and a crazed killer. There had to be a film of sparkling originality in there somewhere. Lacking a coherent storyline didn’t seem to be an obstacle worth considering. Besides, I knew I could always pass that deficiency off as being enigmatic.

Well, it must be irony, though you can’t tell it from the films. Another triumph! Sarcasm without falsehood. May we all aspire to such innovative and candid self-analysis.

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