Art director pet peeve time.

While the use of a plain apostrophe ' is one of my AD peeves, (and Mack Simpson’s as well), I have another that gets me more nutzer. It’s reflected light and shadows in images that are mismatched or shot at different times, as you can see with the plane and vehicle in this shot. (Click the image to enlarge.) It’s for the new LR3 from Land Rover which I first saw on an outdoor in NYC this week.

I used to do heavy print collateral for them, and as an AD, one of the things I did was major retouching on all their images. Shot comes over from the UK with driver on the wrong side? No problem. Flop him and the steering wheel he rode in on. Running lights the wrong color or a roof rack missing? No problem there either. Wheels don’t spin? Give me 11 minutes and they will. Rig on the front of the car? Hell, that’s cake.

Photoshop is my friend – Wacom my harbinger of retouching death.

[And for those that don’t already know, all cars in running shots for ads or brochures like you see above have a rig attached to the front of the car, underneath the front bumper. Camera and car don’t move in relation to each other and voila - motion becomes visible only in the background when shot. Yes, Photoshop can mimic a lot of that blurred motion later if you have to, but there’s still something about that authentic camera effect, and adding motion blur to a static shot can be a real pain in the ass depending on the background you have to work with.]

But I digress.

So why the love on my part? Because I thought LR used to have standards that wouldn’t allow stuff like that to slip by. The plane in the background is shot at a different time of day than the LR3 is. The surface on top of the plane’s cockpit indicates the sun is beating down on it at around mid-morning, say 10:00 am or mid-afternoon, 2:00 pm. It’s just stuff you notice after doing it for so long.

The LR3’s reflections though indicate overcast skies late in the afternoon as the sun is going down. Look at the reflections of the mountains in the side of the car also. They don’t match the mountains in the background, because if they did, those mountains in the distance would be glowing with at least some cast light near their peaks.

So why do I care? Why should anyone? Why does this shit get me crazy? Because it’s about getting it right, especially on a brand like Land Rover. This shows a lack of attention to detail. Little by little, you allow that to go on and the work you do becomes compromised.

I need a drink.

Tags: advertising, brands, viral