The makers of DC Comics have recently released trailers and concept art for their upcoming offerings, and "Holy melancholy, Batman!", are they ever dark! Meanwhile, fast food advertisers have been changing tactics to sell product in the COVID world. Instead of tempting us with glistening burgers and fresh ingredients, they now soothe and reassure us with images of hand-washing and mask-wearing. In this episode, Christine and JJ discuss the visuals in recent ad campaigns, and how our visual language has been altered by the pandemic.
The makers of DC Comics have recently released trailers and concept art for their upcoming offerings, and "Holy melancholy, Batman!", are they ever dark! Meanwhile, fast food advertisers have been changing tactics to sell product in the COVID world. Instead of tempting us with glistening burgers and fresh ingredients, they now soothe and reassure us with images of hand-washing and mask-wearing. In this episode, Christine and JJ discuss the visuals in recent ad campaigns, and how our visual language has been altered by the pandemic.
Talk description to Me with Christine Malec and JJ Hunt.
Christine Malec :Hi, I'm Christine Malec.
JJ Hunt :And I'm JJ Hunt. This is talk description to Me where the visuals of current events and the world around us get hashtag in description rich conversations.
Christine Malec :Today we thought we'd talk about something a little lighter for a change of tone and change a pace. And a lot of media outlets are coming out with content to help people cope with the the malaise of the pandemic. And so we're going to talk a little bit about trailers for DC comic movies. JJ, what have you got?
JJ Hunt :Yes! So while Marvel Comics tend to be bright and fun, the DC Universe tends to be kind of dark and brooding. And so a lot of the material that they've been releasing this material about Batman, Justice League, Black Adam, Suicide Squad, they've been releasing these trailers and it is a little bit darker. So let's talk about some of the trailers that they release some of the content that they released. So one, one character that has never been on screen before is a character called Black Adam. And Black Adam is a villain he's a he's an I mean, he's kind of being turned into an antihero, but really he started out as a villain Like the show Shazam! comics like this is going back a bit in the DC Universe. And Black Adam is a big, thick bodied muscle man. In the comics, he's wearing a tight black costume with gold boots, gold for armbands and a gold belt. And he's got a gold lightning bolt on his very broad chest and they recently at fan dome released concept art teaser trailer so this is not a trailer that has any actual filmed footage in it. It's just art that was it kind of animated just a little bit to turn it into a teaser trailer that was then voiced by the hero by the their lead Dwayne The Rock Johnson who is playing Black Adam. And I mean it's he's a perfect, perfect actor for this role because the rocket His massive a former football -
Christine Malec :Is that what it says on his birth cirtificate?
JJ Hunt :Ya, I think so Dwayne The Rock Johnson. Yeah. The Rock comes from his years as a professional wrestler. That was what he wrestled under. Oh now is a movie star. He goes by Dwayne Johnson. So Dwayne The Rock Johnson, six foot five 260 pounds. You the former former football player, both in the CFL and the NFL. He's a massive man big and muscley and bald, he has a huge chest great big arms, but he's also got a massive smile and very expressive eyebrows from he takes us from his wrestling days where he would, you know, cock an eyebrow and you know, so he does a lot of eyebrow acting. And yeah, like I said the trailer doesn't show any actual footage, but they show a you know, illustrations of the rock in this costume this black costume with a gold boots and the It's really outrageous. And then he does this this voiceover for the for the commercial for for the trailer, and it's kind of threatening you know really gets really close to the mic and it's you know they I will not be held in check any longer it's really it's really quite it's quite wonderful. So then there's the Justice League now Justice League was a 2017 film directed by Zack Snyder and this is a the Justice League cinematic heroes are Cyborg, the flash Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman and Aqua man and Zack Snyder was directing the film, but he had to step down for personal reasons, after a principal photography was completed, and the film then was finished by Joss Whedon. And the tone and the direction of the film were changed by wieden. And this was a critical failure commercial failure and fans have been really angry about this because, you know, comic book fans get very excited and emotional about their, you know, their favorite superheroes, and it was a real let down and ever since people have been demanding that Zack Snyder come back on board and recut his original photography and re release a new version the Jack Snyder cut. Pardon me the Zack Snyder cut. People have been demanding this and so they have now announced that a re cut version of the movie which has no reshoots, just the original material that is then digitally altered and for tone will be aired on HBO as a four part miniseries starting in 2021. And so they released a trailer for this at fandom and it is, it is this is a very different comic book movie trailer. So the soundtrack is Leonard Cohen Singing hallelujah.
Christine Malec :You're kidding me.
JJ Hunt :It is as dark and brooding as you can get for a superhero. Leonard Cohen singing I mean,
Christine Malec :What?
JJ Hunt :Yeah, I know. Everyone in the trailer looks sad or depressed or enraged. And everything's in slow motion right including the CGI images of like snarling enemies with axes and you know, and the whole trailer is like dark and stormy skies and there are floods and fires and flashes of lightning. And of course these work with their characters right the floods from with Aquaman and the lightning flashes are part of the flash running around and it's very like, you know, apocalyptic and the characters they hold and they hug one another in moments of sadness and the there's like tortured screams from these characters again. All with Leonard Cohen singing hallelujah. And all of these clips are interspersed with like CGI fight scenes of the heroes battling with unearthly villains and I mean, it's really intense. It is a very dark and if what they, I mean, clearly what they want to do is they want to show you that Zack Snyder's cut is the dark film that everyone was hoping it was going to be. So that's what this version of Justice League is gonna look like. Now speaking of dark, Batman, so we've got a new trailer the first trailer of the new Batman so this is Robert Pattinson, who is from like Twilight fame. And again, it this trailer is like a dark, violent film noir world and patents since he's a thin, pale, intense, young man. And and just the casting of this young man tells us where they're going to take the character right? So the trailer starts with the sound of duct tape being pulled off the roll, right really ominous duct tape, ripping off the roll, and then you get a shot of what appears to be a kidnapping or a murder in progress. And a man's face is covered like completely covered in duct tape wrapped all the way around his head and the words No more lies are scrawled across the duct tape face in like red. Yeah, yeah, it's intense stuff. It's really dark. And then-
Christine Malec :Hold on. We started this by saying we're going to lighten the mood here but I don't think it's quite working out.
JJ Hunt :Maybe not! We should have picked something a little jollier.
Christine Malec :Scooby Doo! Wasn't Scooby Doo in the Justice League? Just kidding!
JJ Hunt :Ya, that's right! Raggy? Bratman?
Christine Malec :Sorry. No, very serious. Back to the duct tape.
JJ Hunt :Oh, of course. Yes. We have to get serious. So then Batman comes into the scene. Batman's wearing black combat boots and he's got like this gunmetal black body armor and it's scratched ups right so like the armor is not like pristine comic book costuming this looks like armor that has seen some use like got like these hockey type shoulder pads and and the chest piece has that's where Batman always has his logo that kind of the you know the outline of a bat logo but in this version of Batman The logo appears to be detachable. Like it looks like perhaps it's going to be two blades with handles and the blades are forming the the wings of the bow. Yeah, so this is like this is a street level Batman This is a Batman fights in the street, which they then show this vicious vicious. Oh my just the audio from the fight scene, the one fight scene they show in the trailer. It's so vicious and yeah, so and then they get Got a couple like a very quick clips of like the bat case. So you just get glimpses of these things right trailers are notorious for just giving glimpses why they're so difficult to describe because there's, there's never any time there's almost always a voiceover. So it's you know, you never get a proper opportunity to describe some of these things. So I'm glad we get at least this Yeah, so the Batcave you get these like, it appears to be like a maybe an abandoned hall or maybe a concourse, maybe it was from like an old train station or something, but it's been abandoned and repurposed, and it's grimy. And it's lit with only like there are a few pools of really harsh Industrial Light and so you only get glimpses in the shadows of these grimy walls and what a you know, a once grand, perhaps marble staircase that looks like the Batcave. And then of course, you got to have the Batmobile. Everyone loves the Batmobile, this version of the Batmobile - again, you only see kind of a couple quick clips. And it's kind of shadowy and unclear. But this version of the Batmobile is a muscle car. And it's got an open back. So muscle cars tend to be back heavy, big tires. And to date, they have a really, you know, imposing look to them like they really look like they're their blades kind of cutting down into the ground with these great big powerful rears. And this muscle car has an exposed jet engine in the back. And so it shoots a tale of flickering blue jet flames as it takes off.
Christine Malec :Oh my god.
JJ Hunt :Yeah. intense. It's gonna be intense. So this is what DC is presenting us within. Fans are going crazy about this stuff because they've been without, without content. They've been without news of their favorite heroes, their favorite properties. And so now we've got a whole bunch of them and yeah, fans are going crazy. So as dark as this universe might be It's at least comic book dark, which is, you know, better than the real life darker that a lot of us are living with these days.
Christine Malec :About a month into the pandemic, I happen to be in a drugstore. And there was a radio on and the ads on the radio included COVID. And there was stuff about are you working from home? And I was impressed at how quickly the ad agencies had had flipped things around. And then I thought, well, audio ads. You know, that's that's a little less complex. But, JJ, I guess you've been saying that that visual advertising has been catching up with this as well. So what are you seeing in visual advertising that's reflecting the new reality of the last six months or so with respect to the pandemic?
JJ Hunt :Yeah, it's been really interesting to see how, how, you know, major corporations, brands, advertising agencies deal with the pandemic and our new realities. There's been a bit of a, there's been a bit of a curve for the way these brands have dealt with it and the way they've been presenting themselves. So, you know, early days back in, back in March, so these are early days for the pandemic in in Europe and North America. So some of the major brands decided to adjust their logos in what they thought was in solidarity with the idea of social distancing. So McDonald's, I think it was McDonald's Brazil that did this and Audi and Volkswagen, those are just three examples of companies that took their regular logos, and created social distance logos. So what McDonald's did, they've got the golden arches. So these are, you know, a golden m against a red background. And what they did was they took those two bumps of the M and separated them so it's like, you know, one upside down you and then beside it, another They're separate upside down you social distance, and how he has a logo that is for four circles, usually white or silver against a black background. And they they're linked. And so of course, what it did was it separated its four rings and you know, added taglines like keep distance or something. And Volkswagen, they their logo is a circle and inside the circle is a is a little V over a W. So if you imagine the point in the middle of a W, so it's you know, big line down, little line up, little line down, big lineup, there's that bump in the middle, and then they sit a V on top of the bump of the W, they separated those so they just kind of lifted the V over the W, again, social distancing. And, you know, that was nice, I suppose some solidarity with social distance. But it wasn't particularly well received. I think that's fair to say. I think there was a some, some people felt like listen, the world's going to pot and you're mucking around with graphic design like, come on. Yeah. So then we got into the to the kind of ads you're talking about, like you hear some of this on the radio because you're absolutely right. I think like folks in radio, they're able to move and shift a little more quickly than, you know, TV ads and whatnot. it's it's a it's an easier medium to move around in. But then you started to get these, what I what I think of as like the thank yous in the information ads. So a lot of ads thanking frontline workers, right, this was a there's a wave of these Tim Hortons did some in Canada, Bank of Montreal did some law. I mean, most companies did some version of an ad that was thanking frontline workers. And then there were the ads about Drive Thru is being open and we're still open for business. And here's how we're keeping you safe, right? So they took a lot of existing footage, recut it into, like montage is maybe put in some stock footage of frontline workers or their workers and they were just giving you information and thanking people for keeping us all safe, right? And then that started to shift a little bit when they had a moment and they were finally able to start filming new content. Then we started getting ads that were about life with COVID. Right? dove they've got an advertising campaign called real beauty. This is Dove soap, and you know and beauty products. And they've got this campaign called real beauty. And that shows off the beauty of quote unquote real people. This is the concept of the whole campaign has been going on for years. In I believe it was in April. They put out bought that was called dove courage or some people call it the courage is beautiful spot. And this was aired I think on TV but definitely online and there's no dialogue, just a piano soundtrack. And there it's one after the other these natural photos of healthcare workers so they look like snapshots. I'm sure they're not I'm sure they're professional, you know, photographs, but these are very raw portraits of healthcare workers. And they're, you know, a lot of them have hung heads. Some of them are looking directly at us in in, you know, close up. But all of them all of these health care workers, these men and women, they all look exhausted, and they have messy hair, and wrinkled scrubs. So these are like the blue with a gray blue hospital clothes right? Or maybe they're wearing like white lab coats or surgical caps. They all have deep lines kind of pressed into their cheeks, and rashes and red irritated skin around their noses and mouths. Oh, this is from wearing tight surgical masks and the protective equipment that they had to, you know, where during the pandemic, right. And then at the end of the mess at the end of the ad, there's a very simple message. Courage is beautiful. And that's printed across the screen with the little dove logo. Very, very effective. And then there were like lots of different companies that did ads that were a little bit lighter, like kind of poking fun of the idea that you know, we're, we're all at home, you know, you're just playing with this notion that we're all trying to survive while we're at home and separated from each other. So Heineken did an ad. I think they called it connections. And so this is like people in their 20s you know, the young and the beautiful, always on their own in their house. houses or apartments, and all of these people, one after the other is suffering through some kind of mishap or minor indignity while trying to share a beer with friends or family on a video call, right? Hmm. So you've got people carrying their laptop around the house to try and get a better Wi Fi signal or propping up their phone so that they can get a video call and the phone falls over. Or like they've got their laptop set up. And they're doing a you know, a video call and you can only see the corner of their face, which is a real thing that you know, people laugh about are the cat walks across the keyboard. So it's like this kind of thing, but there's always like, they're always holding that high in again, or they're, you know, trying to share a beer with their friends. So then that kind of that button recently that what I've noticed recently and um, you know, maybe in the last month or so, we're starting to see ads that aren't about COVID but COVID is in there because it's part of our new reality. This is just the way life is right now. And the first the first ad I noticed this in was a subway ad I think I tweeted about this. So this is like subway restaurants you know fast food sandwich maker. And the ad that I saw online starts with a with a subway worker wearing a COVID mask and it's a close up of their face so you can just see a little bit of the mask but it's really a close up of their eyes. And they've got great big smiling eyes, right very smiley eyes, and the rest of their face is covered with their like surgical style covid mask and then they wash their hands. And we've got this like close up shot of this luxurious sudsy water the hands being washed and, and it's amazing to me because this kind of slow motion like luxuriating the sudsy this is The kind of effect the slow motion effect that fast food restaurants usually use to create enticing appetizing footage of food. Oh, but they've taken this idea and there's a great if you're a 99% invisible listener, you've probably heard the episode about this this extreme slow motion and fast food advertising that they use to like live in up food assembly. So they create these mouthwatering shots of like, condensation dripping down the edge of an icy glass of coke or a glistening burger patty that's being flipped in the air and lands on a golden toasted bun and so they use in this subway commercial they use the exact same techniques to show someone washing their hands which I thought was really fascinating that that's what they're that's what they want to that's how they're going to get us now that's how -
Christine Malec :They're selling the cleanliness.
JJ Hunt :Exactly.
Christine Malec :They're selling their their hygiene.
JJ Hunt :Yeah, yes. Fascinating. I saw another ad that was similar for Burger King. And they've got some like two for $5 campaign or something like that. And they've got kind of a couple of different ads in this campaign where they have food, pardon me web based food reviewers using and you know, trying their food for this two for $5 campaign and in one of the ads, they're inside Burger King restaurants and they get to like they get to make burgers with the staff, right? And they're making burgers with staff who are not only wearing masks, but they're wearing gloves like either like like the cheap plastic, disposable gloves or clear latex gloves to make their burgers and never, ever would you have seen this before. COVID like even if restaurants did this. They never wanted you to see hands in gloves because it just like in the old days. language that would tell us that this is factory food. This is assembly line food. You don't want that. You want to see like real hands making your food. This is like yeah, you know, but now the visual cue is, Oh, no, no, we're keeping your food safe. So we want to show you these gloved hands making your really interesting shift really interesting. Oh, yeah. I saw another ad. It was a McDonald's ad again, like a lot of fast food ads, because they're they come up quick. They're constantly changing. And because they need you into their restaurants buying their stuff constantly. That's the only way these things work. So a lot of these are fast food ads. And so there was a McDonald's commercial I saw just a couple days ago. I think it was actually released in mid August. And it's two men sitting at a picnic table with their takeout food. It's for a digital rewards program. So one guy shows the other guy his phone. Look, I got new digital rewards on my phone. Whatever. That's the super simple. That's I was watching, I thought this what is it about this? What am I that something was clicking? And I realized not only are these two men sitting first of all outside picnic table, right? Not in restaurant, they're sitting on opposite sides of the picnic table, which is to be expected. But they're also sitting at opposite ends of the table. Oh, yeah, they're sitting as far apart as they can possibly be at one table. And one guy shows the phone like he shows his phone to his friend, but they don't touch. They don't get close. He doesn't pass on the phone. It's socially distant, right?
Christine Malec :It's an it's so normal. It's becoming normalized. So it's not even the focus.
JJ Hunt :It's not the focus at all, but they want to this is something I've been talking with some sided friends about, right? Like when the several people have mentioned this to me, and I've kind of feel the same way if you're watching a TV show or a movie and you see people Breaking what are the current social distancing rules? There's like a moment of "Gasp!" like, there's a little moment of tension.
Christine Malec :I've heard this.
JJ Hunt :Yeah, you've heard this?
Christine Malec :I've heard this as well. Yeah, actually, even from blind friends, funnily enough.
JJ Hunt :Oh, really?
Christine Malec :They'll talk about, yeah, they'll talk about like crowd scenes or people diving in for a hug. And that moment - "Gasp!" That moment where you catch everything, oh, it's just fiction, and it was recorded, you know, a year ago or something.
JJ Hunt :Exactly, exactly. And so I imagine that, you know, companies that are trying to sell you something, they don't want you to have that moment of anxiety. They don't want you to have that when thinking about their product. So they need to create images that are gonna keep that separate, right? Instead, they want you to have a feeling of warmth about their product. So they have to have these safeties. Exactly. Safety. It's it's really interesting.
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