Posted on April 23, 2019
Hack #5 – Smoking DOESN’T Kill
Anti-smoking advertisements were never a thing back home. The first time I saw one of those cringe-worthy, chillingly, goose bump-creating ones, where people dramatically tell their surgery stories due to smoking, was in the US. Before the ban was placed on those sexist, misogynic cigarette advertisements, spending in the US alone, went to over $1 million per hour in 2016. However, indirectly the film industry plays a huge role in the advertisement, product placement and therefore consumption of cigarettes and smoking.
Many remixes nowadays focus on the unexpected and unforeseen. For this hack, apart from the aforementioned, I also wanted to add the theme of mockery and sarcasm. A lot of the examples that I had researched before this project definitely had a sense of parody and joking commentary, invoking laughter to the audience. For my hack I wanted to maintain the “aura of the original” forms of media that I was using as the “dominant” in my remix, as Eduardo Nava puts it, which in this case was to opt for a more retro “vibe” but also to “challenge” that same aura by adding a twist of surprise and . So I knew from the very start that I wanted to create something in which the media and material that I included juxtaposed each other by creating a sense of unexpectedness and irony.
For some reason, as soon as the hack was assigned, smoking came straight to my mind, probably because of other projects I had done in the past related to the topic and because I felt like the Internet Archive would have a lot of available material. My first thoughts were to use those gruesome advertisements I mentioned earlier and include some type of voice over that didn’t match the video material but followed their mouth movements or gestures. But I figured what a better idea than to include Greek movies since smoking is such a big part of the culture? Deciding to find old Greek films turned out to be an even better solution since actors and actresses use to smoke all the time and it would be cool to combine two cultures from different time periods together.
Once I had the general idea in my head of what I wanted to do, I knew that the overall effect I was aiming for was to have this remix maintain the stylistic features of an advertisement with a vintage spin on it. Therefore, it would be the perfect contrast and antithesis to the more modern anti-smoking ads that are now on TV. After some research on the Internet Archive I found out about these cigarettes called Life, basically the epitome of irony for something that kills you, so it worked perfectly with what I was trying to do in my remix.
The process definitely took a long time, as I had to meticulously go through the films and a plethora of cigarette ads to find the best parts that actually showed people putting the cigarette in their mouths and inhaling and exhaling the smoke in order to make it even more dramatic. I had to slowly look through them click by click trying to find the best parts where the focus lays on the characters smoking. Fortunately smoking on Greek TV was “a huge thing” back in the late 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s, allowing me to collect clips way longer than 10 minutes.
The old Greek films inspired this vintage and nostalgic theme for my remix, as they very much so reminded me of home and the “good old days”. To my advantage, it worked out great because they portrayed exactly the juxtaposition that I wanted to create out of this remix, the naive and unaware past of people related to smoking; that cigarettes do not harm. This juxtaposition also falls right in line with the title of my remix, “Smoking Doesn’t Kill” and the song “Walking on Sunshine” (1985) by Katrina and the Waves. In a way it is as if the ad/remix is telling a story that in contrary to what all those films and Life advertisements illustrate, the lyrics of the song stand for, in this case, a guileless person who is unaware of the side effects of smoking; “walking on sunshine” aka walking towards death (if we want to be on the more dramatic side).
As I had only used iMovie once before, my skills were definitely not advanced enough to create something “mind blowing” –if you may. However, I took advantage of whatever was offered on the software and had fun with it, without going overboard as I still wanted to maintain a “serious” commercial theme. The first part of the remix (the colored static) I found on the Internet Archive as part of the Life commercial. I thought that the imagery and sound matched perfectly with what people have in mind when it comes to “old” television programs or films.
The Smoking Kills photo that follows originated in the early 2000s when cigarette companies had to start putting the label on their packaging. The black static image that follows works as a small spot of anticipation of what is to come. Then comes the unexpected image of the label “Smoking Doesn’t Kill”.
Using PhotoWonder (an application) on my phone, I created the Smoking Doesn’t Kill image and chose the soft blue color because ironically, I felt like it created a sense of calmness and reassurance of the statement that truly, smoking doesn’t kill. This also makes a judgment on false advertising that takes place on a regular basis in our daily lives and is only further enhanced with social media. This is the part where “Walking on Sunshine” starts playing as the soundtrack of the remix and with it the rest of the clips where people are smoking play onto the screen. The unexpectedness falls in line with the new intro and the fact that a happy song like that would normally not match the text and the following clips. Without realizing it at first, the combination of the song and the clips gave it a movie trailer vibe, further proving that a remix’s end-result can create the unexpected even for its’ creator. Another unanticipated thing that happened and worked out to my benefit was the fact that the lyrics from “Walking on Sunshine” happened to match certain moments and clips from the Greek films making it even funnier if you let your imagination figure it out!
The “beginning” of the ad/trailer right after the Smoking Doesn’t Kill fit perfectly with the atmosphere as it really is the opening scene of one of the movies and the man in it is even smoking a cigarette and then puts it out by stepping on it.
When it came to the clips from the Life cigarette advertisements I decided to delete the background sound from only two of them because they only contained random words but for the rest of the clips, it worked out great as the ad music itself repeated words like “life”, “life is great”, etc. I chose to mix the Life advertisement clips and the Greek film clips in order to a) not be too repetitive and boring and to b) give it a twist between a movie trailer and a Smoking Doesn’t Kill commercial.
The placement of the clips was not all in random especially when it came to the transitions between the Greek clips and the Life clips. Right after the intro of the Greek clips I also wanted an intro for the Life cigarette, which is why I chose the clip of just the packaging focusing on the irony of the cigarettes being called “Life”. The second clip from Life, ends with a man smoking and then transitions to a Greek woman franticly saying something while smoking, which I thought, could speak for itself like some scene in a movie.
The third Life clip portraying a man and a woman by the pool, is preceded by a man smoking a cigarette while talking on the phone. I used the Cross Zoom effect on iMovie to make it look as if the Greek man was thinking about the pool scene and then the same effect to transition out of it to show yet another couple.
The fourth Life clip is a man and a women smoking a cigarette at a dinner table at what seems to be a party scene and the next clips transitions into a Greek man dancing while smoking making it seem as if the couple was watching him dance.
The fifth Life clip, follows a close up of a Greek women smoking that could also be thinking of the scene where the man and women (in the upcoming Life clip) are romantically really close to each other while enjoying a cigarette together.
The sixth clip, is the same couple carelessly smoking away while the same Greek man is in the two clips before and after the Life one, having what it seems to be like, a harder time than the couple.
Finally, the last Life clip, works great as a closing scene for this remix on its own, as the focus falls back on the Life cigarettes, but also because the three Greek film clips preceding it are concentrated on the actor and actress smoking. The “scene” slowly closes off by placing the focus on the cigarette brand and its packaging, while the song Walking on Sunshine has just come to an end, allowing for the Life theme song to close off with the last words of “Life!”, making it look even more like an ad.
Overall this remix worked out to be or act as many different things. The process alone was very interesting. Looking through all the material made me realize and also confirm certain beliefs around smoking. The fact that every other scene from just five different Greek films included smoking, speaks a lot to the Greek culture. Especially, back in the day when people were less aware of its effects and risks, smoking played (and still plays) a huge part of the culture. The only difference today is that it won’t be as present on television programs as it was in the past, but is definitely still very much apart of it. As for the American Life TV commercials it was interesting to see that once again the cigarette market focuses on male-female relationships and of course on the portrayal of the male as the rescuer/knight of the female, always being there to provide her with a cigarette. Whereas the women in these commercials, were always the ones in bathing suits or in sexualised pieces on clothing, laying out their bodies for them to be focused on by the cameras, while the men stared along and “made the move” on them, as if the women were the catch and the bait was the cigarette. I really enjoyed seeing how this remix at times “unfolded” on its own while I was making it, where bits and pieces sort of fell into place unexpectedly and ended up creating something new and unpredicted within the context of a remix. Basically, the remix did what it was intended to do; unfolded into something new and unforeseen both as an end-result but also within itself matching with things that were broken down and unrelated to each other, to end up fitting perfectly and creating a new “product”.
The remix can be found on Vimeo by clicking on this link! Please use the password: DIG401 to access it.
Bibliography, Sources, Credits
GIF (top of this post) from Giphy: https://media.giphy.com/media/n60s5QpOQymac/giphy.gif
“Nicotine Marketing.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 27 Mar. 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicotine_marketing.
Navas, Eduardo. “Remix Theory » Remix Defined.” Remix Theory RSS, remixtheory.net/?page_id=3.
Song:
“Walking on Sunshine”. Katrina and the Waves. Release date: April 26th 1985Films:
«∆έκα Μέρες στο Παρίσι» (Deka Meres sto Parisi ), 1962. Director: Orestis Laskos, Writer: Giorgos Lazaridis
«Θου-Βου Φαλακρός Πράκτωρ – Επιχειρησις Γης Μαδιά<» (Thou-Vou Falakros Praktor – Epicheirisis Gis Madiam) , 1969. Director: Thanasis Veggos Writer: George Lazaridis
«Κακός, Ψυχρός και Ανάποδος» (Kakos, Psychros kai Anapodos) , 1969. Director: Errikos Thalassinos, Writer: George Lazaridis
«Λατέρνα <ια Ζωή» (Laterna mia Zoi), 1958. Director: Sokratis Kapsakis, Writer: Goerge Javellas
«Μια γυναίκα, <ια Αγάπη, <ια Ζωή» (Mia Gynaika, mia Agapi, mia Zoi), 1971. Director: Odysseas Kosteletos , Writer: Panos Kontellis
Advertisement:
Life Cigarette Commercials (date unknown)
