Ford: True Beauty

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I watched the 2006 short film "Ford 'True Beauty'". It was directed by Carl Rinsch and animated by the company Digital Domain in the UK. The film is a combination of live-action vehicle footage with 3D X-ray imagery.

The basic synopsis of the film is that it cuts between scenes of an actual Ford car and X-ray imagery of various animals. The entire film is set to a beautiful piano score, which adds to the beauty of the film, as stated in the title.

If you would like to read an article about more of Ford's advertising tactics, this is a great one. From this article I learned that Ford actually spend vastly fewer dollars advertising the Mondeo than they have on other models. This is interesting because I am much more intrigued by the Mondeo commercials than others I have seen.

From this link, I learned that the director, Carl Rinsch, works primarily in car commercial advertisement. I watched a few of his other commercials here, and he definitely has his own style, and out of the box concepts, which is refreshing for the advertisement industry.

This film is meant to be an advertisement for the Ford Mondeo ECOnetic car. Unlike many other car ads, this film focuses on beauty in order to try to convey that the true beauty of the Ford ECOnetic is more than skin deep. The skin deep metaphor is established by X-ray imagery that is initially of humans and animals, but then transitions to X-ray imagery of the car's engine and parts. In order to drive the idea of beauty home even more, the film is set to a beautiful and dramatic piano score and the vocals are much softer and more elegant than your typical car advertisement voices.

The reason that I was drawn to this film was for the piano, as I am a lover of music. I was very intrigued to see a car commercial that did not involve annoying talking and footage of a car zipping through the mountains. I think this is one of the most effective things about this film - it is extremely unique for a car advertisement. Sometimes something that is so vastly different from all others in the same category ends up being less effective, but I don't think this is the case for this film. It is a fantastic combination of metaphor and calm. The downside for this film for me is that while the beauty is conveyed very well, I am not sure if I am tempted to actually go learn more about the car. For me, I find myself so wrapped up in the metaphor and beauty of the film, that it somewhat detracts from the purpose of the film - to get people to buy the car.