Balls (and "Paint")
Sony Bravia2005
Balls (and "Paint") is a 2005 television and cinema commercials for Sony Bravia, created by Fallon, London.
The line
Colour. Like no other.
Why it works
The shortest script in the business — "we let 250,000 brightly coloured balls loose down the hills of San Francisco" — produced one of the most beautiful commercials ever shot. No CGI: just bouncing colour, a frog hopping clear, and José González's cover of "Heartbeats." Launched in the UK on 6 November 2005 with Sony buying an entire ad break, it made "Colour like no other" a platform; the 2006 sequel "Paint," directed by Jonathan Glazer, detonated 70,000 litres of paint across a condemned Glasgow tower block. The pair is studied for literalism executed at heroic scale — demonstrating a TV's colour by filling the real world with it — for the production-as-event model that generated word of mouth before social media, and as the campaign that preceded creator Juan Cabral's "Gorilla."
Techniques
- Demonstration Releases a flood of brightly coloured balls down real San Francisco hills, with no CGI, to make the television's colour claim visible at heroic scale.
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