archived-videos Trash -A- Doo. (Parody 1960's Infomercial I put together)

BigBadBilly

BigBadBilly

Just put another video together. This (IMO) is what a 1960's Infomercial would have looked like.
It is a joke infomercial of course.

The hard part was making it look and sound like it came out of the 60's. Something that came natural for them (The equipment of the time) was a real pain in the arse to fake. For the audio I ended up adding a constant hum in the back round (After watching a bunch of old commercials from the time period) and adding some reverb. Of course I added massive high end and reduced the bass, then after rendering added a bunch of low end back into the overall mix.

Although it's a joke, I was/am experimenting with sound and color of the period for another serious project.

Well. Hope you guys get a chuckle out of it and please Let me know what you think and how I could maybe improve both video and audio to make it fit the period.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/bigbadbilly/trash-a-doo-255q
 
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It didn't look very 60's at all, nor did it sound that way. Hey, that's when I grew up! What was your reference material? Perhaps you should go to the Prelinger Archives, and type in "commercial". There are lots of 50's and 60's commercials you could use for reference.

Your piece was sepia toned - the 50's had very contrasted black and white, the 60's less so and color was beginning to come in.

However, my specialty is audio, so I'll stick to that. The sound was usually pretty clean - noises like hum, etc. was usually the result of a substandard playback system, not on the original tapes except for really cheap local commercials. If there is background noise it's usually on location sound, traffic and the like.

Keep in mind that 98% of the TV watching audience was listening on the tiny tinny TV speakers so there was no low end.

The tone of the narrators voice is quite distinct, as is the delivery style.

The 60's style of Foley for commercials was a bit over the top by todays standards, but the playback speakers (see above) called for that type of mix.

The music was also quite distinctive.
 
Hi. Thank you for the very insightful response. It'll have me digging some more for sure.

Anyhow. I bookmarked the 2 videos I had for reference. The first is just one commercial but the second link is like 10 or 15. The colors vary but the sepia tone is in a bunch of them so I thought that was the norm. As for the hum, after scanning through quickly I noticed a lot of the low tone I remembered... wasn't there. lol.

Anyhow. Again, thank you for the response. It's very (Going to be) helpful.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WW9PdERK2No
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yWTsFVkrFc&feature=related

- Oh, thanks for the achive link. Wish I had that before.
 
Again, thanks for the info and the links. Going to try again, focusing on the proper sound and less on the sepia tone. Sounds a real pain using a HandyCams built in mic though. lol
Maybe I'll try a strictly inside one so the wind doesn't get in.
 
Don't focus on the commercials exclusively; immerse yourself in the TV shows and read up on the history. Oh, and talk with old fogeys like me. :D

You can go for a look and a sound, but the attitude of your approach - from script to production to post - is what is going to sell it. That's why the "immersion" is so important.
 
It would have been more funny if you would have just done an infomercial. I did enjoy the Sham-wow reference.:) "Cause we can't do this all day"
 
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