This spec spot takes us to a dreaded place, the dentist’s office. We see the dentist scraping away at a patient’s teeth, removing the remnants of food from in-between those pearly whites. In this case, the food is chocolate, which the dentist goes off to the side to examine and sniff. Those two sensory experiences are enough for him to then astonishingly taste the bit o’ chocolate which he licks off his scraping tool.
Evidently the dentist has a sweet tooth as he positions the overhead light so that it blinds the patient. Thus the dentist can go unnoticed as he continues to scrape off and eat each morsel of chocolate.
A product shot of Ferrero Rocher candy–a delectable mix of chocolate and nuts–perched on a nearby dental tray concludes the spot, accompanied by the slogan, “It’s that good.”
This offbeat spot was directed and produced by Chris Drechsler, who’s fashioning spec work to showcase his directorial talents and possibly land a slot on a production company roster. Titled “Dentist,” the spot was conceived by Jeff Vinick who is presently the creative director at New York agency Renegade. Vinick came up with the idea for “Dentist” independent of his roost at the time, which was Merkley in New York.
The DP was Mike O’Shea. Editor was Michael Schwartz of Breathe Editing, New York.
The music track was donated by composer Robbie Kondor of Kondor Music, Bedford, N.Y.
Supreme Court Seems Likely To Uphold A Law That Could Force TikTok To Shut Down On Jan. 19
The Supreme Court on Friday seemed likely to uphold a law that would ban TikTok in the United States beginning Jan. 19 unless the popular social media program is sold by its China-based parent company.
Hearing arguments in a momentous clash of free speech and national security concerns, the justices seemed persuaded by arguments that the national security threat posed by the company's connections to China override concerns about restricting the speech either of TikTok or its 170 million users in the United States.
Early in arguments that lasted more than two and a half hours, Chief Justice John Roberts identified his main concern: TikTok's ownership by China-based ByteDance and the parent company's requirement to cooperate with the Chinese government's intelligence operations.
If left in place, the law passed by bipartisan majorities in Congress and signed by President Joe Biden in April will require TikTok to "go dark" on Jan. 19, lawyer Noel Francisco told the justices on behalf of TikTok.
At the very least, Francisco urged, the justices should enter a temporary pause that would allow TikTok to keep operating. "We might be in a different world again" after President-elect Donald Trump takes office on Jan. 20. Trump, who has 14.7 million followers on TikTok, also has called for the deadline to be pushed back to give him time to negotiate a "political resolution." Francisco served as Trump's solicitor general in his first presidential term.
But it was not clear whether any justices would choose such a course. And only Justice Neil Gorsuch sounded like he would side with TikTok to find that the ban violates the Constitution.
Gorsuch labeled arguments advanced by the Biden administration' in defense of the law a... Read More