Looking to showcase his prowess in story-driven car advertising, director Joe Murray of Boxer Films, Los Angeles, linked up with freelance creative director and longtime friend Bill Kauker who wrote a script for a spec spot about a young guy caught in a dead-end job.
The guy’s misery is reflected in a small patch of rain which descends upon him wherever he is at the office–in his work cubicle, in the copier room, at lunch, in the elevator. Indeed he is getting soaked at the workplace. But then finally the precipitation ends when he reaches his car parked in the underground lot. Ironically the car is a convertible with the top down–but there’s no rain.
It thus becomes clear that this gent’s one consolation is his really hip set of wheels, a Pontiac Solstice. As soon as he sets his eyes on this cool sportscar, his face brightens and the rain is gone.
The spot was edited by Pedram Torbati at Boxer Films.
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