musings on a cool video

i happened to be at the ibm website today, and came across this video, "start at IBM," which is pretty cool. they have jump-cut a kazillion interesting images in sequence and crafted a piece of creative which in my view says alot more with this visual style than the words and music convey ... though the words and music are quite good, too.

whoever put this vid together, and whoever at IBM had the vision to make it something different than the typical "hey, let's show our employees saying great things about us" video, deserves some snaps. now, i myself have commissioned the aforementioned style of careers video, and it is lovely in that the employees are quite earnest and compelling and say the things we wanted them to say... and that's the problem. everyone who watches it will know the employees are saying the things we wanted them to say, or we would never have allowed it up on our website. so automatically there's a certain lack of authenticity, because you know while these people might have said these things on their own, they probably would've said some other things, too, and those comments aren't there. like, everything that's after the word "but..."

"yeah, this is a cool place, but ... they work us like dogs" (NB: willy & hoover on this topic sometime in a future post.)

"i love it here, but ... i really wish my big-mouthed cubemate would just SHUT UP! i can't hear myself think!

"the pay is fabulous... but yo have to be willing to brownnose the folks at the top."

so, the IBM piece gets past all of that by simply showing us people in motion. are all these people and places actually at IBM? i dunno, but i guess i give them the benefit of the doubt on that. are all these people happy? i dunno that either, but i'm not called upon to think too much about that because they're not challenging me to question the veracity of the employees' statements. i'm just letting a bunch of pictures and words and music wash over me and create the sense of a company in constant motion. my only gripe is that the nature of that motion is jerky and not fluid, which if you take this to an abstract level, it might mean that you would be working with jerks who don't drink. and that would be bad.

also, i wonder about the clean room shots -- how'd they get the camera/gear in there? they shoulda dressed it up in a little white coat and shower cap, too ... would've added an element of humor that might have made the piece a little less sterile. but on the whole, it worked for me.