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Friday, 19 June 2009

Tony Fiandaca and Paul Cummings - an apology

I accused Tony and Paul of plagiarising from 
PES's Human Skateboard ad for their 
GoGurt ad.

As it turns out, Tony vs. Paul - their stop-motion 
film that includes a short boarding sequence - 
was made was BEFORE PES made his film.

So I was wrong. Sorry Tony and Paul. 

Here, in chronological order of their creation,
is a bunch of stop-motion boarding/
surfing films.

First there was this (the whole film is great but 
forward to 4mins 18 for the relevant sequence..)




Then this.




Then this (Tony and Paul again). 




And finally...
















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4 comments:

  1. FreePosterFilms19 June 2009 at 09:35

    Hey,

    I am one of the directors of the Gogurt spot. I'm not gonna get pissy and say it's not a ripoff because they are obviously similar. But I do want to point out that Tony and I made a film called "Tony vs. Paul" which has a human skateboard, years before the sneaux shoe commercial. After our short, GoGurt hired us to direct a few spots. They wanted the human skateboard thing, so we obliged. Yes, I was aware of the Pes spot beforehand, but I was also aware that we were ripping off OURSELVES.

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  2. FreePosterFilms24 June 2009 at 21:14

    I think you've missed the point of my posting. It's not the fact that I "do stop motion too" that means I had the grounds to do a commercial with a "human skateboard." It's the fact that I had made a film featuring this "act" BEFORE the sneaux shoe commercial. I don't really think anybody copied anybody. When this whole thing started up (years ago - I can't believe I'm even still talkng about this) I found an ad for featuring a person riding on top of another person. See link

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGkW1l5nQZs

    So did we rip them off as well? (And I found that link from a blog debating this very thing - tony vs paul and the sneax shoe commercial - from years ago).

    If anything, I mean no disrespect to PES. He is easily one of my favorite commercial directors, and I think he is brilliant, but if you knew anything about advertising (which I'm sure you do), the CREATIVE AGENCIES who come up with these spots are the ones in charge of the ideas. Yes, I have the choice to go along with them or not and to facilitate their initial vision. But I was (and still am) a young filmmaker, and I wanted to get some work under my belt and it was a good opportunity. Unfortunately it did have to be a bit of a cheesy ad that appeared to be a rip off. Oh well.

    I feel stupid even justifying what I did to someone who calls me a cunt, doesn't do their research, knows nothing about the circumstances, and says mean spirited things for no reason.

    But I guess that's what blogging is all about.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Randude7 July 2009 at 05:50

    OK, so Tony and Paul may not have ripped anyone off but someone else has:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9Et7UQh1tg
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmkLlVzUBn4

    Oh-lympus, what have you done?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Unknown8 August 2009 at 04:15

    Well I'm pretty sure there have been gifs of human skateboards knocking about for years.

    I think this was dug in Aug 2006 and wouldnt be surprised if it was quite a bit older.

    http://digg.com/comedy/The_human_skateboard

    So maybe T&P were ripping off themseleves ripping off someone else. :P

    ReplyDelete

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