Terry Tate: Office Linebacker is a series of short television commercials created by Rawson Marshall Thurber for Reebok. It was first aired in 2003 at the Superbowl. The Superbowl being the highest profile game in the sport of American Football. Terry Tate is an American Football player who has been hired by an office firm to administer punishment to those breaking any of the companies rules. The way he administers the punishment is by tackling the perpitrators around the office enviroment.
The cinematography used is fairly simple. Most common shot we see is a mid shot of an office worker performing a slight wrongdoing then Terry Tate charges at the officeworker and tackles them. Tate's victims are then out of shot usually covered by a desk or filing cabinet. After the first of said instances Terry is being interviewed in a room alone. This is the first time he adresses someone outside the office enviroment. This is a shot with Tate in the middle of the screen at a usual height because this is again a mid-shot but it could be argued that is a a master shot as the audience is more formally introduced to Terry Tate and as we as an audience see a label at the bottom of the screen saying "Terry Tate: Office Linebacker" . A different shot used is where one of Terry's colleges throws a soft drinks can into the trash bin when next to it is a recycling bin. Terry arrives with haste but as the company employee knows he has wronged he attempts to ammend his action by rummaging through the trash binto find the can. As this is happening the mid-shot of Terry's entire body gets closer and closer to represent that Terry is getting closer to attacking. This cresendos into a point of view shot with Terry Tate right in the face of the office worker who just in the nick of time finds his drinks can and places it in the recycling bin.
In terms of editing we obviously saw a great deal of cutting between the scenes with Terry Tate himself or his boss talking or the interview scenes of Terry. It could be said that the director used a degree of shot reverse shot in the scene with the recycling dilemma as we see both angles ( Terry and the victim). Most noticable is the uses of montage in the film. We see a collection of shots of Terry performing more usual office tasks like performing presentations and celebrating a fellow employees birthday this is used to show that Terry is fitting in, in the office enviroment. The other montage is of Tate tackling the same people he was fitting in with just moments before. These montages are in quick succesion to excentuate the comedy of what Tate is doing, reminding the audience that what he is doing is ludacris yet ammusing.
There are some intresting examples of sound in the piece. There is obviously a lot of diolouge between the characters which fits into the catogary of digetic sound. A lot of the diologue used by is aggresively adressing those that he has just tackled this is to go along with Tate being represented as a stereotypical American Football player who are often portrayed as violent and overly angry. Alternatively at other times Tate caringly adresses some of the female staff. This diolouge is again used for comedic effect as we see a contrast between the stereotype and then what we as an audience are seeing. A musical sting follows Terry Tate's first hit on an employee which then runs into the opening sequance accompanied by a score after the inital sting. The director also adds some pleonatsic sounds in post production to Terry Tate's tackles. These sounds are louder versions of what you would expect to hear. For example when Tate tackles someone into a filing cabinet which would usually be a fairly loud smack into metal instead sounds more like what we would expect from a car accident. This again adds to the stereotype that what Tate is doing is very dangerous and is the dominent male in the working enviroment which he also portrays in the earlier mentioned diolouge.
In terms of Mise en Scene Terry Tate: Office Linebacker has some very strong themes which will apply to the genre. An example of this is Terry's costume. He has the usual American Football apparell of a brightly coloured jersey and his hands are covered in athletic grip tape. This is in line with the American football side. In terms of the office side he is wearing black trousers and smart black shoes. This again continues with the theme of contrast creating humor. This contrast is again shown in the choice of settings. The office enviroment is obviously the most used which we expect but to fall in line with the American Football side of things we see Tate in his own area. This is a storage cupboard. It has Tate's jersey hanging on the wall to create an enviroment more similar to a locker room enviroment.
No comments:
Post a Comment