It’s nearly a throwaway line in Robert Cringely’s August 4th “I, Cringely” column, but it jumped out at me:

He’s talking about why Apple’s Mac v. PC ads look so good online.

1. the white backdrop dramatically lowers the visual complexity of the frames, allowing room for carrying more visual detail of the actors in the allotted bandwidth, and;
2. those commercials are shot on 35 millimeter FILM then scanned into Final Cut Pro at better than HD resolution. It’s a lot of work but the effort shows.

They’re designed to be viral and passed around online, but instead of punching us in the face with flashing buttons exhorting us to: “FORWARD THIS TO ALL YOUR FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTENCES!!!”, they just made them look so damn good you can barely help yourself.

[tags]Apple, OSX, Cringely, Advertising, Viral, Online, Marketing, HD, Video[/tags]