Ford Mustang: Get in Line [Rick Peters, USA, 2018] /// Wear Your Emotions: Delight [Masaya Matsui, F

This spec commercial from director Rick Peters is a slick and straightforward piece of advertising. The commercial starts with a Ford Mustang driving through a desert, kicking up copious amounts of sand and dust as it speeds across the landscape. Close-ups of the car’s wheels and grill both provide a sense of speed and show off the details of the product on sale.

After making a doughnut in the sand, the Mustang stops and the driver exits the vehicle. He hands the keys to a waiting friend and the camera pans out to a long shot of a queue of imminent drivers. It is both a well-executed visual gag and a fun way of implying the Mustang’s popularity.

In short, Ford Mustang: Get in Line is everything advertising should be. It doesn’t rely on forced slogans of painful attempts at humour like many a modern commercial. Instead it simply shows us a cool car going fast and assumes that will be enough. And, more often than not, that is more than enough.

---

Wear Your Emotions: Delight is a fashion advertisement for French brand Alex Rotin, advertising their winter collection for 2018-19. This commercial, slickly directed by Masaya Matsui, is a short but effective statement; it depicts a fashionable young woman walking down a vividly red subway, accompanied by an irritatingly catchy tune.

It is a very charming (and very French) commercial that uses both sound (the aforementioned catchy tune) and colour (the contrast between the bright red tunnel and the young women’s dark clothes) to great effect. The central theme of the ad campaign – wearing your emotions – is competently conveyed; the model’s happiness and confidence is evident and paints an alluring picture of Alex Rotin’s collection.

Delight lives up to its name, a short but sweet ad that is sure to stick in the memory.

'Ford Mustang: Get in Line' and 'Wear Your Emotions: Delight' were films in consideration for Short Focus Film Festival 2018.