Watch Choose Freedom 1 here vimeo.com/5443800

Choose Freedom is the name of this project. At first it may seem like a catchy slogan, and nothing more. But behind these two words lies a question, actually a series of questions concerning media, progress and the modern way of life. Despite the alleged facilitation of life with technology (progress) and the higher enjoyment with so many options for entertainment (media), this project aims to question such assumptions. “Choose” has the proposition of saying “no” to the so-called comforts and rights of customers. “Freedom” means actively pursuing goals instead of having them serviced for you.
This project is purposefully in the form of a commercial. It is so because of what this genre, the commercial, represents in the television/internet era. Common thought might say that commercials simply try to sell a product. But there are a myriad of unspoken truths much stronger than the simple advertising of a product. As Neil Postman would say in his controversial book Amusing Ourselves to Death, the “commercial is not at all about the character of products to be consumed. It is about the character of the consumers of products.” He even goes further, stating that “what the advertiser needs to know is not what is right about the product but what is wrong about the buyer.” (Postman, 1985, p.128) In other words, on the personal level there is a psychological tone, and on the social level, commercial is embedded in the way people think which is quite hard to disassociate.
Having this brief hypothesis as a background, the aim of Choose Freedom is a counterproposal. Instead of persuading the prospective consumer to buy a product, the spot will try to dissuade the person from buying anything, actually suggesting that he “choose freedom” by consuming less, as if saying “no thanks” to the seduction of commercials. Instead of passive acceptance of what the screen shows, the spectator is invited to be proactive.

“The television commercial is about products only in the sense that the story of Jonah is about the anatomy of whales.” (Postman, 1985, p.131)

The entire project was performed combining two of the university’s subjects, that of Digital Postproduction (watch here: vimeo.com/5443800 ) and the Couch Potato video, Professional Equipment and Techniques. The result was two spots using the same motif. One was more traditional in that it didn’t have any specific prerequisites. This spot had the prerequisites of using keying techniques and controlled camera and background motion.

By Bijoy George, Caro Liu, Dago Schelin, Daniel Yanik, Jan Pieniak, Maria Helena Toscano, Rogério Nishizawa, Simon Schulz. Supervised by Dr.-Ing. Jochem Berlemann.

This is one of two spots produced during the 2nd semester of our master in Media Production in Hochschule Ostwestfalen-Lippe.