commercials

Chris Knight's avatar

Niall Doran, a regular reader of this blog from Down Under, e-mailed to inform me a short while ago that I was seen on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s hit show Gruen Nation last night!

Here’s Niall’s report…

As a regular browser of your blog, I was surprised to see you make an appearance on Australian television earlier tonight!

A regular part-humorous, part-analytical & highly popular program on our national broadcaster (the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, or ABC) is normally called the “Gruen Transfer”, and unveils and discusses the techniques behind commercial advertising. However, we are in the final throes of a federal election, for which the “Gruen Transfer” has become the “Gruen Nation”, with a series of specials focusing on the techniques of political advertising in particular. Tonight they showed your infamous Star Wars ad, although in the comments afterwards they unfortunately didn’t raise the copyright issue that you fought

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Theatre Guild of Rockingham County‘s production of The King and I came to a successful conclusion this past Sunday afternoon. We played three shows to a nearly sold-out house each time!

And as much as ‘twould be nice to have some respite after the past several weeks of work that went into that, there’s always something new afoot for The Knight Shift’s eclectic proprietor.

Been busy the past few days with… work, on… stuff. Along with… new ummm, “equipment” that will soon be employed toward, errr… “projects”. Got to do some field testing with it this week and so far I’m more than a little pleased with the investment 🙂

Might be worth noting here that my blogging may be sparse during the next few weeks as I and others are engaged in numerous endeavors. When I am here though, I’ll do my best to make it worth your ...

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Okay, YouTube didn’t really call me, but you know…

Last month I reported that Comcast was giving me grief about how I posted a clip from E!’s show The Soup where they used MY commercial from the school board campaign in 2006… without asking me, but I was fine with that. I just expected the same courtesy from E! and its ownership that I have given them. That’s not too much to ask, in my mind.

And of course, this whole thing is too much like that crazy situation with Viacom a little over two years ago. And just as I did with Viacom then I filed a counterclaim with YouTube, per the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

A short while ago I received the following e-mail from YouTube:

Re: [#561937480] YouTube Support

Copyright Service to me

Hi there,
In accordance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we’ve completed
processing

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There is no way that a TV commercial like this would ever be made, much less allowed to broadcast, in 2009. But once upon a time when boys were allowed to play “cops ‘n robbers” there were fewer toy weapons as kewl as Mattel’s Tommy Burst arsenal. For three bucks you could get the revolver and for seven you got the Detective Set complete with handgun and holster, toy bullets, badge and one neat-o machine gun!

Behold the commercial from about 45 years ago…

And if that adult looks familiar, it should: that’s Hal Smith as the thief and the commercial’s pitchman. Smith will forever be known as that lovable town drunk Otis Campbell on The Andy Griffith Show.

I remember about two decades ago when every Toys R Us had an aisle devoted to toy guns. Seems like we had a lot less real-life crime then than ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

Well, it was just “that Star Wars school board campaign commercial”… but at least I can now honestly brag about having made Jay Leno and a studio audience laugh on national television! 🙂

I put the clip of The Jay Leno Show featuring my commercial (along with a few others from around the country) during this past Thursday night’s broadcast on YouTube.  Click here to behold Yours Truly’s visual effects and Melody Hallman Daniel’s awesome voice-over entertaining the entire country in prime-time!

However I don’t know how long it’ll be up on YouTube, ‘cuz as soon as I posted it the system told me that NBC Universal had already flagged it for possible infringement… which I’m thinking is just an automated response to the keywords I attached to the video.  But even so, after EVERYTHING that I’ve gone through in the past few years pertaining to copyright law (yeah I’m ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

I’m getting MULTIPLE reports that my school board campaign commercial from 2006 was featured on The Jay Leno Show on NBC tonight! I didn’t get to see it: ’tis been a very busy evening, including auditioning for a community theater production and then grabbing some dinner. When I got back, the e-mail box had lit up like a Christmas tree.

Suffice it to say, I’m very interested in watching this to see how it played out 🙂

Thanks to everyone who’s been sending in the nice e-mails about it. And if you’re just now finding this blog because of Jay Leno running my ad: welcome! Hope you’ll like what you find here 🙂

EDIT: Last night’s The Jay Leno Show is now up on Hulu! Hit the link and go to about 36 minutes into the show.

The entire segment is hilarious! 🙂...

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The TV commercial for the Ric Flair Scratch-Off from the North Carolina Education Lottery…

I’m sorely tempted to insert a “Space Mountain” joke in here somewhere 😛

EDIT 3:18 a.m. EST 09/23/2009: I am just now discovering that this game is not called “Ric Flair Scratch-Off” as I had originally thought. Instead it is officially known as… Wooooooo!

As if this state didn’t have enough people imitating Ric Flair, heh-heh…

That’s it. I’m definitely going to buy at least one of these tickets. Not to scratch off, just to keep and hold onto because, well… a Ric Flair-themed state lottery scratch-off game called “Wooooooo!” is just too clever to pass up on owning one.

This will be the hottest-selling scratch-off game since the lottery started up here almost four years ago, I would wager an RC Cola and a Moon Pie on it. Maybe we’ll see the entire Four Horsemen ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

Just a friendly reminder that if you want to meet the blogger/proprietor of The Knight Shift in person and you’re going to be in the Raleigh/Durham today, that you’re in luck!

I will be at Artspace, located at 201 East Davie St in Raleigh at 5:45 p.m. this afternoon during the filmSPARK track of SPARKcon: a grassroots-organized four-day festival celebrating individual creativity around the Triangle area and throughout North Carolina. This will be the fourth annual event and this year SPARKcon will be held September 17-20. I’ll be speaking about the bizarre “copyright infringement” situation that happened between Yours Truly and Viacom on YouTube two years ago.

Look! Event announcement!

The Dude Who Took Down Viacom: One Filmmaker’s Story
EVENT LOCATION
Artspace

EVENT DESCRIPTION
Meet North Carolina filmmaker Chris Knight, a.k.a. “The Dude Who Took Down Viacom”. In 2006, Knight made a campaign advertisement to help promote his running

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