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College Grads Create Fake Tesla Commercial That Elon Musk Loves
cartechboy (2660665) writes "Two University of Southern California grads were looking to start a digital content company so they decided to roll the dice and create a home-made (but incredibly professional looking) television commercial for Tesla — just to see if they could get some attention for it. Well, apparently, mission accomplished. R.J. Collins and James Khabushani took $1,500 and created a 60-second Tesla 'faux-mercial' dubbed 'Modern Spaceship' that is well, pretty good. Elon Musk noticed, tweeted it and has helped the thing go viral."
At least it is being manufactured in the USA man.
Surprised that in 2014 people still think that wealth has anything to do with hard work rather than innate talent, connections and lack of scruples.
(Son of multimillionaires and private school scholar here, so I'm not bitter - just saying it how it is.)
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My answer: no.
This is an enjoyable commercial.
Question: why cannot the "professional" commercial makers do this sort of thing? Why are current car commercials always screaming at me?
It's not a fake commercial. It's a real commercial. They just made it without having been asked or paid.
Better known as 318230.
Should have ended with "See your New Jersey Tesla dealer today!"
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
Doing something like this for free for a company is one of the best ways to get hired.
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.slashdot.org Errors found while checking this document as HTML5!
I just realized that the shared definition of a 'fake' commercial is that it was produced by someone not hired by the product manufacturer. It no longer means one that involves special effects, and hasn't for some time.
Do you mean now, or when they produced this commercial?
I don't have a problem with this particular ad, but I can see a problem. Commercial speech is subject to more and different laws and restrictions than 'free speech'. I can see a situation arising when an unsolicited ad is produced by an independent group making unsubstantiated claims about some product. The FTC steps in, but can't touch the manufacturer because they didn't produce the ad or pay for it. The volunteers aren't subject to the same restrictions as the manufacturer or its agents, so broader free speech rules apply.
Watch to see if the amateur producers don't suddenly have Teslas parked in their garage.
Have gnu, will travel.
It is all about being frugal. I started out with nothing, and I still have most of it left.
And yet, Musk is a multi-billionaire and started out VERY middle class, with no connections or money supporting him.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Really? I'm making under 100K in Canada and I'm driving one... Why? I don't have to line up at Costco for gas... It just goes. Ya, so it's more expensive up front compared to other cars, but it just works. I don't have to look at the gas gauge and try to figure out my next route to the gas station. I simply bypass the people making a right turn right onto the highway. Oh ya, and the carpool lanes also allow green cars... instead of being stuck in traffic going to work, I have a pass to ride the pool lane by myself to get to where I have to.
BTW my other car is an 2013 Odyssey, half the price, to go camping... It does about 15l/km fully loaded. So I get about 300km/tank... But I get there.
I eval'ed a Kia Rio 5 vs the Ody. On an unloaded trip up north, I got 5.9 on the Kia Rio (dealership let me try it for a few days) and 6.1 on the Ody (213Km trip). (I do contract work). The Telsa just blows everything away. I got pulled over on highway 12 a couple of times, because the OPP wanted to check out the car. Let's just put it this way. From requested tests, the Tesla can blow away anything for a fraction of the cost of the really beefy cars.
It was a little corny and copycat, but it had a great ending.
Table-ized A.I.
Instead of linking to some site linking to or embedding the ad from youtube,
here's the actual youtube link.
This is a very common kind of thing done in most college film schools, where students are encouraged to make a commercial about some product that they like and promote it as if they were hired by that company. I had a rather progressive high school where I did that as a high school junior for a television communications class.
Really, it isn't that big of a deal. If the company itself picks up the commercial and runs it as if it was their own, that is where the FTC gets real nasty.
The other thing to worry about is that these guys posted the video on YouTube. Technically Tesla could yank the commercial as a violation of their trademark, and I suppose if it was misleading or doing something to ruin their reputation, they certainly could send in a DMCA request to YouTube and cause the commercial to be pulled. On the other hand, if it is this good, it is free advertising for them and generates buzz with a whole lot of people seeing their products in positive light, so it generally is a win-win situation for companies to support
The key thing is that most of them are self made, and aren't born into wealth. Some 70% of them, in fact.
http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/ne...
Honestly I'm sick of this invented war that some people call class warfare. It just doesn't fucking exist, nobody has declared war on anybody else except for the OWS types, and even then they make up less than 1% of the population themselves.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
Any real car company would have 5 minutes of disclaimers:
Car Cannot Fly.
Do not allow children to drive car.
No children were harmed in the making of this commercial.
Caution, do not look directly at the sun.
etc
etc
etc
Just like the Chinese have been able to undercut the price on SpaceX rockets?
Not saying that just because *one* of Musk's companies managed to make something (in the USA!) for less than the Chinese or Russians could manage means that *all* of his companies will have the same fortune, but there's a lot of engineering knowledge that goes into making a Tesla. Yeah, cheap knockoffs - things that don't have anywhere near the specs - will probably appear, but they won't have much penetration outside of Asia.
Tesla doesn't just "make electric luxury cars". They make electric cars that have both more range *and* more efficiency than anything which can reasonably be called a competitor (i.e highway-safe enclosed multi-passenger vehicle). I don't have a clue how they manage to beat the others so handily on efficiency, but it's a critical factor for an electric car. A gasoline car with low fuel economy can just use a bigger tank, but that strategy breaks down with batteries much earlier.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
'Self made' is a myth, all of them had to first develop strong and binding connections with sources of capital, influence and discreet knowledge not their own. It is as much, and more in most cases, the cultivation of these relationships as it is their talents and vision that make for success.
So basically you can fap to porn all day and the knowledge and influence will just magically appear in some cases? Or more realistically, when opportunity doesn't knock, you have to build doors?
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
The very first cars where for only the rich, until they were made commodities. Travelling on boats (or at all) used to be only for the rich, until it was made more available with steam ships. Travelling on airplanes used to be only for the rich, and now it's very affordable. Computers and smartphones used to be very expensive, and now everyone can have one for "$0" (plus a monthly contract). ABS brakes and air bags used to only protect people in the luxury cars, and now they're standard on most automobiles in the Western world.
Most things start off as being expensive and become commoditized over time. Musk et al have to start somwhere to build up the infrastructure to get reall mass production going and getting the incremental costs down (and recoup R&D).
Is the desire for instant gratification really that ingrained that you can't wait for a few years for things to work their way down?
The four-stroke Otto cycle was developed in 1861, the Diesel cycle in 1897: Ford's Model T was first build in 1908. The Tesla Roadster was first produced in 2008, and the Model S first delivered in 2012: perhaps give them to about 2018 before you start bitching?