Tested for the unexpected - Dunlop vs. Atmosphere - Joy Division

Tested for the Unexpected, Dunlop advertisement from 1993.

After watching it for the first time I must say I found the video a bit weird. All the weird masks, face paints and the costumes made a weird impression. The video is also very dynamic, it jumps from one shot to another, there are many shots which are blurred, quite a few shots that are spinning etc so I feel like to fully understand what’s going on you have to watch it more than once. But after watching it the second time I realized that all the weirdly painted people seem to be in some cult, or something of this nature. And they’re setting traps for this upcoming car, which just drives through them all with no problem leaving the cult very surprised. There were a lot of noticeable leather pieces, either as costumes or even in the song! ‘shiny shiny, shiny piece of leather’ it all sort of gives you hints that it’s a tyre advertisement before it confirms that it actually is a tyre advertisement. It’s target audience is obviously drivers since there is no need for people owning tyres if they don’t own a car.

The second video I will be talking about is Atmosphere by Joy Division.

The very first thing I notice that compared to the previous video this one is a really calm, really peaceful video and the song really helps it being very relaxing. Also another huge contrast is the quality. This one is not only black and white but also the quality of it, seems really pixelated at times. There is also a big lighting difference, with the Dunlop video the light was very controlled to have the wanted effect and here it’s all the sun, it’s all natural lighting. With this video being calm it is a lot easier to sort of understand what’s going on. At first I thought they look like the Ku Klux Klan, dressed in white robes with pointy hoods, and it seems there is a complete opposite group dressed in black pointy hooded robes. But this isn’t about hate to white or black race; this is a very peaceful video. Those groups of people with what seems complete opposite views are working together. They love one thing, which seems to be the Joy Division band because they’re carrying all sorts of band photographs or paintings, I can’t quite tell because of the quality. I thought that at the end of the video I would see like an art installation that these both groups have worked together to build. The whole video seems to be about people coming together, helping each other and building things together rather than hate each other and destroy. I am not sure if this is the meaning of the song or the video, all that I just said is what impression it has on me. Because of such a peaceful message I would say that this video is meant for everyone rather having a certain target audience.