Local cinema = local cinema ads?

[Ted Max]

There may be a cinema opening in East Dulwich. Whatever.

Will there be, enquiring minds want to know, local ads?

As a youth I would occasionally be dragged along to the local independent's showing of the latest Merchant Ivory for two hours' sleep. By far the best bit of the experience was the local ads: such richness of visual expression and hammer-subtle sloganeering, the audience craning for a glimpse of someone they recognised in the photography. I loved it.

I suspect these ads were a common cultural language across the UK. Could they work now, in East Dulwich? I think they could.

What we are after is an obsession with exactly how many metres from the cinema the advertised business is and, if possible, a slightly wobbly map with red footprint tracks showing the way from the cinema to said business.

Ads to look for:

Used car dealerships: Must have rows of gleaming cars on forecourt. Someone from the sex offenders' register (usually the garage owner himself) filmed taking a model of sports car not available at the dealership out for a drive to local beauty spots.

Indian restaurants: Lots of stills of interior and exterior and of murky plates of food. Every single transition effect should be employed between stills. Music: generic plinky sitar. Voiceover: local (not Indian) accent.

Pizza House/Cottage/Land/World: Chef should be shown maniacally lofting 12 inches of dough frisbee above his head. A lingering shot of the oven's gaping maw swallowing one of those long wooden paddles. Optional extra - over-long still of office Christmas party festooned in streamers holding up triangles of pizza to catastrophic dental arrangements. Voiceover style: near-bankruptcy frantic.

Local fashions: Elegant women having elegant tea and elegant lunch dressed in the finest stylings of the provincial boutique. Marine/ yachting regalia if possible. Music: Vivaldi Four Seasons (Spring).

Local family law firm: You, the couple in the back having the seething silent row over your kids' heads. This pathetic attempt to do something together as a family is fooling nobody. Pop along to Slaughter & Co for your divorce, will, school fees consultation after the show. Don't leave it until it's too late. Enjoy the main feature.

[red devil]

[El Pibe]

we used to have Mr McGuffy from Grange Hill selling wood at a local timber merchant. we always felt vaguely star struck when he came on the big screen.

[Ted Max]

Those Seaton Delaval ones are good. Cool Northumberland.

[Ted Max]

El Pibe - the minor local celeb. A key addition.

[Help-Ma-Boab]

A domestic appliance repair shop and sales room was always a favoutire of mine. I knew the guy that owned it.

[Ted Max]

Yes. There was something cool but also amusing about seeing businesses and people you knew up on the big screen sandwiched between glossy national campaigns for things like milk tray and lilt.

Milk tray multi million campaign.

Allan's lawn-mower sharpening service.

Lilt.

[numbers]

Ted Max are you my friend James IRL? We used to have a giggle about the different regional accents in cinema advertising and this thread has just reminded me about it.

Why were the ads always for the most mundane of local shops?

Dodgy second-hand car dealership a must.

Electricity "showroom". No, not the trendy bar in Hoxton.

Local independent chemist.

If you were lucky you may have seen ads for more exotic places such as:

Antonio's chip shop & family run ice cream parlour.

Pizza place that only lasted a year before going out of business.

Lingerie shop. That no-one dared go in. Or be seen.

Hairdresser's shop with all the 'latest' styles/products/techniques that would transform your life.

[Seabag]

In Sussex you had ad's for The Yeovil Sheepskin Centre

Lots of cutaways and people posing in dodgy car dealer sheepskin

All the fonts were in that Ye Olde style

Overdubbed with "the Yeovil sheepskin centre" repeatedly

Arg, it still haunts me

[Seabag]

Just found this on The Guardian website

... and then slap a Bad Regional Ad in here like this ...

"You haven't had any accounts of bad regional ads from the south," writes Tom Morton. "Please allow me to redress the balance. I'm still haunted by an ad for the Yeovil Sheepskin Shop, a sheepskin shop in, um, Yeovil, which ran on TVS in the 1980s. There was no action in the commercial, merely a series of photos of the exterior and interior of the shop, and an inexplicably jolly voiceover detailing the parking facilities. The ad ended on a high note with the endline: The Yeovil Sheepskin Shop. It's Well Worth A Visit."

... but let's hope that never happens, though, because that would be shoddy.

[*Bob*]

We had one for a local firm of solicitors; a selection of mundane stills taken in the office accompanied by a dry voiceover.

The final shot - a last-ditch attempt to 'bring the fun', featured a shot of a judge peering over the top of his spectacles with a face of mock outrage - with a scantily-clad woman sitting on his lap.

[*Bob*]

Crusader Nuts are another strong memory - though I don't think they were a local product (?!).