Bert TV is Aces

For those of us who worry that in 10 years we’ll look back on the 20th century and realize the most popular cultural influences of the time were those that ended in the letters ‘tv’ (mtv, pay-tv, hdtv, Recovery tv), have no fear.

Bert tv will redeem the masses.

Yes, the Ace Film Company has done it again, taking the ordinary – Bert – and making it anything but. In a pool of four 30s created for the Pacific National Exhibition and agency Palmer Jarvis, Ace (the same people who showed us cows can scuba dive and dance classical ballet) proves there’s a lot more to the PNE Fair than rollercoasters and hot dog stands.

Gord Carson directed over five days, performing camera duties for the on-location shoots, while dop John Houtman worked the blue screen studio shoots.

All four spots – ‘Log Rolling’, ‘Monster Octopus’, ‘Junkanoo Parade’ and ‘Demo Derby’ – have a similar soundtrack (Bertmusic) and structure: stop-frame animation segments bookend a collage of Bert adventures. In the first animated bit, a station id a la mtv welcomes the viewer back to Bert tv programming; in the second, PNE Fair’s ‘The Big Fun’ poster wiggles across the screen as the announcer tags, ‘And you thought you’d seen the pne’.

And what falls in between?

The most fun you’ve ever seen in 20 seconds, at one time, in one sitting, ever in your life.

This collage of quickly edited segments features Bert, inconspicuously accessorized in good-time gear (camera and flip-up shades), in various PNE Fair scenarios.

The on-location segments are amusing in themselves; one particularly fine moment comes when Bert plays piggyback to a couple of goats at the petting zoo, but it is with the blue screen bits that Carson takes cheese to new heights. Here we find Bert in some larger-than-life scenarios, walking on the moon with an astronaut, swimming with some really big fish and live, on stage, at a ZZ Top concert.

Undoubtedly, the cheese factor could not have been accomplished without the talent of Bert, played by thespian Glen Roald. There’s a gentleness to Bert, a childlike quality that sort of reminds you of that kid in the second grade who, one spring, stuck a pussy willow up his nose and had to go to the hospital to have it removed and was never heard or seen from again.

Although Bert tv was launched as part of a multimedia Bert/PNE Fair campaign, this holds true: Bert is more than just a spokesperson – he’s a cultural phenomenon.

And one heck of a snappy dresser.

Bert tv is the brainchild of Palmer Jarvis senior writer Alan Russell. Other agency credits go to art director Ian Grais, producers Melanie Cook and Terry Green, account executive Kelly McCourt and account director Tom Shepansky.

Executive producer Parker Jefferson headed up the team at Ace, with producer Anastasia Marchand. Online and offline editing was performed by Reg Harkema of Ace and Bertmusic was done at Westward Communications. JL