Ads are on Flim!

Last year was the year of new genres on Flim: music videos and TV series were launched and we are very proud of this diversity. Today it's the turn of ads to have their own stills selection here. We have to date collected 13,262 stills from 709 ads: Clothes, sneakers, cosmetics, food, drinks,cars , banks, phones, furnitures, pet food... We are interested in all areas. But as you probably know, we are very demanding when it comes to the stills we collect. We want to show ads created with a real artistic vision and consequently ads that can in turn inspire advertising or any other form of visual creation. So let's review what we have in a few images.

As with the other types in our database, you can filter your search by color, number of characters or release year. And the oldest ad we have is The Film by French director Michel Gondry for Motorola, in which we find the whole world of its director: childish onirism made of cardboards and strings. At that time Michel Gondry was already a famous director of music videos, movies and other ads. He is, among so many others, an example of how brands and advertisers seek the genius of great artists to translate their artistic vision into promotional videos.

We can also mention Nicolas Winding Refn, from whom we have collected five advertisements, such as the recent Where Fashion Comes to Life for 24 Sèvres, in which we find his red, purple or blue lights, his sophisticated composition and his artificial and unreal atmospheres, or the more urban Shangai Fast for Nike. Nike, Adidas, Puma and other sneaker brands always offer ads about rising above thanks to sports. Sometimes with a humorous tone as Choose go by Edgar Wright in which the director, known for his satirical genre films, uses the codes of disaster movies, often with a very serious tone, like Your future is not mine for Adidas by Terence Meale and Limitless for Puma by Jovan Todorovic.

And that's one of the most interesting things about advertising: the way an everyday life product like sneakers or cars can lead to very aesthetic videos. We all have in mind the spectacular "extreme wide shot of landscape with cars", driving through shady landscapes like Storm by Salomon Ligthelm for Mercedes Benz or Adaption by Dorian & Daniel for Peugeot for example.

You can also try the search "in the bathroom", which offers images filmed as funny genre scenes, like Buttery Dunes for Dollar Shave Club or The New Axe effect, or try just "food", which proposes refined and pop images, like the spot Celebrating 150 Years of Heinz by Dom & Nic. It features the famous catsup crossing the ages in plates filmed from above: a very creative and colorful ad for what is surely one of the most popular products in the world.

As you can imagine, fashion and luxury brands make up a large part of our images from advertising. Fashion advertising is certainly the industry where we find the most collaborations between famous great directors from cinema. Gaspar Noe and his mysterious and psychedelic short film Summer of 21 for Saint-Laurent, inspired by Suspiria, Eyes Wide Shut and Davyd Lynch aesthetic. Jean-Pierre Jeunet and his epic ad Chanel, which is a great example of how advertising wants to reproduce the emotions generated by cinema. We can also mention Yorgos Lanthimos with Of Course a horse for Gucci, in which we find the director's pastel palette and his absurd iconography.

Even if these examples show the links between advertising and cinema, ads nevertheless keep their own codes because the goal is to represent the identity and vision of a brand. And there are directors most dedicated to advertising, such as Kim Gehrig, Daniel Wolfe or one of our favorites: Salomon Ligthelm, who has produced numerous commercials and video clips so far, like the very powerful and impressive Mictlan for the Mexican beer Victoria, inspired by Aztec mythology, or the contemplative Speak We're Listening for Hillsong Conference.