0:01

We start off with a living room, well decorated with various degrees of beige and variation of white and gray. The entrance to the living room has a large wooden arch grasping the attention. It is glossed over and reflecting the light coming from a pair of windows on a wall on the side of the view. The arch leads into seemingly a hallway, and another archway leading to a dining room parallel to the perspective. There is a girl, seemingly older teenager to young adult. She has her hair pulled back into a ponytail, wearing round glasses and wearing a sweater with jeans. She also looks of East Asian descent. She is seemingly typing on a laptop in front of her, maybe doing classwork considering she may be doing homework. There is nothing special about what is happening, seemingly mundane. Just the decor itself screams well off, everything is in place, nothing is out of place. It feels too sterile to be a commercial, though it is just the very beginning. It sets a stage that could grow into anything, a standard upper-middle class household with a blank, representative character.

0:02

The perspective switches back behind the girl, on her right shoulder. Four strange people enter the room, wearing various degrees of clothing. The way they’re dressed it seems like they’re from a wide array of backgrounds. Blonde hair, blue eye, white skin cheerleader still in uniform? She also happens to still be carrying her cheer supplies. The next seems like a caricature as he is wearing very “Millennial” dress, jeans, gold chain, an off pink shirt and a purple/pink jacket. He also happens to be wearing orange plastic shades that are practically unusable. He looks of African American descent and seems like a stand in for something. The third is of East Asian descent like the original girl, but she is dressed way more whimsically. She has a spray of various colors, with purple polka dots on a red skirt, one set of red and yellow bracelets on her left arm, and blue and white bracelets on the right. She is wearing a short-sleeved polo shirt, yet it has a checkered pattern of whites and various shades of cyan. Large circular orange earrings are hanging from her ear, looking a little too thick to comfortably wear. She also has vast amounts of makeup, especially cyan and orange eye shadow caking the top of her eyes. Her hair is curly and pulled up via a cyan scrunchy. The last one in view is a boy, seemingly much scrawnier in comparison with the other 3 that are on screen. He is wearing bright yellow shorts, with seemingly a cyan shirt on that is hidden beneath a patterned shirt similar to that of a Hawaiian shirt. Though his shirt consists of various blues, yellows, and reds in seemingly unconjurable patterns. He has shorter brown curly hair, with a smaller straw hat similar to a fedora. Large words don the screen of “A Very Special Episode”, like it is a sitcom. Pure confusion, these completely random group of four springing into action to enter center frame. They are dressed way to elaborate for normal friends, let alone leaving the house like that. This is not a commercial, unless it is advertising the eccentric clothing, it could only mean something else, with the “Special Episode” meaning this may just be a crossover episode.

0:03

The camera swaps back to the original girl, this time she is looking up at the four in a confusing manner, almost as if she is wondering why they are all in front of her. Her typing also stops in this manner. She doesn’t know them. Her eyes widen in confusion, why would these people show up in her house, while she is doing something, and just declare something to her? Maybe still a crossover episode, though seemingly unlikely. Wouldn’t you expect somebody to know if they were collaborating with someone, especially with four people?

0:04

The camera then swaps back to the four. This time the man with the orange sunglasses is very center stage. Both of the girls that are in perspective are looking up at him while he speaks, as the boy with the straw hat it just dead staring at the original girl. He takes off his sunglasses and it seems as if those in frame nod along with the brief thing he says. It is a declaration. Confidence oozes from his posture, he stands as if he himself owns the world. The other three stand and nod like they’re minions to a super villain in a comic reel. They’re too… artificial. Too clean, too slick, as if physically pulled from a television. These people… they just aren’t based in reality.

0:05-0:06

The camera swaps back again to the original girl, this time she still has the confused face yet says something, seemingly as if she is just saying a “What” in pure confusion on how these four entered her abode. We aren’t close enough to accurately read her eyes, but it’s as if she might know who they are. Maybe they’re friends from afar, maybe so far even that them showing up unannounced has completely stumped her.

0:07-0:08

The perspective shifts back to the four, and now the Asian girl with the large amount of make-up takes the stage. She says an array of words, yet the way she looks and uses hand motion implies a sense of sass, similar to that of someone who may be taking a “Popular” caricature. She seems to be lecturing the original girl of something. It’s a spitting rebuke, the way she is assumes a stance that just screams offensive, like she’s completely against what the original girl is doing.

0:09

The camera then swaps over to the blonde girl, zooming in onto mainly her face. The orange sunglasses man also is in frame, yet he stands there without movement. The blonde girl says something, yet she her face is speaking like she is distraught about something, though seemingly very exacerbated in that sense. Her eyes bulge out of her skull, as if there are magnets pulling them forward into a permanently shocked expression. The pom-poms on her hand swing about like beheaded chickens. There is no rhyme or reason for her to even have those on in a standard, modern day upper-middle class home. She just, exists, like a photo from an album pulled with the same expression frozen in fear.

0:10-0:11

The camera pans back to the first scene, with the archway now being blocked off by the four people. They are all assuming a stance of distraught, though it seems way too unnatural. It looks as if they were told to get into a pose where they’re looking directly at the original girl, yet it seems way too hammed up like they aren’t really ‘real’. It’s like they’re actual stereotypes or from a different world in the way they speak, emote, and even just in the way they’re standing feels as though they’re just complete imagination. They all seem as if they’ve been plucked from a high school movie and plopped into this house to confront the girl. Nobody in any normal sense would be wearing what all four are wearing, either be it contrasting colors, a cheer outfit, party sunglasses in a non-party sense, and a hat that just doesn’t fit. The sense that these people aren’t at all real, that they might just be figments of the girl’s imagination. Especially because of how confused she has looked when staring at the group of four. It’s similar to how someone would recognize something but are confused on why that thing is directly in front of them, like how an apparition appears in the corner of the eye. Every emotion on the faces of the four are plastered on, glued and morphed into something completely uncanny.

0:12-0:17

The scene pans back to behind the girls right shoulder. It’s facing the living room again yet this time it is the blonde girl speaking. The words she says are still unknown, and the way she speaks and acts herself is like that of an AI, or even just like a really emotional person. The other three all look at her and nod their head in agreement, but everything still feels off. It’s as if they’re demanding something of the original girl, just by the way I feel they’re all speaking. It’s uncomfortable, like an intervention into something but it just doesn’t feel like the appropriate dress or characters to do that. Bombastic people acting like snobs or caricatures doesn’t fit an environment where you’re supposed to tell someone straight up that something is wrong. This continues for the next 5 seconds, which is uncomfortably long. The characters are similar to a body double, acting and speaking as if they would normally, yet unnaturally moving and speaking. It is as if there are strings attached to each person, moving them as they should and speaking, yet artificial enough to see that there is something greater behind the scenes.

0:18

The camera then pans back to the original girl, still very much confused. She’s sitting dumbfounded, and it’s clear she has absolutely zero idea what has occurred or what is occurring. Her eyes dart from the right to the left, and it’s clear she is lost in thought. Visible processing of information, either due to the lack there of understanding or the complete shutdown of any cognitive function from the sudden appearance of four, completely inhuman humans.

0:19-0:23

It pans back to the group of four, yet now words pop up on screen. “Wacky sitcom teens aren’t the best people to talk to your kid about vaping.” They are all in a stance and frozen in the background of these words. Though it feels very much out of the blue, considering these confirmed caricatures are all just, there. It doesn’t feel like anything has hinted at vaping, but it just drops it onto you. I don’t understand. There was nothing signaling about vaping from the start, besides any confrontational attitude, but the ‘Wacky Sitcom Teens’ are already stereotypes, and having them be confrontational is seemingly normal especially to fit that stereotype. It feels just super terrible to try and relate these people who don’t seem real at all to those who are. Especially when presented with so little information besides these colorful people encountering a seemingly normal girl. Why were they so unnatural, pictures pulled into motion. Why would they be frozen in the same emotions, stuck like a statue in a pose. What was even the point of all of this? To signal that vaping is bad?

0:24

The camera pans to the original girl, and the eyes of confusion transfer into that of relief. Her darting eyes focus for one of the first times, as she notices something in front of her that seems to be familiar, rather than the previous group of people that were just there. Considering that we now know the point of the advertisement, the four are gone. Hopefully replaced with either a recognizable wall or something familiar that calms her nerves. No loud bombastic group of four to ridicule her for vaping.

0:25-0:26

Replacing the group of sitcom teens is a man. He has brown hair, glasses, a sweater that is worn over a collared shirt, along with jeans. He has a smile on his face, and is looking at the original girl. It seems to be a father, or maybe just a guardian. But the sight of him brings visible relief to the girl. The four teens from earlier have vanished. Most likely her father, even though he is visibly Caucasian, her mother shares her attributes. He will probably talk to her about vaping, rather than the specters that haunted her mere moments earlier.

0:27-0:30

The camera now pans back to the original view, and we see the full living room. This time, the girl has closed her laptop and the father has sat next to her, seemingly talking to her about an important topic. He’s sitting close yet slightly far, his hand draped over the back of her seat. The point of the advertisement shows on screen, ‘TalkAboutVaping.org”. The scene then ends with these words.

Nothing ever in this entire PSA says anything about vaping. Zero pictures, zero stances.

Reflection:

I found the ad without any sound, absolutely terrible. There is no indication on any sense of specific things happening, especially with the characters added. They fill no purpose in the grand scheme of getting the message across, besides making the original girl feel uncomfortable. I don’t get the whole wacky thing of using these teens as a bad way of attempting to talk about vaping, especially when in reality nothing is like this at all. It feels like a way of either relating to an older generation who may find these characters relatable, rather than anyone else who can see that they aren’t. I personally don’t understand why the director made the choice of spending 25 seconds in a 30 second ad with these characters that do nothing to get across a point. The shift in camera also doesn’t exactly help, why does it zoom in on one of the stereotypes for seemingly unknown reason, and also why do some of them just uncomfortably stand there?