In computer news this week:

Making movies on your pc - The Kung Fu Bear advertisement

As I've been working on making movies on my pc this past week, I've been searching the internet for information and samples. Companies are actually advertising on the internet using pc-made movies, although it seems more common overseas than here in the US.

I came across the John West Salmon Commercial, and I really think it's one of the best commercials and funniest commercials I've ever seen.

The movie clip can be found on the internet by using any of the common search engines and searching for "john west salmon". John West is a real English company that sells gourmet type foods.

The movie starts out with the beautiful panoramic scene of several bears fishing for salmon on a river.

A narrator talks softly in PBS documentary style over this pastoral scene :

"At the river mouth, the bears catch only the tastiest most tender salmon, which is exactly what we at John West want."

In the movie you see a bear flip a huge salmon up onto the grassy shore. Suddenly you hear a shout and you see what looks like a New England fisherman wearing aircraft orange coveralls run down the bank towards the bear and its salmon.

The two engage in a battle over the salmon, with the bear exhibiting boxing skills - a straight left - that knocks the man down. Then he gets up and the two exchange fisticuffs. The bear then goes into an Ali shuffle and throws a spinning back kick that would make Bruce Lee envious. The man then diverts the bear's attention by pointing to the sky and shouting "Oh look - an eagle !"

The bear stops fighting and looks up, and the man kicks the bear in the stomach, causing him to roar and double over in pain. The man then scoops up the salmon and walks away, and you hear again the narrator say:

"John West endures the worst, to bring you the best .... " And it fades out with a shot of a can of John West salmon on a log. English humor of course.

You really have to see it to appreciate it, and I'm sure it's not going to go over with the animal rights activists. But it's all in fun. The bears are actually actors in bear suits, although their realism puts the Bigfoot sighting film to shame. You can even see the actors that play the bears on an English television advert website

www.westwood.u-net.com/ads/

But if ads are supposed to grab your attention, entertain you and make you remember the product - this one really is great. And of course it's a new kind of commercial on a new medium - the internet.

Technically, you may find this movie in different formats and sizes, ranging from well over a meg to just a couple hundred K. I've put the smaller real version of it on my website - mtamicro.com. Next week I'll talk about how to shrink movies down to usable web size.

For Raw Bytes, this is Frank Delaney

POB 222 Spangle, Wa 99031 (509)245-3736 Email: fdspokane@mtamicro.com