It’s embarrassing being from Buffalo.
I realized this tonight while watching the local commercials on our Time Warner cable channel.
Now, I’m sure there are many small markets across the country where the paucity of money to be made drives commercial production values to within a halogen lamp and a slab of foamboard of YouTube’s. But I don’t have to watch them. All I see from my dander-coated 15″ screen on the city’s upper east side is the jarring contrast of million-dollar movie trailers and local shoestring-budget car commercials.
The Cadillacs of Buffalo TV commercials have to be those for the law firms. It’s not hard to see who is making the dough around here. But even these comparatively slick productions bear the smudges of a rusting city. For instance, the commercials of local law firm Cellino and Barnes are technically passable. The skin tones are good: the men don’t appear underwater, or full of rancid shellfish. The locations are safe: a breezy field, an impressive, oak-paneled law office. Even the graphics show appropriate (and uncommon) restraint, choosing dissolves and clear fonts over slide-ins and the “Animals Doing Yoga” letter set. But just like you can’t put 11 losers on the field in Rich Stadium and call them a real football team, you can’t put Cellino & Barnes on a commercial set and call them actors. Barnes, tall and bald, at least appears human in the last few commercials. As probably only he and I have noticed, his acting has improved over the years. His partner Cellino, however–a squat, unpleasant-looking, dark-haired man–appears visibly uncomfortable on camera. He is always looking in the wrong direction, somewhere off-camera, stretching his mouth into the sort of grin usually only performed for dentists. As Barnes takes up his part of the stilted dialogue, Cellino pivots his head robotically, and stares at his partner, the same leer locked on his face, his eyes now inexplicably gone black with rage. The whole effect is like watching two slightly drugged dishwashers in tailored suits taking turns trying to hypnotize you into taking off your pants. I just hope their clients get better performances out of them in court.
More typical of the local airwaves are the commercials produced (if that is the word) by Airport Plaza Jewelers. You call them low-budget, I call them indie-chic. Forget everything you knew about the green screen. It is OK to use in every shot. They relish in their low-budgetness, using mannequin parts and a rubber chicken, and any prop you could reasonably expect to find for free within a half-mile of your house.
As fun as these commercials are, they remind me of the sobering reality of things around here. Even our TV stars are ramshackle. The bruises on our city’s collective ego are hard to see in bars and pizza joints (that is why we go to them), but they show up just fine under even the cheapest television lights. National television has reduced Buffalo to a few cliches: blizzards, chicken wings, and urban decay. TV has made us a joke, undermined us, chewed us up and spit us out.
Now we are returning the favor.
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Only a small fraction of Buffalo businesses account for all our local commercials. Again, probably this is a typical situation, but it leaves one with the impression that only seven guys in the whole depressed area are actually making any money (an impression supported by our ranking as the 4th poorest city in the nation). And even none of these success stories seem to be able to rally the requisite capital for a two-camera shoot.
There is something suspect about a commercial in blue-collar Buffalo, the “first city of the mid-west.” It seems vain. Just open your shop, and if it’s on Elmwood, maybe we’ll come. Provided there is a place to tie up our dogs.
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