I made a commercial for the product placement radio ad assignment and did it a little bit differently. Though not necessarily owned by anyone, the games of chess and checkers are 1) widely popular, 2) centered around the same general idea and 3) major representations of the “game” so often discussed in the Wire. Chess and checkers are a product placement ad, but also serve to show the “game.” This scene of D’Angelo correcting drug dealers, or “pawns” in a sense, from using chess pieces to play checkers. The games themselves are highly different in level of difficulty and I absolutely love the way D explains chess in terms for the dealers to understand. In a way he is explaining the larger “game” in the show and telling these men, the pawns, that even they can move up.

The idea of a different type of chess game, geared toward drug dealers, was a funny quip for me and I thought it would be interesting to make a commercial for. I taped the audio from the episode and then overset it to some classy music in Garage Band, which I thought provided an ironic air to the way chess is usually thought about (very high class) to the way D explains the game (in jargon).

The greatest part is we may be able to use this commercial in my group’s radio show as we are focusing on product placement already!

 

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