Chills: I thought that videos involving Michael Jordan could not give me chills anymore. I was wrong.

Cool in a different way: Here is another basketball video from GoogleVideo (hat tip Club For Growth Blog), that is cool in an entirely different way than the Jordan commercial to which I linked yesterday (but you have to stay with it, it does not go where you think it is going at first). Apparently the embedding function--which I think is pretty cool in itself--is not available for this clip, so you have to click here.

I enabled comments for comments on this clip as well as on the Jordan video which still gives me chills after watching it 10 times. If you have not yet seen the Jordan clip use the chain link below to get to yesterday's post.

ESPN on "The Spot": After "The Shot" I think we can now say there is "The Spot"--the new Michael Jordan Nike commercial, "Second Generation," that brings chills to me and many other VC readers. Now ESPN has a lengthy story on the spot's creation here. Most interesting is the strong implication that all the spots were recreated live without help from computer generated graphics, including "The Dunk" from the foul line. An excerpt:

In order to film the spot, Wieden + Kennedy held casting calls around the United States looking for kids of various backgrounds and ages who could make the moves, ranging from Jordan's tongue wagging to his gum chewing to memorable moments like his foul line dunk from the 1987 Slam Dunk contest, the fist pump after "The Shot" over Cleveland Cavaliers guard Craig Ehlo in the first round of the 1989 playoffs and his fake out of Utah Jazz guard Bryon Russell that gave the Chicago Bulls the title in the 1998 Finals.

Although all the spots were filmed in Los Angeles, the goal was to show kids imitating Jordan in all parts of the world. Jordan's defensive stance is portrayed by a kid dressed in a jersey that is African inspired. Another scene is set on another continent, where an Asian boy famously palms the basketball like Jordan. Other moments are supposed to hint at play taking place in U.S. cities, like Chicago and New York.

The only attempt at reconstructing specific scenery is the point in the ad where a young player imitates Jordan's most famous dunk. Because the dunk is supposed to happen in the present, the producers didn't have onlookers wearing clothing from the late '80s, but Mark Adamson, Jordan account executive for W+K, said the crowd was spaced out to look like it appeared during Jordan's dunk with the colors matching those of the insides of old Chicago Stadium.

While one might think that the kids were shown the specific Jordan moves before they were performed, W+K execs maintain that was not the case. The kids did what they remembered as art director Jesse Coulter fine-tuned to make sure the moves were as technically accurate as possible.

Chills II A kind reader of the VC sent me the link to the following video that pairs the original images of Michael Jordan with the amazing recreation for the recent Nike commercial that gave me and many others chills every time I watched it. Four comments:

(1) The recreation was even more impressive than I thought. Notice how the reactions of other players to the Jordan move are also recreated. This must have been very difficult.

(2) There was a debate in comments on the original post over whether the recreation showed the "push off" by Jordan that freed him up for his "final shot." Whether or not the contact constituted an illegal push off and whether or not the recreation showed the contact at all, Jordan's contact is much more visible and obvious in the original than in the recreation and this cannot have been an accident. (see point (1))

(3) I think the recreation is somehow more poignant than the original of the very same action.

(4) I still get chills from this. Either version.