A very good friend of mine who owns/runs a great Web development company has offered to host the "Making of the Honda Cog" movie - all 109Mb of it! You'll need Broadband or a lot of patience, but I am hoping to have it available for download and viewing before long. Watch this space.

Rod Jobb contacted me through my feedback form, also offering to host the movie. Rod, you didn't leave me your email address, so I can't reply directly, hopefully you'll see this. I really appreciate the offer, and if for any reason plan A falls through, I'll be in touch!

As an aside, due to the huge interest shown in this and the thousands of people who have visited this website (and the previous huge number who asked about the music from the T-Mobile commercial) I'm setting up uktvcommercials.com and uktvcommercials.co.uk! You people are the very first to know! I'll be emailing everyone who's contacted me again, just as soon as the "Making Of the Honda Cog Commercial" movie is available.

The Doctor Who Restoration Team Website can be found here. So why do I tell you this? Because for all you Dr. Who fans out there, there's some news from Colin G that might interest you. He says, "On their web site there was mention of a request for any tapes of Dudley Simpson who wrote and recorded most of the music for Dr. Who. I have such a tape from the BBC Maida Vale Studios. It was a re-used tape they recorded over with some material I need for the 1975 / 1976 Christmas Lectures." (These are the annual Royal Institute programmes - Steve) "There is some 20 minutes of studio recording of him for a Dr Who episode called "Spiders" and in fact this is music for Episode 2. I am already told by them that this was the last series with Jon Pertwee! I've made a Minidisc copy and will give them the original for their archives collection. By the way, they also tell me that the video I shot for BBC Enterprises at Longleate House in 1983 still exists today and would have gone onto the DVD of the Five Doctors....but they didn't have the money to make it a DVD9 (double density disc) :-( Nearly fame at last..."

(Colin attended a Dr. Who convention to shoot video of all the living Doctor Who's together in 1983). Never Mind Colin, your day of fame will come!

Just to make it clear, I don't have the DVD of "The Making of" neither do I have access to a CD burner right now. Sorry folks. I'm still looking at ways of reducing the filesize so I can put the "Making Of" movie on the Web for you. If and when I can, it'll be right on top of this site and I'll email everyone who's asked about it again. Promise!

I've extracted eight stills from the "Making Of" Movie that accompanies the "Honda Cog" TV Commercial and I present them below for your interest and amusement. I think they pretty much tell their own story. There's a pre-production sketch and some out-takes (the opening of the commercial featuring "The Cog", the rolling cylinder that opens the electric window and the wheels on the ramp). There are ideas we never saw, (one of these looks bloomin' dangerous!). There's the crew working on setting it all up and the proof it took 606 takes to get it right. And of course there's the Champagne when it all finally worked! I hope you enjoy them.



OK, one more big one! This is a great shot showing the general arrangement; you can see the ramp of wheels on the left and the camera crane that tracked along the whole set as it happened.

This morning, a package arrived from Jelle in Scotland. A CD containing the 45Mb QuickTime version of the Honda Cog commercial and the 109Mb "making of" movie. I wish I could share this with you people out there, but I don't have a spare 109Mb of webspace! I'll look into ways of reducing the file size to see if this is possible.

In the meantime, I can report the "Making of" movie is fairly short but very interesting. It shows several other interactions between parts that were not used in the final version and also of course, quite a few out-takes of things that did not work. In the opening shot for example, where the first small cog hits the larger one, there are views of it rolling right past or just hitting the second one without the latter moving, so things did not always work right from the start! There are several shots at the end of the Champagne flowing when it finally came together. I am very grateful to Jelle for this and as I say, I'll see if it can be reduced in frame rate or definition enough to post here. If not, I'll see if I can extract a few stills from it to show you.

Another email has flooded in from Jelle in Scotland. I quote: "In the UK the free DVD was included in the advertising supplement of the British national newspaper The Guardian on Sunday 11 May. The DVD has got the cog movie on it in two variations (two different models of the Accord) it also features the "making of" documentary, and a diagramatic explanation of all the parts, and a short video clip of the seventies band whose music you hear at the end of the ad.

The DVD also has a data (DVD-ROM) part on which there is an interactive HTML version of the DVD interface. the movies themselves are on it as Quicktime (Sorenson 3 codec) movs. 500*375 pixels. The ad movie is 45Mb the making of is 109Mb. The quality is superb."

Thanks for the information Jelle. I completely missed that. I wish I'd known about it on the 11th! If anyone from Honda or the Guardian reads this, I currently have the email addresses of 102 people who'd love to have a disk!

More about that Honda Cog commercial: Matt sent me an email with the following information. He says, "I did find a Quicktime version that is a little better than the 2.9 MB version. This one is 4.8 Mb and is 320 pixels wide." Matt found it at Subjunctive.net. He adds, "I'd love to find one TWICE that size as a native file. Like I said... It's probably out there somewhere. I also have read that there is a free DVD of it available in the U.K. I'd like to see a whole DVD, actually, including 'The Making Of'." Now I'd agree with that!

In the meantime, all you people who have been looking for a better .mov or .avi file of the Honda Cog Commercial, it does work and the definition seems to be the same as the shockwave one I was suggesting you use. Go and get it folks. I suggest you RIGHT-Click This Link and use "Save Target as..." to save it to your local hard drive.

Hi Folks. My apologies for being a little slow in replying to emails recently, but I've been without a PC from Friday until Tuesday evening. All is back to normal now however.

Here's just a quick update for today: Honda UK now have a site that lets you download a copy of The Cog at: www.honda.co.uk/multimedia/videos.html. I tried it last night, and the video is delivered as a zip file of over 3mb. When unzipped, it reveals the file is Mpeg. However, it is only a VERY small window sized video. Some of the action is so detailed as to be almost indistinguishable in this version. Come on Honda, put a decent sized video on there as an AVI, or ASF file so we can see and keep it properly. For the moment, anyway, the definition in the one I'm suggesting is far better.

I've had all sorts of great comments from all sorts of people. I must mention one from Jon, a teacher, who has already used it in a physics lesson - great! Let's see if I can remember any physics - Kinetic energy, Potential energy, Ballistics - yep, I can see how that would work superbly! Physics teachers take note!

Tomorrow, I'll tell you about my new digital camera.

Hi all, I haven't posted much recently, but that's been deliberate. I'm getting so many people still asking about that amazing Honda Cog TV commercial, I'm almost reluctant to put much more on the Home page right now, because it will scroll the Honda stuff into the Archive! However, I have a reputation for updating regularly, so I can't ignore everyone else forever! An interesting aside to all this is, I have had three separate enquiries from journalists writing about various aspects of this ad'. As I'm a marketing person myself, I'm delighted to reply and who knows, maybe stephenbell.net may appear in an article somewhere! As for Honda, I suppose telling you good people how to get the commercial on your PC Desktop is, strictly speaking, against copyright, but it's a compliment, and what incredible viral marketing! I didn't see John West complaining when people started sending around the "Man Vs. Bear" TV commercial, so I reckon Honda will forgive me. I'll state here and now though, if Honda or their lawyers object, I'll remove everything immediately, so there you are; the offer is sincerely made.

Whilst on the subject, some of the requests I have received have been so enthusiastic! They include: "Hi Steve, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE LET ME KNOW!!!", "I want to show it to others, and you're right- it's great 'viral marketing'.", "Please, I love that commercial", "Gotta have it!!! it's so brilliant." and "I was convinced it was computer animated! Please, PLEEEAAASSSEEE send me a copy so I can marvel at it again and again."

Wrigleys "Dog Breath" Commercial
Next subject: I received a letter this morning from the ITC. (British TV advertising watchdog organisation.) I have never, ever, complained about a TV commercial before, but I did about the recent Wrigleys "Dog Breath" commercial. It turns out, I was apparently one of 860 people who complained about it - an "unprecedented number" according to the ITC. The ad' was withdrawn voluntarily by Wrigleys. The interesting thing is the pure number of people who objected to this UK TV Commercial. Part of the letter I received today reads: "The number of complaints that the ITC received was without precedent. On hearing from the ITC of the viewer reaction, the advertising agency expressed its concern and took steps to restrict transmission to after 9pm whilst considering how the material could be appropriately edited. When the ITC informed the agency that complaints were still being received in large numbers, and it was clear that significant offence was being caused, the Wrigley Company announced the withdrawal of the advertisement." Good job too!

Just as I will laud a commercial like "Honda Cog" I will complain (maybe more in future) when commercials disgust me as much as this one did. Wrigleys - I'm genuinely surprised at you, and withdrawing it was the right thing to do. You can read about the commercial (which I am certainly not about to describe here) and the full ITC adjudication here.

And finally: The site statistics for last week are in. 1,483 unique visitors - down from last week, but I was expecting that. Nobody with a site like this could expect to maintain over 1,800 unique visitors a week. However, it's great to know you people are finding something interesting here. Back to normal soon I'm sure.

I mentioned a while ago, and in the panel top left, that I redesigned this site to be faster and, well... different. Everyone has commented positively, especially aboout the speed, so I've now changed the rest of the pages and popups to match. So, here we are; this is what it's going to look like for the next 12 months. Thanks also to everyone who's contacted me about the Honda Cog commercial (see 'Naughty But Nice' below). So far, nobody's said it hasn't worked for them, which is great.

Here are a couple of updates on the two topics uppermost on this site at the moment.

Firstly: I've had loads (i.e. an unspecified number because it changes by the hour) of people asking about how to get that Honda Cog ad'. (See the "Naughty But Nice" post below.) Several people have now written back and said it all worked fine for them. Thanks for the feedback, folks!

Next: www.We Love The Iraqi Information Minister.com reports that "clips of the best media statements from Iraqi Information Minister, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf (M.S.S.) have now become fodder for the latest dance track sensation in the UK. In a nod to MSS's restrained and subtle style, record producer Les Molloy quips, "We're sure it will go down a storm in the clubs." Right. And there are STILL no Americans in Baghdad. Never!" I have to hear that!

Finally: the new site statistics for this site are being downloaded, analysed and collated right now. I'll get them into the side bar in a while but the headline stat is: Last week: 1,817 Unique visitors, 1,560 came once, 257 more then once. Thanks for visiting and just to help out, here's that banner again . . .

I have been so busy this week, I've only just got around to looking at the site statistics for last week. I thought the week before last was good with 1,100 visitors, but there were 1,699 unique visitors last week. "WoooHooo" as 'they' say. I know the numbers will fall again as the Iraqi Information Minister gets into his Honda Accord and drives off into history, but thanks for visiting! How about adding this site to your favourites before you go? There's always something of interest going on.

Lots of people are asking about how to get the Honda ad'. If you want me to answer you, you have to leave me your email address! A few people haven't. "Popular64..." my email to you was returned, do you have another email address?