Bouncy Balls

Back in July an ad agency dropped 250,000 colored superballs down a San Francisco hilltop street (the corner of Filbert and Leavenworth). Here’s the resulting TV commercial for the Sony BRAVIA. Very nice.

The superballs must have a matte finish because they don’t really look three-dimensional.

Watching this I wonder how they got the city to allow them to do this? Also, I wonder if they had to hire “ball wranglers” to collect them after the shoot? Anyone living in San Francisco or nearby know? (Via BoingBoing)

Update: Ned points out in the comments that there’s a Behind The Scenes video available here. It shows how they launched and then collected the balls or each shoot. The clip has a lot of talking heads but the action scenes are fun to watch. I liked the sequence where the crew run for cover as the Bouncy Ball hailstorm comes cascading down the street. The sound of the balls being shot out of cannons and bouncing down the hill gives a menacing feel. Someone could probably combine the commercial and some of the content here into the trailer for Attack of the Bouncy Balls.