Summary

16mm motion picture film containing a television advertisement for the Kodak Instamatic Camera. It features a woman loading a camera and taking photos. She doesn't speak and the advertisement features the catch phrase 'Too Easy For Words'. It was produced by Senior Film Productions in 1968 for Berry Currie Advertising, who were commissioned by Kodak Australasia.

It is a stylistic and thematic departure from most of the commercials Kodak produced in the early 1960s, as it does not rely on concepts of nostalgia, family, memory or home to sell photography, but instead on humour, youth and to some extent, sexuality. What does remain the same as earlier Kodak campaigns is the stress on the Instamatic camera's simplicity of function. By showing a young model, dressed in minimalist, fashionable white, posing on a table but being able to take the photographs, rather than be the subject of them, Kodak were turning the typical photo-shoot on its head and using humour to drive home the message. It seems that the humour in this advertisement lies in the fact that this female model, without saying anything or receiving any instruction, could use a camera. The girl smiles and wrinkles her nose happily each time she completes a step in the process. Then she sidles up behind a man with her photographs to show him. He seems amused and a little surprised, but so does she.This sort of message is unlikely to be used in advertisements today and it highlights the different concepts of gender roles acceptable in the marketing of the late 1960s.

This film is part of the Kodak collection of products, promotional materials, photographs and working life artefacts collected from Kodak Australasia in 2005, when the Melbourne manufacturing plant at Coburg closed down.

Kodak manufactured and distributed a wide range of photographic products to Australasia, such as film, paper, chemicals, cameras and miscellaneous equipment. Its client base included amateur and professional photographers, as well as specialist medical and graphic art professionals who used photography, x-ray and other imaging techniques.

Description of Content

Commercial advertising Kodak Instamatic Cameras. It features a woman in dressed in white, on a white table in a bare white room. She loads the camera, winds the film, affixes the flash cube and takes a few photographs, turning and posing differently with each shot she takes. She then shows the photograph to a man and smiles and shrugs to the camera. There is easy listening music playing in the background and the sound of a woman occasionally humming along. The commercial ends with male narrator and a shot of the camera, film pack and prints.

Physical Description

16mm cellulose acetate motion picture film; Black and White; Television commercial (TVC); Optical sound; 1968

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