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   CLUB SANDWICH 73

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PAUL ADVERTISES LIPA

This is LIPA's big year - the school opens for business in the Autumn - so Paul has "gone that extra mile" and filmed a TV commercial, as Mark Lewisohn reports

Club Sandwich 73

            It's not something he does every day - in fact, we can think of only two previous occasions* when he's done it at all - so make a note of this: Paul McCartney has just made a TV commercial. Oh, and it will be screened in the cinema too. (And that is a first.)
            For such a departure you would expect the cause to be a just one, and so it is. After years of planning and energetic fund-raising, LIPA, the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, Paul's brainchild, will welcome its first students just months from now. So it's time to go out and get the customers.
            In other "words, now is the time to act. (And sing, dance, etc.)
            The theme of the commercial absolutely underlines LIPA's raison d'etre - that, while inevitably it will be dubbed "a Fame school", students will be able to study an enormous range of performance-related topics at the Liverpool Institute. People at drama schools study how to act, but at LIPA they can also learn how to understand business contracts, how to work a lighting desk, how to set up equipment, how to take a show on the road and how to conquer the many other practicalities and realities of the ever-changing modern entertainments industry.
            So, in the TV commercial, by means of rapid-fire editing and the merging of images, Paul appears as a Shakespearean actor (all tights and ruffles), singer (indicated by a microphone), dancer (kneepads and dancing shoes), set designer (plans and brushes), lighting man (spot the light) and manager (telephone). Role by role, he takes on the accoutrements of these various occupations until, by the end, he's the master of them all - quite literally, since the final image is of Paul as a schoolmaster with mortar board and gown.
            The shooting, and the recording of Paul's voice-overs, was done start-to-fmish on 11 October last, in a small TV studio in Battersea, south London. Paul showed up in the morning and worked through until six, having to spend almost as much time in costume and make-up as he did front of the cameras. (Shades of 'Coming Up' here.) There was no time for lounging around, nor was the studio particularly warm and comfortable, but a good and creative day was had by all.
            The commercial was directed by Bryan Loftus, who made the Pioneer ads with John Cleese (which were humorous in a similar way), and was shot on film owing to the fact that a slightly longer edit (40 seconds rather than the 30 seconds TV version) is being shown in German cinemas. Why Germany? Because the advert has been paid for by Grundig, LIPA's title sponsors, and the company is keen to publicise the project outside of Britain, where fewer people know what LIPA is.
            The ad can be seen also on the European cable TV channels MTV, Eurosport and Viva, and it ends, incidentally, with yet another landmark: a snatch of 'C'mon People'. Except for tour commercials, this is the first time that Paul has permitted the use of one of his own recordings for a TV advertisement.
            Because, as we said, the cause is certainly a just one.

            * Wings filmed special footage for a TV commercial in 1975 to promote Venus And Mars, and Paul made another in 1987 for All The Best!

Club Sandwich 73