Sir Clive Sinclair's Quantum Leap

This week I have mostly decided to be obsessed with the TV advert for the Sinclair QL and I'm going to look at it in an excruciating level of detail. Off the top of my head I'm not really sure what the point of this article will be. It might be helpful to go through the advert looking for any clues as the where it was filmed or I might point at stuff and try and show how clever I think I am. Who knows. Here we go. Theorising that one could time travel within his own lifetime, Sir Clive Sinclair stepped into 

I like the QL advert a lot. It uses a memorable visual to deliver a simple message in thirty seconds. The Sinclair QL is a quantum leap over the opposition in price. The visuals and the voiceover both reinforce this message in their own way and compliment each other, and you can get the point even if you watch the commercial with the sound turned off or listen to it with your eyes closed. 

Shot one. The camera follows Sir Clive as he walks past a park keeper. Most of the trees are bare of leaves so it's late in 1984 and, from memory, I recall the commercial airing in early 1985. You can see Sir Clive's breath misting in the cold air and he's wearing the same scarf he goes on to wear at the C5 launch on 10th January 1985. Question one, is this film or video? It's difficult to tell because the footage has been through the wringer. It was recorded off air onto VHS and then digitised and then squeezed through the Youtube compression algorithm; and this was done when the original tape was already getting elderly, to judge by the picture errors. My best guess, this commercial was shot on film, I'm sure I can see occasional blotches of dirt through the low resolution haze.

Shot 2 is one of the few really wide shots which gives a good look at the location. It's clearly a large well maintained area with proper paths. I thought it might be Jesus Green in Cambridge but you can't see the river, or any traffic in the distance, or any other people. If it's not a public space then the alternative is a private estate like Milton Hall. Sinclair Research brought the place in 1984 and today it still has extensive grounds. Behind the park keeper is a bare square metal frame; part of a climbing frame, a cricket net or football goal without the net? As Sir Clive strides along he suddenly veers to the left and his walk speeds into a run.

Shot 3. Sir Clive's in full Steve Austen mode and running towards something. A tennis court can be seen in the background. There are also a couple of trees which weren't there when Sir Clive first ran off the path so the filming location has shifted, at least a bit, to another site in the same area.

Shot 4 shows us what has caught Sir Clive's eye; a giant line computers. It's a terrific effect, absolutely seamless, and it really does look like Sinclair Research has stubbed up the cash for a line of giant lookalikes. Maybe they did but what I think is going on here is a forced perspective shot with a line of small models placed close to the camera in the foreground. The models are hung from a support hidden by the tree branch and the tree truck on the right of the frame makes the branch seem natural. The only big thing on location is the white board standing in for the base unit of the computer. The seam between the base and the monitor is where the the miniatures and the board are carefully lined up and when Sinclair runs forwards the top of his head never goes above the seam. If it did, the top of the head would disappear behind the bottom of the monitor. The camera angle flattens out the depth and on screen turns a complicated 3D setup into an effective 2D illusion. Having the board behind Sir Clive and the lady feeding the ducks sells the idea that everything must be in the rear of the shot.

Sir Clive keeps running forwards in shots 5 and 6. We get to see a bit more of the location in the background of both shots but the blurry low resolution doesn't reveal anything significant. Shot 6 is the most elaborate of the advert as the camera spins round the woman feeding the ducks. I think it's there to get some motion into the picture and give it some energy because in the next shot Sir Clive is going to take flight.

Shot 7. Sir Clive, or possibly his stunt double, leaps into the air. The camera pulls back and away from another model positioned close to the camera. Foreground miniature shots allow you to move the camera and keeps all the shadows and lighting consistent. In shots 8 and 9 Sir Clive keeps heading up and away, going where no man has gone before.

Check out those computer prices in shots 10 and 11. A £3325 IBM PC would cost £10,297 in 2023 and that £2698 Apple Macintosh would set you back £8,355. Even the park keeper is amazed. The text on the monitors is not computer generated, you can see a slight shadow where they've been stuck onto the screen.

Look at that scratch across shot 13, that's what I meant when I said the original VHS tape was in a state. It would be lovely to get a nice high resolution copy of the original film but it's not going to happen. I don't even know which advertising agency made this commercial. Look closely at the QL, the black one on the right. Reflected in the monitor you can see a hint of blue sky and the very blurry shape of whatever building faced on to this lawn. That nice detail aside, shot 13 is the one where I don't think the forced perspective miniatures work as well as they do elsewhere. The computers float unconvincingly above the grass and the contrast on them is flat and somehow wrong. Shot 14 takes aim at Acorn. £1632 for a fully-loaded BBC Model B why that's nearly £5054 in new money. And here's the hero shot, number 15. A Sinclair QL, £2161 today. A snip.

Sinclair lands and looks back, pleased. Not a bad day's work, that. Shot 18 is one last foreground miniature shot with the side of the QL carefully aligned with another dark grey board for Sir Clive to stand in front of, again this sells the idea that giant computers really were used on location.

The advert ends with a nice animated gag involving the QL leaping, Clive-style, over the Sinclair name. That's 19 shots in total in an advert running just over 30 seconds, less than two seconds per shot. It packs a lot into a short time but never loses sight of the central message and that's why I think the commercial is so effective. Compare it to the Enterprise 128 advert which starts with the idea that the Enterprise makes other computers look like fossils but overcomplicates things by getting Max Headroom to do the voiceover. There's nothing wrong with using Max Headroom, he was very trendy and cool in 1985 but his arrogant and mocking persona needs a different advert. For the fossils idea you could really do with a David Attenborough-type voice guiding you through a museum and explaining why other computers went extinct. 

I don't know who was responsible for Sinclair's adverts but they gave good value for money. The vaguely Six Million Dollar Man style we-can-rebuild-it advert for the Spectrum Plus also looks and sounds great. Commodore's Elephant adverts are jolly but they haven't aged well. Your milage will vary depending on how you feel about the use of trained animals in adverts but I really don't like the one where the elephant has been dressed in shorts and boxing gloves. And I don't know what Amstrad thought they were doing with this one for the CPC 6128. I get that it's adults in an office behaving like kids, and the boss is the headmaster. I get that the advert is walking a difficult line promoting a machine which is both a serious tool and a games machine but I don't think this is the way to do it. I guess Alan Sugar thought it was funny.

Do you recognise the location for the QL advert? Do you know who directed it? Not Ridley Scott, he was off making this one for Apple's £2698 Macintosh. Do you know which advertising agency made it? Any further information will be gratefully received.

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