Double LL Lager Beer – Painter

Synopsis

An advertising sign painter falls from a scaffold and starts seeing stars. Soon afterwards, letters begin to dance before his eyes. They turn out to be the letters “LL” from the logo of Double LL Light Lager Beer.

50 Commercials

Ballantine Brewery was one of Joop Geesink’s Dollywood’s most loyal clients. Over the years, the studio produced around fifty commercials for the brewery’s various beer brands. Several of these can be found elsewhere on this website. Production was spread over a considerable period, from 1958 until the mid-1960s.

Trivia

The design of the main character reappears in several Double LL commercials. One example features a hunter who finds happiness through this beer. Interestingly, Dollywood was also producing commercials for Heineken Brewery during the same period. Not only do the characters in both campaigns bear a strong resemblance to one another, but the storylines are often similar as well. Typically, a man is occupied with a task or adventure, encounters some sort of setback, and ultimately finds comfort in a glass of the advertised beer.

Glass Plates

To modern viewers, this commercial may appear somewhat slow-paced. However, this makes several interesting visual effects easier to observe, such as the clouds of dust created by the fall and the dancing letters moving across the screen. Today, such effects would be added digitally, but around 1960 they were created by hand. The letters and other visual elements were mounted on thin sheets of glass positioned between the camera and the set. By moving a letter slightly for each frame, the filmmakers created the illusion of motion. In the still above, the letters LL can be clearly seen as separate objects placed in front of the set. Therefor you can see the shadow moving over the set.
The studio most likely used cut-out photographic prints attached to glass. In some cases, the letters may even have been painted by hand to create a motion-blur effect. This technique allowed the filmmakers to make letters float through the scene without having to alter the set or the puppets themselves.

For comparison, here is a still from a Heineken commercial.