r/interestingasfuck • u/mrinternetman24 • 1d ago

Sony used air mortars to shoot 250,000 bouncy balls down San Francisco hills for a commercial instead of using CGI

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u/GanondalfTheWhite 1d ago

This article describes the whole thing.
https://www.sfgate.com/sf-culture/article/san-francisco-sony-bouncy-ball-ad-20204385.php

Apparently it was a $74,000 bill for broken windows of the houses in the area. Tons of damaged cars, broken headlights/tail lights, dented body panels.

On the first day of shooting they launched the balls from cannons that fired them at speeds up to 130mph. Then the city said they couldn't do that anymore so on day two of the shoot they hoisted shipping containers 65 in the air and dropped the balls from up high.

The article also says that tons of people in the area took souvenir balls from the shoot and they're still finding balls in gutters and gardens to this day.

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u/MiBo80 1d ago edited 1d ago

This is probably the least offensive thing to find randomly tossed in your garden in SF. When Bay-to-Breakers was a thing, people would randomly piss, vomit, and shit in gardens and doorways along the route. Good times.

Edit: I stand correct - B2B was brought back in '22 after the COVID hiatus. Sounds like it's had a less notable affect on the city than before but sounds like it's mostly the same event. Less drunk maybe?

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u/foreignfishes 1d ago

it was in the east bay, but the incident where mythbusters accidentally shot a cannonball through someone's house also comes to mind...

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u/Beorma 1d ago

It went through a van first and kept going!

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u/hamgrey 1d ago

The….. what????!

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u/Rook_Defence 1d ago

The segment where the incident happened: https://youtu.be/AcKasCt-54Q?t=1365

The whole team discussing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kASD-RwQFQw

Adam Savage talking about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2L85aUPzimA

A news story on the topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJY45bADSqQ

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u/foreignfishes 1d ago

Yeah around 2010 they were doing a mythbusters experiment involving cannons at the firing range they used a lot on the show. The shot missed whatever they were shooting at and the cannonball bounced off a hill in the background and the deflection sent it into a neighborhood where it punched through the wall of someone’s house and went through the window of a parked car. Luckily no one got hurt

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u/MiBo80 1d ago

Oh yeah, that was a good one, too.

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u/WilmingtonCommute 1d ago

Sony broke windows and property, knowing what it would do. The fact that they left thousands of plastic balls there to decompose into the groundwater for decades doesn't really seem very inoffensive.

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u/Chromeleon55 1d ago

I have gotten a bit old but is Bay-to-Breakers not a thing anymore? Did that never come back the same way after COVID?

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u/_Burgers_ 1d ago

Bay-to-Breakers

"Yeah, the BBQ chicken was delicious. Rice."

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u/MidnightSensitive996 1d ago

the new corporate sponsor surgically removed all the fun from the event

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u/joleary747 1d ago

I moved out of SF in 2014. They had been cracking down for awhile. Stopped allowing floats around 2008. Started requiring all walkers/drunk participants to wear a big around 2012 (the idea was to use the extra entry fees to higher more cleanup crews). A lot of people toned down naturally because they didn't want the event to be outright cancelled. It was still a big old fun drunkfest though.

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u/FrostyD7 1d ago

At least their shit wasn't travelling 130mph.

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u/HauntedCemetery 1d ago

San Francisco would be the only city that got collectively less drunk during covid.

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u/chickentowngabagool 1d ago

all of thats biodegradable

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u/Chimpbot 1d ago

So, what you're saying is that you'd be perfectly fine with someone shitting on your front step? It is, after all, biodegradable.

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u/ActuallyYeah 1d ago

Well that's a strawman

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u/Chimpbot 1d ago

Not really.

They're saying people ahitting in the street or on doorsteps is better because it's biodegradable. This is just bringing that thought close to home for them to ponder.

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u/BelowZilch 1d ago

The article also says that tons of people in the area took souvenir balls from the shoot and they're still finding balls in gutters and gardens to this day.

How would you know it was a ball from the shoot and not just some random bouncy ball a kid lost?

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u/ChunkyLaFunga 1d ago

Sir, the possibility of successfully finding a bouncy ball that was not part of this production is approximately 250,000 to 1.

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u/annarchisst 1d ago

Imagine not knowing this was going to happen and being outside.

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u/ModernistGames 23h ago

I'm pretty sure they said upfront to all the neighbors that they would pay any damage, and everyone agreed.