An Israeli man has gone to great lengths to try to sell his 20-year-old car, creating an elaborate video using visual effects that has generated millions of views.
Latvia-born Eugene Romanovsky, who according to his Facebook profile works as the creative director for a Tel Aviv-based design and animation firm, uploaded his car ad to YouTube in mid-April, and it has garnered over three million views since then.
In the video, edited in the style of car advertisements (albeit longer), Romanovsky aimed to highlight the specs of the second-hand, manual 1996 Suzuki Vitara (its speed, high-quality tires) and the "adventures" it had been on, including a trip to the moon and a drive underwater.
Set to dramatic music, the video shows the car in different settings and situations such as out-running dinosaurs in footage from one of the Jurassic Park movies, keeping pace with a cheetah, escaping an avalanche and driving to a desert mountaintop.
In the text that accompanies the video, which has some spelling and syntax errors, Romanovsky says he'd had the car for 10 years and was sad to part with it, calling it his "best friend."
The clip got positive reviews, with over 27,000 thumbs up on YouTube and more than 1,000 comments hailing Romanovsky's creativity and editing prowess.
The video ends with shots of Romanovsky driving the car along Tel Aviv streets and parking in what appears to be an empty lot — a feat more improbable than dodging dinosaurs — before handing over the keys to the viewer.
In an interview with popular nightly show Hazinor on Channel 10, Romanovsky said he worked on the video for an hour or two every day over a period of about three weeks, agreeing with the host that it amounted to about 40 hours.
He said he was fielding calls for potentially interested buyers and had some 100 inquiries.
He added that he was asking for approximately NIS 21,000 (close to $6,000) for the car, a detail not evident in the video though some commenters noted that the labor that went into making the video was likely more than what the car is worth.
Source: www.bing.com