Apple scored Hollywood royalty in the form of Martin Scorsese for its latest iPad commercial, which got prime placement on Sunday night's Academy Awards—with the legendary director narrating the 60-second spot.
The ad manages to be inspirational—by, oddly enough, valuing hard work over inspiration. Scorsese's words actually come from his commencement speech to the NYU Tisch School of the Arts Class of 2014.
"I'm not talking about 'following your dream,' " he says. "I never like the inspirational value of that phrase. Dreaming is a way of trivializing the process, the obsession that carries you through the failure as well as the successes, which could be harder to get through. If you're dreaming, you're sleeping. It's important and imperative to always be awake to your feelings, your possibilities, your ambitions."
It's a nice message on a night where "following your dream" is a constant mantra. And the realism is reinforced by the casting of the ad—actual Los Angeles County High School for the Arts students who were tasked with making a movie with an iPad. They combine perfectly with the voiceover—novices working in the shadow of the master's encouragement.
The spot pitches the iPad as a filmmaking device, and follows its own advice. According to Mashable, the new spot was itself filmed entirely on an iPad.
Read more about the ad, and the students, on this Apple web page.