DVLA – Computer (2006, UK) [4K Upscale]

Описание: This frighteningly sinister PIF from the DVLA (the Driving and Vehicle Licensing Agency for those outside the UK) is a perfect example of the profound use of unnecessary paranoia to stop people from avoiding paying tax... as though millionaires, billionaires, and the folks who have been running most of the world's countries haven't been doing that for aeons.

We see a guy in a car park presumably leaving home from work, but he starts being haunted (quite literally) by some weird big black box with some kind of flashing light on it. No matter where he goes, this big black box never seems to leave him alone. Just after he arrives home, a brief moment of relief and solitude is inevitably cut short as he slowly looks behind himself in the car – only to reveal the big black box (revealed to be some kind of DVLA supercomputer) being sat right behind him on the rear passenger seat. The sinister, monotonic narrator tells us that if we don't pay our road tax, the super evil DVLA computer will haunt our every move until our sanity eventually caves in (or until they take you to court for tax evasion, whichever one comes first). And why the hell does the narrator sound like a Dalek right at the end? "There's no escape. Pay your car tax. Exterminate!!!!"

Seriously, what was with all these creepy tax avoidance ads back then?! If it wasn't road tax ads making you paranoid to leave the house in case a big black computer would haunt your every move, they were showing us creepy PIFs like this one which shown TV license dodgers being caught in fishing nets:    • TV Licence Ad 1980s - The Net Is Closing  

Perhaps they should make a redux of this commercial and air it again for today's audience, but this time having the DVLA computer donned in £840-a-roll wallpaper haunting the Prime Minister while he's on a luxury holiday in the Caribbean, or something.


Directed by Chris Dada at MullenLowe London.

Upscaled into 4K using AI software.
Original for comparison: https://vimeo.com/296016580