From the Salmon

Let me get this out of the way first....

Sony is evil.

Well, not so much evil as really, really, really irresponsible.

So while I’m an absolute sucker for iPod commercials, please don’t think that the commercial I’m about to highlight will lead me to purchase anything from Sony. Because of the evilness irresponsibility, you see.

Now that that’s behind us, let me say that someone at Sony has tapped into my dreams. But not in an evil, irresponsible way.

San Francisco is known for its imposing hills. Sometimes, when I look down the steep face of one of these streets, I feel an urge to send a small, round, bouncy something tumbling downhill for gravity to snack on.

Sony can afford to think a little bigger than I do.

For a recent international commercial for its Bravia television line, Sony decided to go with a couple hundred thousand gravity snacks.

That’s right. They shut down several of San Francisco’s steeper avenues and proceeded to launch some 250,000 superballs from the top. How fantastic is that?

The commercial is truly beautiful, a slow-motion technicolor avalanche set to José González‘s effervescent “Heartbeats” (iTunes).

For other views of the filming, you can visit Sony’s Behind the Scenes page, an amateur video of the drop, a set of photos, or even more photos.

But then look away. If you can.