A man crests a hill on a bicycle. The camera follows him over a series of precipitous drops and craggy boulders, it’s that sort of sped-up-motion style that we’ve seen a million times before. The man wears a white helmet w/ a red cross on it and a kind of deconstructed uniform—an amalgamation of the hi-tech breathable spandex suit worn by cyclists and some sort of postmodern ambulance driver. He wears a red armband with a white circle on it, inside of which is another red cross. The man stops, gazes at the surrounding wilderness—it’s a desert scene, the orange sun vibrates, a hawk alights on a cactus—then pulls a walkie talkie from his shoulder and says “Charlie two-eight Delta, this is Recon Three. I’ve got a visual.” He wipes the sweat from his brow and digs his foot into the pedal of the bike. A closeup of this reveals some serious footwear and a professional-looking bike: shock absorbers, mudflaps, multiple reflectors and switch-operated LEDs, a dial we understand to be an altimeter (!), a built-in air pump as well as a patch-kit, thick off-road tires with complicated tread patterns. He races off again and dirt flies against the camera lens, all of this serving to really pull the viewer into the scene. Cut to: In a jarring POV shot, we come upon a woman sprawled on the ground, a man peering over her all worried and helpless. He runs his hand through his hair repeatedly, sort of thing. Two bikes lay on their sides, glimmering in the sunlight. The woman seems barely conscious. The helpless man says, “Oh, thank God you’re here. My wife, she’s . . . ” and doesn’t even finish his sentence. Our hero nods and speaks again into the walkie talkie. “Carlie two eight Delta, I’ve established contact with the subject. I’m at” (here he looks at a large watch worn on the inside of his wrist) “six-five-two-five-whiskey, repeat six-five-two-five-whiskey.” We don’t know what this means but it doesn’t matter. It could be gibberish for all we know, only it sounds serious. He peers out at the surrounding, sun-baked landscape. Cut to: In the background and out of focus a helicopter pulls a stretcher up slowly, it twirls as it ascends, and our hero, pouring sweat and still panting from the rigor of his task, says to the camera, “In my line of work,” (he points to the armband with the medical cross on it) “I just can’t afford to have a migraine.” The screen says: Kevin Whiting, Bicycle Recon/Medic. He unsnaps his helmet and wipes a tremendous amount of sweat from his brow. “When I’m just puttering around town with my wife, or exploring some uncharted woods with my buddies, just no big deal, I might take an Aspirin or a Tylenol. But when lives are on the line, I trust [product name]. [Product name]” (repeated for emphasis) “is the only medication proven to be effective for twenty-four hours straight, so you can worry about what’s most important.” Here the walkie-talkie buzzes to life again: “Recon Three, we’ve got a young kid says his dad broke his leg somewhere along the Dakota Trail. Kid sounds pretty desperate. We’re gonna need you there stat. This one could be serious.” The man looks at the camera with a see-what-I-mean?-type look, which he conveys just by lifting his eyebrows and lowering his chin a bit. We notice, maybe for the first time, that Kevin is fit—lean and not conspicuously muscular. He is attractive, but not intimidating. A sort of glorified everyman. Someone we can relate to but also look up to. An achievable ideal. We watch him bound confidently away, over more rocks and fallen tree trunks, then disappear over a hill. The Product is superimposed on the screen along with legal copy and catch-phrase, which could be something like, “When lives are on the line, trust [product name].” Just an example. Could be anything. I’m not in copywriting. Fade to white or whatever.

There’s a guy lying on the couch. His eyes are closed but we can tell since he’s got a speech bubble that he’s awake. His wife has just walked in the door with a bag of groceries or a briefcase, something that suggests accomplishment, and she’s saying, “Still working on the novel?” and he’s saying, “Mmm hmm.”

What if you filmed a movie in black and white, maybe a WWI movie or something old, but you filmed it in COLOR only you just built all the sets and costumes in black and white. You’d have to shoot only on cloudy days and everyone would have to wear makeup and it would be hard, but it would be totally, totally worth it.