The City of Los Angeles is trying to deal with the slow end of the billboard. Those were bad enough and had been regulated – there were some places you couldn't put them, as they were eyesores or caused safety issues, distracting drivers. And then the electronic billboards came, with alternating multiple messages and animation and flashing lights and whatnot. It's hard enough to drive here without those trying to amaze you. Those are being limited and regulated. The City is catching up with that. But now it's the supergraphics, the giant photorealistic building-wraps. And there were no rules for those, so the City is working on that now, starting with the fire code as it pertains to blocking windows and exits. But they have a long way to go, and effective marketing is always one step ahead of the law.
Here's the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel – a promo for "Sex and the City, 2" – with a very large and quite distracting Sarah Jessica Parker.
But this is cool, a promo for a new antidepressant, next to the El Capitan Theater on Hollywood Boulevard –
At the El Capitan itself, a mix of old and new –
The Hollywood First National Bank, 1927, Holler and Mayer, and a supergraphic for a new animated 3-D DreamWorks movie about a boy and his dragon – and the head of promotional firm that put it up, without a permit, was fined and did some jail time, for creating a public nuisance that is a safety hazard at one of the busiest intersections in Los Angeles, endangering the public. There may be a free speech issue here, or it will be gone soon.
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Technical Note:
These photographs were taken with a Nikon D200 – the lenses used were AF-S Nikkor 18-70 mm 1:35-4.5G ED, or AF Nikkor 70-300 mm telephoto. The high-resolution photography here was modified for web posting using Adobe Photoshop 7.0 software.