This was the inspiration I needed. Thanks mankind.

Before Monty Python's Flying Circus, these goofballs made satirical films making fun of the mundane, yet often seriously considered world of commercial and political everything.

Nice lil' piece of tripe chronicling the actual end of days with...... " product placement " { echo, echo, echo, } Todays existence brought to you by _______

Even as a slightly comic piece this stings a bit right now. The language, the whiteness, the colonialism ... woo hoo the myth is deep.

Feel free to check it out if you're curious to see how others are using footage from the Prelinger Archive:

The Aquaerials - "The Ascent"
https://youtu.be/tFDI2JsqLyU

The Calvin Company was a Kansas City, Missouri-based educational and industrial film production company that for nearly half a century was the largest and most successful film producer of its type in the United States.

*j..j..j..Jeez- Didja ever see so many.. Indians?" Man der must be a man of 'em we better be like, goin' back.. "
"s'matter, u some kind of a nut'r somethin'? What about our.. 'age ole dream of a better life?"

"Oh! yeah.. welp uh.. OK... Like, 'wagons Ho!"

Off and on during the 1950s, the Calvin Company employed a young director named Robert Altman who had ambitions to leave them and become a Hollywood filmmaker. He was directing TV episodics in LA at the time "Your Name Here" may have been produced, but the people who did it certainly seem to have felt his wry influence back in Kansas City.

I can't believe this is for real. This is a 1960 joke film, right? With woman unhappily tossing and turning in her single bed, well, the first thing I thought of was...well, you know...his...well, you know.

Watch the film again and insert his, you know, each time at the prompted place. Makes for an extra funny film!

Perhaps this very film inspired Lou and Peter Berryman to write this song:

Sometimes when the grass is blown by the breeze
There's a faraway look in the leaves of the trees,
A memory returns heartbreakingly clear
Of a place I call home...YOUR STATE'S NAME HERE.

No sky could be deeper, no water so clear
As back in the meadows of...YOUR STATE'S NAME HERE.
I'm goin' to go back, though I don't know when
There's no other place like...YOUR STATE'S NAME AGAIN.

Oh...YOUR STATE'S NAME, oh...AGAIN...what a state!
I have not been back since...A REASONABLE DATE.
Where the asphalt grows soft in July every year,
In the warm summer mornings of...YOUR STATE'S NAME HERE!

My grandpa would come and turn on the game
And fall asleep drinking...YOUR LOCAL BEER'S NAME.
My grandma would sing in the garden for hours
To all of the...NAMES OF INDIGENOUS FLOWERS.

The songs that she sang were somewhat obscure,
Learned from the local townspeople, Im sure.
The language they use is not very clear,
Like... PLACE A COLLOQUIALISM RIGHT HERE.

I'd love to wake up where...THE STATE'S SONGBIRD...sings,
Where they manufacture...THE NAMES OF SOME THINGS,
Like there on the bumper a sticker so clear,
An ``I'' and a heart and...YOUR STATE'S NAME HERE.

Whisper it soft, it's a song to my ear,
YOUR STATE'S NAME HERE, YOUR STATE'S NAME HERE.
It's there I was born and there I'll grow old
The rivers of blue and the arches of gold.

How cynical! I agree, the "use Robert E. Lee here if desired" and "use Dwight D. Eisenhower here if desired" spoke volumes and made it worth watching! I could imagine seeing this on a 1970s Saturday Night Live episode.

It was worth the 10 minutes to see the one second flash of "Use Robert E. Lee here if desired" bit. hysterical.

And that ladies and gentlemen is how we won the Cold War!

This is such a great take off on all our "American Century" pretensions back then. It's nice to know that some folks knew how silly it all sounded. And to think they were the same folks who helped propagate it to society -- not just Mort Sahl and Lenny Bruce!

Loved the couple in the twin beds. I am sure this evoked laughs out of the crowd who first saw this film.

Could the writers of this film have had the amazing foresight to realize that what they were lampooning would one day become the status quo of politically correct dupes in a 21st century consumer culture?

While home sick today, I came across this movie while researching Calvin . My Dad worked for Calvin starting in 1959, I believe, well up into the 1970s. His name was Gene Carr and in this film he is the coon skin cap wearing pioneer on the right . He was a writer,director and producer for Calvin. He had a great sense of humor and was probably behind alot of these ideas.This was a treasure to find to say the least.I miss him greatly Stephen Carr

These pre 70s films are such a blast!

A vastly improved version of this film is now available at HungryFlix.

Some pictures and a small discussion of the film and the restoration are located here:

http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=122187

In any form, though, "Your Name Here" is a marvelous poke at the pompous nature of some of these corporate films.

~~~~~

"Your name here" is where Calvin Communications
makes a parody of their own industrial film productions. It might seem very funny to those involved, but not as much to the general public. However,it still holds up after so many years.

my theory is that the film was produced for a convention or get together of the Calvin Workshop people. there's another film on the archives here (can't remember the name, but it also stars the guy who is the announcer at the beginning of "Your Name Here") with the same kind of comic point of view - basically poking fun at industrial films.

I'm thinking that they made the films for fun to open up a convention or dinner or something - kind of the same way they do the white house press corps dinner.

great article on wikipedia about the calvin company...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvin_Company

"your name here" is the best. film. ever.

Cheesy, overblown, and just nutty, this is my favorite find in the Internet Archive. Everyone I have shown it to has enjoyed the heck out of it.

Well worth watching & downloading.

Since nobody else seems to have mentioned it yet, the media collage group Evolution Control Committee used this film & re-tooled it just slightly to make "The ECC Story." That was actually the first I saw of this film, before discovering the original in the Archive!
http://www.evolution-control.com/videos.html
The other ECC videos & music are pretty good, too!

I have brought this film before friends and family, wanting their comments on it. They all say the same thing: "How did they make the film look so old?" Then I tell them that the film was made in 1960, back when films of this type were a staple of advertising. They do a double-take, and refuse to believe me. This film seems so oddly entertaining now. I'm certain if it was included in a collection of shorts for a "Midnight Show" audience, it would go over well.
Wooden acting, ambigious plot, overblown drama, self-referential parody; it is a genuinely funny film. Watch it, download iot and share it with friends. It's a great "party film".

This film is freaking awesome. I had no idea that filmmakers in 1960 could be so "meta". The whole thing is almost like a Saturday Night Live skit (except that unlike and SNL skit, this is actually funny!). If you enjoy watching the films in this archive for cheap laughs like I do, then you'll love this one.

Although I don't really think it's the bee's knees as people make it out to be, there are some funny moments towards the end. But it's an atypical Calvin production, which company I'm not the biggest fan of.

Looking at this film again I noted its provenance: The Calvin Group.

Calvin was a Kansas City company that marketed 8mm and 16mm ("Movie-Mite") projectors. Surely "The Calvin Group" is related.

And almost as surely, this brilliant satire is a direct shot at the Jam Handy Organization and its films--all made to this same tired formula at the time.

It would be fun to find out more about these relationships.

This is outstanding. "Ahead of its time" doesn't even begin to cover it. And it must have been even funnier to the 60s-era audiences who, unlike me, were steeped in the kind of promo films this film is spoofing...

I hope you enjoy another example in this fine genre:
http://media.ebaumsworld.com/retro.wmv
here are the comments:
http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/34817

-brewster

This movie was way ahead of its time in regards to satire and parody. If you are a fan of Spinal Tap or Best of Show you will love this film. The best scene is the one with the 2 beatniks dressed as Lewis and Clark and the one guy calls his wagons by saying "Like wagons Ho!"

This is pure genius. The stupid hats, the melodramatic married couple, the hapless scientists...I couldn't stop laughing.

I'm amazed that someone had the foresight back then to realize do a spoof like that, as most spoofs on 50's corperate propoganda films are made today. Genreric Product and Generic Company Name: the History of Our Future: Today! [Insert Robert E. Lee if Derired.] Classic!

Those wacky Calvin Workshop people! This ten-minute parody of industrial films is perfectly-produced satire. The best character is the beatnik frontiersman.
"Like..Wagons HO!"
Also great: the "subliminal" messages superimposed over the presidents' portraits.
NOT TO BE MISSED!!!!!!!!!!

Hilarious, and almost perfectly produced. If you haven't had the pleasure to work for a dotcom -- and I've seen business plans with less detail than that film -- then just insert your favourite evil multinational or local nest of villains when prompted. Should be required viewing for anyone involved in producing or decoding corporate promotional material, and perfect fodder for anyone with video editing software and a company party coming up.

One minor whinge: the music is mixed too high for too long on the intro, muddying the vocal. And one bonus fact: the Historic Saying concocted by the scientists was in fact the first message Samuel Morse sent over the telegraph. Beats a press release.

I am involved with indexing, standards and forms. This may well be the future, as average forms of data become standardized. So that, in the future (like, tomorrow) a form of "Great American Novel" will be made. And like a form, all one has to do is to fill in the blank spaces with what ever noun, verb or adjective pleases the users of that novel. Best sellers will be a breeze to market. The formula novel, formula movie, formula lifestyle. Good stuff. Hey Dino, check out closed captioning. It will be a way of indexing visuals for making RAP MOVIES (i e, taking the best contextual elements of movies and mixing them up, for example, into new plot lines, ect)

Having recently got into DV editing and moviemaking, I stumbled upon this site 30 minutes ago.

As my first delve into the archive, this had me grinning ear to ear, and set the creative juices flowing for how I could use some of the materials on this site cut into my own footage, to humourous effect (as I gather is fine to do so).

Thanks to the creators of this archive for making such a rich resource available, free-of-charge, to the public at large. Who knows, perhaps I'll see my own submissions immortalised here one day!

Great stuff!

Fantastic film making! Can I actually use this to promote my product?

Originality is a bothersome detail that has been overcome by the triumph of modern filmmaking. Now you don't even have to waste time coming up with good lies and can get back to pushing boxes, or services, or whatever.
Best scene: Scientists revising their cry of discovery to "something that'll get quoted"!

Loved it! What a great tongue-in-cheek piece this is. Glad somebody in 1960 had the guts to make this.

Has this film been on Comedy Central yet?
Way ahead of its time!!
This reminds me of my passion for Mad Magazine during my childhood and the emergence of the counterculture
Dennis Jennings
Celestial-Image.com

I work for a large telecommunications company that recently filed for bankruptcy--all the way thru the film I inserted "W*rldC*m" and "Network Connectivity" at the appropriate places.

Sounded like the pep talks the upper echelon gives to us peons just before they lay some more of us off...

I laughed thru my tears, I did....

Haw! This was a laugh riot! I wonder what the makers were thinking ... I imagine they were so bored with churning out the same old corporate glop that they had a little fun with it. It's nice to know that some people back then saw how ludicrous the cliches were even when living and working right in the middle of them.

I almost skipped over this little gem of a film. I'm sure glad I didn't! Just as funny whether you ever had to sit through one of these types of films or not! This one is definately worth a look.

Whenever a company starts to get carried away with an overblown sense of its self worth in the world, this little gem should be played to the Board as a reminder that those they strive to fool, see through them every time.
Watch this one, and have a chuckle on me

"The 'Your Name Here' Story" is a very funny parody of the standard overly-serious, overly-dramatic corporate promotional film. It shows that at least some cold-war era filmmakers realized how contrived these company stories were, and has a sense of humor about them. Watch out for the beatnik pioneer, the couple with mysterious marital difficulties, and the sensitivity to diverse political sensibilities.