Old Seattle Radio Saturday: rainier beer, 1933-1999

Rainier Beer (1933-1999) also known as Raindeer, fueled Seattle media in more ways than one. Plus, over the decades, they put up some of the most predictably quirky and funny spots for radio and the teevee.

Here is the iconic teevee motorcycle spot from 1978 (there was an audio version for radio).

Ed Leimbacher, writer/producer of many Rainier broadcast ads, describes here, and here how difficult that seemingly simple spot was to make.

The Motorcycle Spot, for example, really was the all-Northwest all-time favorite. Very simple: camera looking down a straight back-country road, nothing in sight, then gradually a spot becoming a motorcycle coming straight at the camera, passing close, flash-pan to follow it tailing off toward a looming Mount Rainier—and all the while the shifting gears have been keening/singing, distantly at first, then louder and louder, "Raaaaiiiii-niiieeeerrrr… (zoom by and receding sound) Beeeeerrrrrr…"

Looked amazingly simple, but of course there was much going on behind the scene. Building the soundtrack, for example, we found that we could not stretch the words out over the full 30 seconds, had to settle for 20-plus to be understandable—which meant the visuals had to not show any bike at first. Then trying to capture the actual motorcycle shot we found that we could not pan fast enough as the bike passed, so we had to make a hidden cut during the pan. And neither the weather nor the motorcycle itself cooperated at first—we had to go out filming on three different days to get the bike actually operating properly, at a time when Mount Rainier was also visible!

Watch a buttload of old Rainier commercials here.

Comments

[sparky]

Very cool...now I want to go research Oly beer.

I liked the Rainier/deer in the woods...

[joanie]

I thought those commercials were great. On Seattle Channel I recently watched a documentary on the Seattle Rainiers and it brought back so many good memories. I still miss the big red R atop the old brewery.

We were quite a town in those days. We had a lot of which to be proud.

[sowhat]

who in hell gives a shit about what joanie(and sparky) says about anything?

[Puget Sound]

for the olympia fans from tumwater WA, check it out:

Olympia Beer Retro

BTW, we still have quite a town. the future is bright...if we make the right choices.

as nice as the old days were, if you go back to that time you'll see lots of things that caused people to full of angst and worry.

[Archie Goodwin hater of neo cons]

huh?

[KS]

"huh?

Posted by: Archie Goodwin hater of neo cons | January 02, 2010 at 09:09 AM"

Crawl back in your hole GG and try again on Ground Hog's day.

[Drew]

Olympia's Artesians were great, and spawned a whole slew of jokes about them. But the Rainier commercials had to be the best. With the rare exception of an occassional Budweiser commercial, Rainier had the best ads.

Budweiser had to change their "Real American Heroes" radio ads, to "Real Men of Genius", because the families of troops and rescue personnel around the country thought it was a little insensitive). But the story behind the songs and performers on those ads is still pretty interesting.

[KluelesS, chunks & PutzS=tres assholes]

remember the this classic: what does olympia beer and the ceo of olympia beer have in common?

they both come in a can!

[KS]

The last poster has previously been banned for obvious reasons.

[KluelesS, chunks & PutzS = tres assholes]

wrong as usual KluelesS

[Willamette]

klueless wrong? egads!