conTRAST + copyWRITING

Breaking Bad — Season 3, Episode 10: “Fly”

No spoilers. 

Just an attention-grabbing copywriting tactic… 

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“Fly” starts like every other Breaking Bad episode, with an opener, a short scene before the intro sequence.

Breaking Bad openers usually use flash forwards or flashbacks to create curiosity and suspense.

But this opener uses another attention-ensnaring tactic: conTRAST.

Imagine it… 

All you SEE is ultra-zoomed-in footage of a house fly. It’s very close. You can see every hair, every individual hex on its massive compound eyeballs.

It’s cleaning itself the way flys do,
meticulously,
moving quickly and deliberately.

It’s horrid.

All you HEAR, meanwhile, is a woman’s voice in the background. 

She’s reciting a lullaby the way mothers do, 
gently, 
singing slowly and softly:

Hush, little baby, don't say a word.
Mama’s gonna buy you a mah-king bird.
And if that mockingbird won’t sing,
Mama’s gonna buy you a die-mond ring. 

It’s soothing.

Horrid and soothing and yet you can’t stop watching it. 

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Now consider this:

On its own…

Footage of a fly cleaning itself isn’t very compelling. Neither is audio of a lullaby. But put them together and some strange alchemy happens, 1 + 1 = 3.

Fact is, clashing words and/or concepts and/or colors and/or images create drama, energy: 

• BIG & small

• Clean & diRtY

• Loooooooong + shrt

Together, each works to highlight the other.

Whenever you need to command attention — whether you’re writing an email, crafting a landing page, or filming a show — contrast something.

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