Given the size of the war chests created to purchase air time, the number of political consultants who double as filmmakers, and the proliferation of in-house editing systems, no candidate is apt to make good on this promise. In addition to being bombarded with broadcast spots, the US electorate is now subject to Internet-related communications, like enriched banner ads, designed to calculate voter savings under a candidate's proposed tax plan.

"The importance of television advertising to a campaign is the difference between winning and losing," says director/cameraman, Marius Penczner whose primary responsibility is to create conceptual cinematography and assist in post production on the Gore 2000 campaign.

Penczner has shot commercials and music videos through New York's Flashframe Films as well as through his own production company, Penczner Productions currently based in Maryland. His most recent commercial projects include spots for Americtech, Florida Sugar Growers and the "Tennessee: Sounds Good to Me" 2000 campaign for the state's Department of Tourist Development.

Penczner entered the political arena in 1984. While writing and producing television spots for Tennessee Governor Don Sundquist (R), he was approached by consultant Dick Morris to work on President Bill Clinton's re-election campaign in 1996.

"Penczner brought us ideas that were well outside the mainstream of political advertising," writes Morris in Behind the Oval Office. No doubt, Morris is referring to Penczner's varied background, which includes playing keyboards for '70s rock band Black Oak Arkansas.

In the early '80s with the birth of MTV, Penczner began making country music videos at the legendary Ardent Studios. Today he works alongside Democratic media consultants Bob Shrum, Carter Eskew, Tad Devine, Mike Donilon, and Bill Knapp in an effort to win the presidency for Al Gore.

Penczner says that while the process of producing mainsteam commercials and political spots is similar, the pressures are anything but. "You just have to look at political production as traditional advertising on steroids. The adrenaline intensity is exponentially higher and the stress level is substantially higher. What I found, and it continues to be surprising to me, is you don't have much time with the candidate, particularly somebody running for president."

Penczer recalls a recent incident in which he had just 12 minutes to film Al Gore, which in the making of political spots is par for the course. "There's no time to tweak the lights or do much of anything," explains Penczer. "This was also true of Bill Clinton in 1996. They basically sit down and the words you never hear are: 'Would you like to run through that Mr. President?' He sits down and it's like: 'Go, roll.' You've got to get it right the first time. Where in traditional advertising you get to do a lot of takes and retakes. None of that is present in political spot-making."

Time spent prepping and approving materials is also limited. "The dynamic is totally different," says Penczner. "In politics you have very little time to get something written, approved and up on the air."

Penczner notes that a political campaign is often based on current public opinion as expressed through polls and in the press, while commercials are the result of carefully constructed marketing strategies.

"A political campaign is a revenue-depleting enterprise," says Penczner. "It doesn't really make money. It is there to conserve its resources, to spend them based on a particular production schedule for maximum effectiveness and really the goal is to persuade public opinion to vote in favor of your ideas. You tend to have more spots, they tend to cost less per spot, and they tend to be strategically focused to present a particular point of view at a particular point in time."

And producers need to adapt to these demands, says Penczner. "Nonlinear systems in production techniques and rapid turnaround are all inherent in this kind of crisis management mode that a political campaign is always in. We never think months ahead, we really think weeks or days or hours ahead."

One of Penczner's first tasks was to create a library of stock footage that could be utilized in quick turnaround situations. Footage is shot and archived according to issues such as education, health care and social security. The use of stock footage allows the campaign to generate messages that coincide with shifting national opinion. The result, according to the director, is less customization of spots than in previous presidential election cycles.

The combination of needing lots of backup film footage and the public's cynicism towards glossy political posturing has led to a ressurgence of 16 mm film as both a cost- and image-saving device.

"People have an optic for 16mm over 35mm just because it has a more real texture with it," says Mark McKinnon, who heads Maverick Media, the agency responsible for handling Governor Bush's presidential campaign.

"Most political work these days, the less filtered it is, the better it is. I mean, most people when they see political ads, the first thing they think of is that somebody's lying to them. So the best political communication is usually the most direct and usually, it's the least complicated." McKinnon says there are several ways to convey a straightforward approach on television, including the integration of various formats.

"Sometimes we use an 8mm cut into a 16mm or 35mm which gives it the look of a home movie and makes it very real.

"What most people are looking for in political media these days is something that is not very commercial looking," adds McKinnon. "They are looking for something that is very real life, something that doesn't have a lot of ribbon and bows on it - a very straightforward approach."