For SHOOT’s Fall top 10 chart, the three highest ranking spots have one thing in common: they all take an absurd, fantasy-like situation and make it feel real. A poignant piano tune causes viewers to feel empathy with a discarded lamp for Ikea, while sound design and an eerie score accompany the tale of a man on a city street who finds that a video game from Sony PlayStation has invaded his world. And pigs literally fly for Time Warner Cable, backed by an orchestral piece filled with wonder. Below is a look at how music makes fantasy seem like reality.
Number One
The poignant and bizarre exist side by side in "Lamp," an Ikea spot directed by Spike Jonze of bicoastal/ international Morton Jankel Zander (MJZ) out of Crispin Porter + Bogusky, Miami. The music and sound design were by Mit Out Sound/ M.O.S, Sausalito, Calif.
The commercial opens with a mournful piano tune that accompanies the images of a woman unplugging a red desk lamp, taking it out of her apartment, and leaving it downstairs on the sidewalk for trash pickup. We see the lamp, desolate and alone by the garbage can, as it starts to rain. The lamp sits, forlornly, seemingly staring at the window of its former home where a new lamp has taken its place. The tragic music and the imagery make it seem as though we are witnessing the end of a relationship. Then comes the kicker: a Swedish-accented man steps into the frame and addresses the audience: "Many of you feel bad for this lamp. That is because you [are] crazy. It has no feelings. And the new one is much better."
Initially, sound design was to play the pivotal role in the spot. For that, the agency turned to Ren Klyce of Mit Out Sound/M.O.S. Although the agency had teamed with Klyce before on an antismoking PSA, he was selected this time more for his long-standing working relationship with director Jonze. "Spike and I work together a lot," he explains. "We get along really well." (Klyce created sound design on Being John Malkovich, which was directed by Jonze.)
Before the spot was shot, Jonze sent Klyce the storyboards for "Lamp," saying that he wanted no music only sound design. That was no problem for Klyce, yet he recalls thinking that music would probably be a plus. "When I read the boards, I thought it was a musically driven piece," he says.
Nonetheless, after the commercial was lensed, Klyce and sound designer Malcolm Fife, spent five days meticulously recording authentic sounds for the piece (the lamp being picked up, the footsteps on stairs, a doorknob opening, and so on). While they were doing that, editor Eric Zumbrunnen of Spot Welders, Venice, added a temp track to the piece.
"We felt [the music] added so much," recalls Rupert Samuel, a senior producer at Crispin Porter + Bogusky, adding that the agency then decided to go with music only. Klyce then composed and recorded the haunting piano tune that accompanies the spot. It was an odd experience—for the comic piece to work, he had to get very serious and empathize with the lamp, an inanimate object. "I tried something simple and sad on the piano," explains Klyce. "Although it’s a humor piece, you had to approach it very seriously as a dramatic piece. I had to really get into the music, writing it as if I was passionately, honestly upset about the lamp, as if was a tragedy: oh, the pain, the pain!"
Klyce recorded the composition on a nine-foot grand piano, playing it with three or four variations (ultimately, there were 20 alternate endings recorded). He added synthetic strings and a cello. When Jonze came to an edit session and saw the music-only piece, it didn’t sit well with him. He felt that the lack of noise was jarring, and that for the piece to work, it needed realistic sounds. "You need to hear the feet on the stairs," Klyce recalls Jonze saying. "You need to hear the wind blowing. Damn it, it’s a real situation."
A compromise was reached, in which the sound was included, but at a low level, and the music was prominent. Fife then completed the sound design. Klyce says he is pleased with the final result, but adds that he worries that the commercial may be too effective at evoking sympathy for the old lamp. "I’d be interested to see Ikea’s sales charts," he says, adding in explanation: "I played the spot for my wife. She almost cried. You know, you end up feeling pretty sorry for the lamp."
Number two
Sony PlayStation’s "Signs" is a remarkable short film. Its 60 seconds are filled with narrative imagery; in it, a man sees visual clues of impending danger. A graffiti figure on a wall points the way for him to go; at a store window, three mannequins point towards a boy drawing a sidewalk picture of a huge winged dragon attacking a girl. Other clues come fast and furious, as the sounds and subtle music—tribal drums—pick up the beat of the street sounds. A little girl is singing "London Bridge is falling down," while above her the masonry holding a gargoyle in place begins cracking. Other clues abound as the man begins to run towards the girl: a "Watch for Children" street sign, an electronic ticker crying out, "Rates drop." He runs—the throbbing music becomes more apparent—and manages to save the girl moments before the gargoyle crashes on the spot where she had been standing. The end tag: "Live in your world. Play in ours."
The spot, directed by Dante Ariola of MJZ for TBWA/Chiat/Day, Los Angles, is meant to capture the essence of video games, in which a main character must decipher clues so that he or she can save himself or others. The sound design and music played a crucial role, since one had to complement the other. "When we were developing the score, we didn’t want the music to dominate," recalls Debra Wittlin-Martin, one of the agency producers on the spot. "We even pulled back on the music to heighten the sound design. The sound and music teams had to be synergistic."
To do that, the agency turned to two companies with which it had just collaborated: bicoastal Elias Arts and stimmüng, Santa Monica. Gus Koven, a sound designer at stimmüng, came to the shoot in Toronto, the beginning of two months’ work on the project. "I talked with [the agency team] extensively," Koven says. "The spot is a combination of abstract stuff and very real stuff. In Toronto, I recorded realistic city sounds. The agency was not interested in big, strong sound design. They were more interested in creating a strange environment that the guy could walk around in. So I mixed realistic sounds with the abstract: he would be walking through the city and there would be really loud, abrupt moments, and then it would be really silent, just hearing footsteps. At some points, even if he was running through an area with a lot of people, we chose to make it obviously quiet."
Indeed, in many cases, ambient sound was as important as music. "We were very sparse on music up front," explains Wittlin-Martin. "We didn’t want to telegraph what was happening. There were sparse little moments. We wanted the audience to experience what he is experiencing. When the main action starts, the music comes in."
"Basically, the spot is divided into two halves," adds Koven. "The first part is very fluid and free; the second half is very rigid and structured with music. When he sees the gargoyle breaking off, the pace shifts and you start to hear music. The sound and music are at different extremes and play off against each other."
Nonetheless, the music is very subtle, almost unnoticeable throughout the piece. "The music has a very percussive, driving element," says Wittlin-Martin. "It heightens the drama."
"It was Asian-tribal music," explains Chris Jenkins of Elias Arts, who composed the music for "Signs." "We were trying to get a feeling of battle. We started with a mock-up of Asian Taiko drums … alternating with sticks played against each other." David Wittman, also a composer at Elias Arts, worked on the score. Wittman supplemented the tracks with additional percussion and bells.
Remarkably, for such a cohesive piece, the collaborators worked long distance; Jenkins (who lives and works in Utah) never met Koven; Wittman and Koven only hooked up at the final mix. Yet sound and music mesh perfectly. "The music and sound became a hand-in-hand effort," Wittlin-Martin notes. "I was very impressed at how graciously the two different houses worked together. They were very generous; the sound designer would let the music play out and vice versa. Their focus was what was best for the creative."
Number Three
It’s an age-old expression, "If pigs could fly … " and it is made literal by the recent Time Warner Cable spot, "Pigs," directed by Bruno Aveillan of bicoastal Believe Media and Quad US, out of ad shop SS+K, New York. Accompanied by an uplifting orchestral score, the piece shows various people—old and young, in cars and at windows, on the street and in buildings—looking up into the night sky at a truly wondrous sight: pigs, with feathery white wings, soaring through the heavens. "What if what you thought was impossible suddenly wasn’t?" asks the voiceover, who, after extolling the future of television, says, "What if there was a cable company that actually cared about you? Now, anything’s possible."
For the spot, says creative director Marty Cooke, the agency needed to evoke a soaring sense of wonder—and music was always a key element. "Once you’ve got flying pigs, there’s a certain level of fantasy," he observes. "But we didn’t want to have cutesy, Babe-style music."
To achieve what they were looking for, the agency creatives turned to someone they had never used before: Robert Miller, of RMI, New York. (Miller, who was previously with Amber Music, New York and London, launched RMI this past summer.) "We saw his reel and he was so right," Cooke recalls. "We felt orchestral music would have the sense of wonder we needed, and Robert Miller loves the sound of strings; he’s even married to a string player. He uses them in a wonderful way. He’s amazing at bringing the most out of a film."
Miller says the work on "Pigs" was rewarding, yet challenging. "It was a complex film," he notes. "The pigs were sort of dark and mysterious. It was a challenge to score the film and not let the message get lost. I wanted to do something that felt dreamlike, and would not rely on the normal thematic devices used in other spots; it was devoid of a melody that you could sing, or a tune that you could go away humming. The harmonies, the drum programming, and the string orchestra were the stars." (Mike Pandolfo of Native, New York, did drum programming on the spot.)
Miller cites film composers Ennio Morricone (The Good, The Bad, The Ugly), and Bernard Herrmann (Psycho) as role models. "I remember Ennio Morricone said once that filmmakers had such an obsession with themes. There are so many other things that make music memorable. Stravinsky’s ‘Rite of Spring’—who sings that? Or Bernard Herrmann’s screeching strings [from the shower scene in Psycho]; everyone remembers that. We limit ourselves by reducing music to themes and sound bites."
The score for "Pigs" was demanding work: there were many discussions with the agency; a track was recorded using two vibraphones and a large string orchestra. But the client wasn’t satisfied; Miller tried fixes, and then recorded completely new music. Cooke praises Miller as being flexible—and prolific.
"He wrote a ton of stuff," Cooke recalls. "Every other day, for a couple of weeks, he’d have something. We tried a lot of different musical approaches. We just wanted to explore. He’s prolific as hell, writing in completely different styles. There’s this repetitive thing he’s got going [in the final score], a wonderful leitmotif. We wanted something distinctive."
Miller spent about three or four weeks on the piece. "Marty Cooke was real supportive and positive about this score and others," says the composer. "He always had an eye for what he wanted but he listened to what I did. His openness helped to accomplish the final result."
The agency, the composer, and the client are all satisfied. Miller notes that the music plays a key role in bringing reality to the unreal. "The film itself is absolutely beautiful," Cooke adds. "The music helps you look at it in a way that you appreciate the fantasy."
