For SHOOT’s spring music and sound design edition, the top three picks signify how important the soundtrack is to a spot’s success. The number one track, Nike’s "Move," has no dialogue, and is driven by its score. "Weary Traveler," which landed in the number two spot, is mostly dialogue free, with a twangy guitar track moving the action along. And Volkswagen’s "DNA" seamlessly blends voiceover with a mellow tune. Below is a look at how the top three scores were created.
Number One
Nike’s "Move" is moving—both visually and aurally. The :90 opens on a teenage boy jogging down a suburban street. As a stirring piano-and-violin-based score plays in the background, images of athletes—professional and amateur—in action sweep by in fluid transition. Professional skiers, skaters, runners, and tennis players blend seamlessly with skateboarders, Frisbee players, and an older man working out on a pommel horse. The spot ends as it began, with the teenager jogging down the street. The scenes segue from one to another, cutting on similar movements or actions: running to running, jumping to jumping, and so on. The music, an uplifting, attention-getting score, is the greatest linking device of all.
The creation of "Move" was as complicated as the imagery is graceful. Done via Wieden+Kennedy (W+K), Portland, Ore., the spot was directed by Jake Scott of bicoastal RSA USA, and scored by bicoastal Elias Arts. Jeff Elmassian of Endless Noise, Los Angeles, did the sound design. Initially, the creative team at W+K had a multitude of ideas for the music, ranging from the simple to the complex. While still in the storyboard stage on "Move," Hal Curtis, creative director at W+K and the art director on the spot, and senior producer Vic Palumbo met with frequent Nike collaborator Elmassian, and batted around ideas for music and sound design, based on storyboards and ideas of material yet to be shot.
"We were coming at it from the standpoint of trying to make the transitions work," recalls Elmassian, who says that the first idea was for a pulsating drum track. Another idea, eventually discarded, was to prescore the spot and then shoot images to match the music. In any event, for a month and a half, as Scott shot, Elmassian composed and also recorded original sounds for the sound design.
"We were really trying to explore our options from a musical and sound standpoint as to how it would work," explains Palumbo. "In talking with Jeff, we had a lot of different ideas about the music and we were not sure about the style or genre. We had Jeff sketch out different musical ideas for us while he was working on the sound design."
After the spot was edited, however, the agency creatives turned to Elias Arts for a new take on the music. "Jeff was doing double duty [handling both sound and music] and it became a tall order," explains Palumbo. "We felt he should concentrate entirely on the sound design."
Elias Arts had a long track record with W+K in general, and with Curtis in particular (also on Nike spots). On the phone, Curtis explained the dilemma: They had tried a variety of musical styles, sometimes changing them as the scenes changed, but they couldn’t find the right music. Then, according to Palumbo, Curtis gave composer Jonathan Elias the key request: "Make it timeless."
"I remember seeing it for the first time, and I think it had a rock track," recalls Elias. "Originally, I think they were interested in something that was drum- and techno- driven. I didn’t feel that was the direction I wanted to pursue. The agency was very open to the idea of bringing it to another level."
Elias had different composers write five different tracks and then presented them to the W+K team. He himself worked one afternoon and late into the night composing one of the tracks in collaboration with Elias composer Ryan Rehm. "The visual has a ballet quality to it," explains Elias. "I always correlate sports to ballet, so to me the concept of transformations meant a melodic, ballet-style approach." When the classical-sounding piece was played for the creatives, everyone who heard it was moved, and agreed that it had a natural rhythm and flow that enhanced the imagery. And, says Palumbo, "It was timeless."
The spot, which broke during the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, was a challenging, but satisfying, experience for everyone involved. Elias says W+K allowed him the creative freedom to experiment, while Elmassian reports he is very satisfied with the end result. "This was a different animal than a lot of spots," he notes. "It was about choreography, about lyricism, and about trying to make incredibly beautiful footage into a lyrical whole so that everything works seamlessly together. There was no dialogue and you had to find a way to express things from an audio standpoint. It needed a very organic sound design and very lyrical music."
Number Two
A tractor-trailer pulls to the side of a bright desert road. A young man, whose car has apparently broken down, climbs into the cab. For a while he and the driver, a beefy guy with a devilish grin, cruise down the highway in silence. Then the driver suddenly places a ventriloquist’s dummy in the center of the seat, and the dummy stares fixedly at the newcomer. An unspoken tension permeates the air, accentuated by a twangy guitar playing on the soundtrack. The silence lingers as the hitchhiker shifts uncomfortably in his seat, the dummy staring up at him. Unexpectedly, the dummy opens his mouth and screams. Unnerved, the hitchhiker jumps out of the moving cab. Cut to: a scene in a bar, where the hitchhiker is telling the story of his adventure, over a Miller Lite.
The sequence is from "Weary Traveler," a Twilight Zone-like spot for Miller Lite that was directed by Erich Joiner of bicoastal Tool of North America. It is one of a package of six commercials—comprising "Weary Traveler," "Wallet," "Pool," "Big Bills," "Lottery" and "Copy Kitten"—out of Ogilvy & Mather (O&M), New York, and scored by Craig Snyder, composer/producer of Snyder Music, New York. Sound design for the package was done by Jun Mizumachi, through HSR Studios, New York. (Mizumachi is now with Tonic, New York.)
Snyder, whose eerie music adds immeasurably to the creepy atmosphere of "Weary Traveler," was selected by O&M senior producer Joe DeFranco for his skill with the guitar, and his ability to work quickly. (Snyder had about 10 days to write the music for the campaign.) The composer has scored a number of spots for O&M since the early 1990s, including the American Express campaigns featuring Jerry Seinfeld.
"Craig is one of my reliable staples," reports DeFranco. "He always comes through for me." DeFranco also wanted "that twangy country feel on the soundtrack, and Craig is a great guitar man."
Snyder envisioned the spot as a mini-movie: edgy, funny and a little scary, so he saw the scoring as more cinema-like than commercial. "When I saw it, I knew that the music had to really set a mood—it was about creating atmosphere, not selling a product," he explains. "It was a creepy Texas guitar meets Fellini. I wanted a wooden, hollow sound for the dummy, so I used a bass marimba and added a low, ‘spaghetti western’ guitar. That plays throughout the scene in the truck. The music is in four parts: a harmonica at the beginning, the guitar in the truck, a backwards string and trumpet when he jumps out, and then Texas rock-and-roll in the background at the bar. It was very eclectic."
"Weary Traveler" took a day and a half to score, employing five musicians as well as electronic sampling. Throughout it all, the agency was very supportive, offering input as needed. Snyder says the creatives occasionally asked him to tone down the creepiness. "They didn’t want it too scary," he notes, adding that DeFranco and the agency creatives were all clear about what they wanted. "They knew when it worked. We all agreed that the music had to enhance the mood. It was all very collaborative."
"The music really enhanced the spot," relates DeFranco. "When we finished shooting, there was no doubt in my mind that we would use Craig for ‘Weary Traveler,’ partly because of the guitar, which I know is his passion. But we had so little time that I was thinking of splitting up the package between two music houses. He assured me he could do it all. And he did."
Number Three
"DNA," a spot for Volkswagen, out of Arnold Worldwide, Boston, uses computer line animation and a pulsing electronica score to portray the evolution of various Volkswagen models from the ’60s to the present. The spot was directed by the PSYOP Creative Collective of PSYOP, New York, with a soundtrack by Peter DuCharme, a partner/composer at Music for Picture, New York, and Chris Dyas, a freelance composer.
The ad opens with a single black line on a plain white background. That line transforms itself into a designer’s sketch for a ’65 Volkswagen Beetle. While a line drawing of a technician inspects the car, a voiceover asks: "What kind of people finish something, but are never quite done with it?" The images then keep morphing from one style of car—the Karmen Gia, the VW Bus, a Passat—and end with an image of the ’02 Beetle.
The agency creatives, who were given the brief to write a "big picture" kind of spot covering the history of Volkswagen, initially thought of using prerecorded pop music to score the piece. "We had four stacks of CDs of various bands piled up, with suggested selections from everyone on post-it notes," recalls Tim Brunelle, VP/associate creative director at Arnold Worldwide. But licensing music ultimately proved too time-consuming and, says Brunelle, it also meant they had less control over the direction the score would take. So they turned to original composers.
Once that was decided, Music for Picture became an obvious candidate. Brunelle had a previous relationship with DuCharme—they had actually played together in a rock band years before—and the agency had worked with both DuCharme and Music for Picture partner/producer Ben Davis on previous projects (mostly recently a spot for Royal Caribbean), including work for Volkswagen. "They were heads above everyone else," observes Brunelle.
Before anything was animated, and based on discussions and sketches, freelance composer Dyas—who works with the avante-garde performance troupe Blue Man Group—wrote a piece of music for the spot that was, says Davis, "kind of a sketch or outline that we ended up working with and layering on top of after we finally saw the picture."
"[The agency] didn’t give us a whole lot of specifics, musically," relates DuCharme. "They said, ‘It would be great if it sounds like the beginning of a song.’ They gave us the freedom to create. That’s why it’s fun to work with them. It’s like working for a record label. They just wanted a good tune."
Because the animation was time consuming, the music house had a number of weeks to create the music. The piece employed electronically created sounds and traditional instruments, including an electric guitar—playing a "Duane Eddy-type thing," says DuCharme—as well as a cello, and a drum machine. "It was—I don’t like the word—a quirky sound," he continues.
"When we first heard [the track], it was eighty percent there," recalls Brunelle. "The melody was there, the beat was there, the tempo was there. Any tweakings we did were more about sound effects than music."
Both before and during the scoring process, the agency creatives were very supportive. "One of the things we were very excited about was that we had a cellist play to camera movements," DuCharme notes. "[The agency] saw it and asked us to try more cello. They then felt the revisions were not needed."
"We realized collectively when we crossed the line and when we were over-thinking it," explains Davis.
In the end, the agency was very pleased. "We find that the best spots are the ones which have musical integrity," says Brunelle. "This did. It was magic. They nailed it."
