The creative process works in mysterious ways, and inspiration is born in unexpected places. A case in point is this week’s "Top Spot," in which a song borrowed from the 1959 musical comedy Gypsy, about a famous burlesque stripper, provided the conceit for a branding ad for the Discovery Channel.
Part of a three-spot campaign directed by Peter Darley Miller of bicoastal/international @radical.media, "Singing Scientists" features people of various professions singings lines from "Let Me Entertain You." Their performances are notably subdued, lending an intellectual air to the ad.
"A lot of people think Discovery is like too many vegetables," noted creative director Jerry Cronin of Atlanta agency Bayless Cronin, which created the ad. "This feels like Discovery, but a little more fun. It makes you smile, so it tweaks the perception a bit."
The other two spots are "Hospital" and "Shark Week." The latter promotes the cable network’s annual shark-programming extravaganza by depicting people who are afraid to go in the water. Meanwhile, in "Hospital," a patient in intensive care gets overly excited by watching the Discovery Channel.
"Singing Scientists" opens on a middle-aged man sitting at a desk in front of a chalkboard, which is covered with mathematic equations. "Let me entertain you," begins the mathematician.
Cut to a shot of two women archeologists standing neck-high in a trench. "Let me…"
Cut again to a man standing in front of a giant steel gear in a factory. "…make you smile," he croons.
And so on: Inside an observatory, an astronomer standing next to a giant telescope sings, "Let me do a few tricks."
The song continues, with lyrics delivered by a welder, a motorcycle mechanic, a deep sea research diver, a mortician standing behind a corpse, a marine biologist, a bee keeper, a group of surgeons, some scientists in a lab, a pair of cops on a stakeout, and a train engineer, among others. The spot ends with the engineer doing a little jig alongside the train, and then the screen fades to black. The tag—"Entertain your brain"—is followed by the Discovery Channel logo. The spot is slated to air nationally in early June.
Credit goes to agency copywriter Devon Suter for first suggesting the song from Gypsy. (The original song, "Let Me Entertain You," was composed by Jule Stein with lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. The agency licensed the track from The Albert Co., New York.) "Devon’s a big show tune guy," Cronin quipped. "He knew the Sondheim song, so we thought if we could have people sing as portraits—not kicking their legs, no Rockettes movement—that would be entertainment."
Composer Ray Loewy of Tonefarmer, New York, was brought into the creative process early on because the action in the spots needed to be shot around the score and tempo—similar to a music video. After production, Loewy was able to revisit the material, add some strings and "sweeten it a little bit. It’s not the first time a song and dance has been done," Loewy noted. "What made it special and different was that usually there’s a natural tendency to make it fast, because advertising moves fast. But the creatives were real set on this relaxed feel, which to me makes it an unusual commercial. This is much slower than it would usually be performed. Originally, it was a slinky cabaret vamp. [Our version] allowed you to concentrate on the amazing people and settings, and created this otherworldly feel. It’s almost the opposite of that razzle dazzle."
The entire campaign was shot and posted over three weeks on location in Sydney. About three days were devoted to "Singing Scientists" and the 35 set ups they used, which meant a fast paced production; numerous set ups in different locations were shot each day, according to agency art director Dotsy Evans.
The creatives turned to Miller in part because of his background in still photography, which would lend itself to the portrait-quality they were looking for in the spot. The DP was Mandy Walker (Lantana), who captured the portraits with muted tones and colors, so that the photography almost looks black and white.
It was decided that real people, rather than actors, should be used in the ad. "I felt—and Jerry felt—that we wouldn’t get that sincerity [if we used actors]," Miller noted. "We felt it was critical that the people would have to emote some realism. The idea was not to make it a perfect lip sync—they should just do what they do."
Along those lines, it was also important that, if there was to be a dead body in the mortician sequence, it would have to be a real body, so Suter volunteered to lie still on the gurney, an I.D. tag hung from his big toe. "I’ve always wanted to be dead and famous, so this combined my two passions," Suter joked.
Postproduction was done in Sydney, with Alexander de Franceschi of Guillotine serving as editor. "Alex was phenomenal," Miller said. "He just got it. His first cut was almost the exact cut we ended up with. So many times it’s a battle, but he definitely brought something to the party. You know when you’re going out to eat and everyone likes the same restaurant? It was like that."
"I’m just really pleased with how it turned out, which is close to my original idea," Suter said. "When you get to that scale, usually something has to change, but this came to life pretty accurately."
