In that this week’s edition features our spring Music & Sound Series, we thought it appropriate to look at a campaign that has placed consistently in SHOOT’s Top 10 Spot Tracks charts over the past three-plus years–none other than United Airlines’ diverse mix of animation commercials featuring creatively inspired incarnations of George Gershwin’s fabled “Rhapsody in Blue.”
Our look back comes as the United Airlines’ account is slated to shift from Fallon, Minneapolis, to startup Barrie D’Rozario Murphy, Minneapolis. (Fallon will work on United for the next 90 days.) BDM founders Bob Barrie and Stuart D’Rozario provided much of the creative impetus for United’s “It’s time to fly” campaign during their tenure at Fallon.
Manhattan Beach, Calif.-based Trivers/Myers Music, headed by composers/arrangers/producers John Trivers and Liz Myers, has been a driving force behind this work. We sought out Myers to reflect on the genesis of the campaign and how it has evolved starting with the lauded “Interview” spot directed by Wendy Tilby and Amanda Forbis of Acme Filmworks, Hollywood, right through to the musical tour de force “The Night” helmed by Alexander Petrov via Pascal Blais Studio in Canada.
Myers earned a master’s degree in music from UNC-Chapel Hill and studied composition with Nadia Boulanger at the “Ecole d’Arts americaine” and later privately with Jacques Rouvier in Paris. Upon returning stateside, she was hired as musical director of the Broadway show Grease in New York. She has conducted members of the L.A. Philharmonic in original scores for films and other compositions, including commercials. She received a special BMI Award in 2006 for the one millionth performance of the song “Shakin'” which she co-wrote with Eddie Money. The year prior she and her husband Trivers won a Clio for their arrangement of “Rhapsody” for United Airlines.
SHOOT: How did you become involved in the campaign?
Myers: A 90-piece orchestra plus pipe organ makes an absolutely incredible sound, but one has to go backstage to carry on a phone conversation. In December 2003, my husband John Trivers actually held his conversation [with Fallon] in the hallway of the Rudolfinum Concert Hall in Prague where we were recording a piece from Holtz’s “The Planets” for a Pontiac commercial.
The discussion was about a new United Airlines campaign that Fallon was producing that would be radically different. Each spot would be a full minute and animated with very little voiceover. The music would be telling the complete story.
SHOOT: What was your approach?
Myers: We wanted to breathe fresh life into “Rhapsody” [which had been United’s anthem for many years] and not just do another version of the ubiquitous piano theme. We decided to study the musical score and various recorded performances and find the “unknown Rhapsody,” the previously untapped sections. We spent the next three months piecing together ideas. This luxury of time was possible because hand drawn animation takes months. The first concept was being animated and directed by Wendy Tilby and Amanda Forbis through Acme Filmworks.
SHOOT: The spot they directed was the lauded “Interview” in which a man flies to the Big City for an important job interview. Did you stick with your original approach musically?
Myers: Yes. We went with the “previously undiscovered” parts of “Rhapsody.” For “Interview,” we wanted to delay that tie-in [with United] as long as possible. We wanted the audience to first become empathetic with this character on the day of his interview.
SHOOT: Next came “Lightbulb” directed and drawn by Joanna Quinn of Acme. The story centers on a woman struggling to come up with an idea, which suddenly appears. She flies to make presentations of her idea to others, setting off lightbulbs for them as well.
Myers: We started with the recognizable piano motif from “Rhapsody,” but the piano part that followed traced musically the life of this little lightbulb as it evolved and the idea replicated itself. Eventually the piano melody gives way to the addition of strings and some brass.
SHOOT: “The Rose” was next, a spot painted on glass by animator Alexander Petrov. It shows a businessman mysteriously protecting a rose as he boards a plane. He ultimately gives the rose to his mom back home.
Myers: We did not want to give away the surprise ending by being overly sentimental. To help create suspense, we created a rhythmic ostinato played by one piano, which was then joined by another piano emoting the melodic portions of “Rhapsody.”
SHOOT: Next was “A Life” directed by Michael Deduk De Wit.
Myers: The track is a simple rolling piano piece that I performed to convey the compressed passage of time in a man’s life. The music then comes to a pause, as our hero wonders what to do with the rest of his life. At that moment, the music changes, and so does the pianist. We enlisted Daniel Lessner to perform the bravura sections of “A Life” and the featured piano versions of this entire campaign. He brings a fire and technical virtuosity to “Rhapsody” and is a good jazz pianist. Our approach has always been to remain true to Gershwin’s original concept of “Rhapsody” being a jazz piece first, and a symphonic work second.
SHOOT: Then in ’05 there was the Tilby and Forbis-directed “The Meeting.”
Myers: A businesswoman tries to explain her proposal over the phone to clients in a distant city. Via phone comes their response in the form of snakes’ tongues, beaks and other animal snouts. She flies to make her pitch in person, succeeds in humanizing and convincing them. Our challenge was to make animal sound effects out of “Rhapsody.”
We discovered this raucous middle section from the original Paul Whiteman jazz version that immediately reminded us of honks, bleats, and hisses.
SHOOT: Next came an ’06 Super Bowl spot, “The Dragon” (directed by Jamie Caliri of Duck). In it we see what a dad does on a business trip through the eyes of his dreaming child.
Myers: Our score was adventurous, full, large and filmic in scope, and brought to life by 60 members of the L.A. Philharmonic.
SHOOT: Petrov returned with “The Night,” which takes a jet-lagged business traveler to an Asian city where a moped driver takes him on a whirlwind tour that unfolds into a colorful night of lanterns, drums, dragons, masks and shooting stars.
Myers: The klesmer-like clarinet opening of “Rhapsody” was a wailing sound that perfectly scores the ennui of the film’s opening scenes. At the moment the moped driver appears, the music is transformed into the style of traditional Chinese music composed by John and myself. We wanted the Asian music to be even more raucous than the opening. We asked noted Chinese erhu player Karen Han to perform the solo musical sections, joining L.A. Philharmonic members.
An erhu is basically a stick with two strings on it that is held on the lap and stroked with a bow.
When played by someone with Han’s sublime skill, it sounds like the cry of the human soul.
