Chances are if you had your TV tuned to Ally McBeal, Everybody Loves Raymond, or even the Weather Channel on Nov. 1, you were one of an estimated one billion people around the world who saw "Goodbye/ Hello," the Ford Motor Company’s two-minute branding effort for the millennium. The spot features footage shot in nine countries over a period of 91 days, and showcases the 13-year-old Welsh opera prodigy Charlotte Church singing "Just Wave Hello," which was written and composed by Danny Beckerman, who has since joined Farmington Hills, Mich.-based Yessian Music.
The ad, directed by Edouard Nammour of bicoastal Atherton for J. Walter Thompson, Detroit, shows several scenarios of people from around the world finding and leaving friends and loved ones, all set against the backdrop of several Ford cars, as well as Ford brands, such as Mazda and Jaguar. For example, in one scene, a woman returning from a trip drops her suitcases and excitedly rushes into the arms of her waiting husband.
Beckerman and JWT initially went to Yessian Music to mix and record demos of the soundtrack. The agency decided on Church for the vocals, and "Just Wave Hello" will appear on her forthcoming self-titled CD.
The assignment turned into much more for the music house. Company president Dan Yessian and Beckerman established a rapport. This led to the shop signing Beckerman, who is in the process of relocating from Australia to Detroit. "We’ve been invited to write more material for Charlotte Church," says Yessian, "so that’s going to be fun to do."
Yessian Music consists of five composers—Beckerman, Yessian, Kurt Schreitmueller, Brian Brill and Chris Plansker—who operate four specialized studios. Also part of the company roster is sound designer Jeff Buikema. Recent projects from the music house include Chevrolet’s "Start Dammit Start," directed by Tom Schiller of New York-based Five Union Square Productions via Campbell-Ewald Advertising, Warren, Mich. The spot shows clips from different horror movies where people try to drive away from unseen predators, only to have their cars fail them. A supered line in the ad, "If only everything were as reliable as a Chevrolet," implies that if the would-be-escapees drove a Chevy, they would not have been potential victims to the various horrors. The spot called for original music and "something different," according to Yessian. "Jeff Buikema created exaggerated effects to underscore the music by Kurt Schreitmueller and Chris Plansker. Those were fun spots."
Yessian’s sound design production has increased almost 40 percent this year, and he’s not surprised. "Sound effects are literal. Sound design pushes the envelope from literal to sensational, creating something entirely new, and we’re getting more and more calls for it," he says.
Wedding Singer
"My band was doing a wedding reception in 1971," recalls Yessian, who had been a full-time English teacher and part-time jazz reed player. "Some guy asked if we did jingles. Having never done one, I said of course we did. He had $1,200 to make a jingle for National Bank and Trust in Traverse City, Mich. I hired singers and musicians, went into a studio and came out with an $800 profit. I thought, ‘There’s gotta be a lot more where that came from,’ and got very excited."
Each of Yessian Music’s four studios features a different array of technologies. The "Mozart" room caters to both live and MIDI music production with a 40-input Amek/Neve mixing console, a live recording room and an array of digital processors and samplers. "MIDI City" is a fully-equipped composing studio for film and video post scoring, offering a combination of Akai, Roland and Korg samplers and synthesizers. "Radiology," geared for voiceover work, uses the eight-track Digidesign ProTools system. And in "Earshot," ProTools 24 and Akai sampler/ sequencers produce otherworldly sound design pieces for commercials and industrials.
"There’s a definitive warmth and depth and richness to instrumentation that, thank goodness, is coming back to the forefront," Yessian says. "There is a place [for synthesizers], but … you might find that there’s a cello bowing over it these days because it brings a whole new color, one that’s fresh, and people are rediscovering that live instruments can bring life to music."
People are also discovering that Motor City composers such as Yessian and his staff are not just "car guys." "How can you convince [producers in other cities] that car music is music and not necessarily car?" Yessian asks. "What we’ve done is produce hypothetical spots where we create music against pictures that have no relevance to cars. We send it out and say, in effect, that since you’ve pegged us as a music company that does only cars, we’ve put some different pictures there [to] see how you think the music works now. By doing so, we’ve been able to get opportunities from agencies like Campbell Mithun-Esty in Minneapolis [for Domino’s Pizza], Bates New York [Wendy’s] and D’Arcy in St. Louis [Whiskas].
"Music, like any craft, is dependent on so many things, from conception to execution," Yessian continues. "At the end, when you look back, you’re never happy. You say, ‘I could have done this better.’ That’s what makes it elusive. That’s where the chase comes in and that’s what makes it interesting. The chase is never over."
