The Summer Olympics are right around the corner and there’s no time to waste getting motivated for the 2012 Games in London. Continuing its “Keep Team GB (Great Britain) Pumped” campaign, Cadbury Dairy Milk this time goes underwater to inspire U.K. freestyle swimmer Rebecca Adlington, a double Gold Medal winner at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.
A janitor mops up around a swimming pool, listening to the radio. We then see Adlington ready to jump in the drink as part of her rigorous training. The radio DJ informs us that over the past month, hundreds of callers have been singing “Simply The Best,” the tune made famous by Tina Turner, as a means to pump up Adlington as she trains for the Gold.
Once Adlington dives into the pool, we too are underwater where we hear those voices and see Brits from different walks of life launch fully into song. They’re all at the bottom of Adlington’s training pool, looking up to see her churning across the pool at a brisk pace. The fans’ underwater aquatics–which include playing the saxophone, and a vocalizing Buckingham Palace guard–are enough to make Esther Williams envious.
Taika Waititi of Hungry Man, London, directed for agency Hypernaked, London. Mark Silk was the DP. Gareth McEwen of The Whitehouse edited “Simply The Best,” which runs approximately four minutes.
Hypernaked artisans included creative director Oliver Green, and producers Linda Paalane and Matt Keen. Smoke & Mirrors was the post/VFX house.
Camilla Cullen produced for Hungry Man. Chris Lightburn Jones served as production designer.
Craig Henighan Sounds Off On “Deadpool & Wolverine”
Hollywood lore has it that character actor Edmund Gwenn--while on his deathbed--quipped, “Dying is easy, comedy is hard.”
The second part of that darkly witty utterance remains all too true today as Craig Henighan--a Best Achievement in Sound Mixing Oscar nominee in 2019 for Roma--can attest in that he had to grapple with the sonic of being comic for this year’s box office hit, Deadpool & Wolverine (20th Century Studios/Marvel Studios).
The degree of inherent difficulty was ramped up even further because Deadpool & Wolverine had to seamlessly bring together high action-adventure exploits with moments and dialogue that tickled the funny bone. There’s a mesh of humorous banter--a staple of the franchise--along with major spectacle replete with explosions, fights, an impactful score and off-the-wall musical numbers.
Henighan explained that among the prime challenges for him from a sound perspective was having to make sure every joke landed within the construct of a superhero film. The tendency for a tentpole movie of this variety, he noted, is to gravitate towards big, loud audio spanning music, dialogue and sound effects. But the unique comedic element of Deadpool & Wolverine necessitated that re-recording mixer and supervising sound editor Henighan strike a delicate balance. “You need to get out of the way for the comedy,” he related. The jokes in a superhero film become “a real dance” as Henighan had to establish a rhythm that did justice to both the comedy and the action as the narrative moves back and forth between them--and sometimes the funny and the high energy, high decibel superhero dynamic unfold simultaneously in a scene or sequence. The “sonic fabric” has to... Read More