By A SHOOT Staff Report

Build it and they will come. In fact, they are already there. That’s the scenario which has children in an urban neighborhood desperately in need of a place to play. And coming to the rescue is Barcelona soccer star Lionel Messi who’s cast as a real estate developer. He surprises the local kids with a soccer field as the community is transformed before our eyes, a change envisioned, mapped out and facilitated by Samsung’s Note 3 and Galaxy Gear used by Messi.

That’s the magic of The Developer, a two-minute film for Samsung that was created by Leo Burnett Chicago and directed by Adam Hashemi who was with Furlined at the time of this project but is now repped by RESET. Messi’s positive action is in line with his real world persona. He runs the Leo Messi Foundation, a charity benefitting at-risk children around the world. He also serves as a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF.

The Developer plays like a musical–a modern-day Les Misérables featuring an inspiring version of Lorde’s hit song “Royals” sung by a group of kids.

“We were going through an abundance of songs, and one of the creatives showed up with this one,” Hashemi said of “Royals,” noting, “At the time, it wasn’t a big, global hit yet. It had about two million YouTube views, and we all thought that it was merely a matter of time before it would blow up.”

The children featured in The Developer were cast in England and Spain, and they were singers as well as actors. Their voices were actually recorded on location as the film was being shot. “I wanted the song to feel real, so I stole this shooting idea from Les Misérables,” Hashemi said. “It allows for imperfections and authenticity.”

Hashemi added that legendary music producer George Drakoulias came in to build up the song with the kids’ voices and meld them with Lorde’s original track. “The fusion worked wonders for the spot,” assessed Hashemi.

McDonough
Gabe McDonough, VP, music director, Leo Burnett Chicago, said that the biggest challenge for him on The Developer was finding the right song. “We had the visual and narrative concept before we had the song, so finding the perfect tune was key,” related McDonough. “Following that, we were tasked with how to make the kids’ voices fit in with the original master in a way that felt natural but also musical. George Drakoulias was instrumental in shaping the feel of the young voices and worked closely with [sound designer] Gus Koven from stimmung on the final mix.”

Audio post mixer was Loren Silber of Lime Studios.

As for why McDonough gravitated to Drakoulias and Koven, the Burnett music director noted that the agency creative team “knew the vibe of the song that they wanted but were initially trying to find something that was an old standard. Intuitively, that seemed right given the musical feel of the spot. We went through a slew of options, none of which were feeling exactly right when we realized that “Royals,” which was starting to gain heat at that time was a perfect fit–Samsung agreed. Our director Adam Hashemi was a long-time fan of George’s work and recommended him–his technique completed the puzzle for us. Our production team also had a strong connection to Gus Koven, so we were off with a great team of talented folks covering every inch of the audio on this.”

Koven said he found himself “trading sessions” with Drakoulias. First Koven did some “dialogue cleanup” on the track, an initial step to making the film play like a musical. Next, Drakoulias took over. “He took it to the next level,” said Koven of Drakoulias. “He made these kids’ voices sound as if they were in a studio. He made the voices sound more polished. It was magic. Then he handed it back to me and from there I got everything ready for the mix.”

The Burnett creative team, Koven, Drakoulias and Silber all collaborated on the final mix. “We were all trying to figure out how much we want to put these kids in their natural acoustic space and how much we wanted things to play like a musical,” recalled Koven. “We married both approaches and found the proper balance. It was a great collaborative process.”

From a sound design standpoint, Koven noted that the neighborhood depicted was ““gray and kind of a dirty, grimy world. When steamrollers come to knock down buildings, paving the way for the soccer field, Adam [Hashemi] wanted that to sound huge, like the city was rolling along with the steamrollers. There were distant perspectives on the buildings being leveled. We see an empty street, with sound bouncing around the city.”

See the Top Ten Music Chart here.

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