Upon being drafted to serve in the U.S. Army, Irving Berlin wrote a song in 1918 which gave a comic perspective on military life. “Oh! How I Hate To Get Up In The Morning” became a hit, eventually making its way into three Broadway shows as well as the film This Is The Army.
As the song’s title suggests, Berlin was hardly a fan of reveille. A portion of his lyrics went:
“For the hardest blow of all, is to hear the bugler call.
You’ve got to get up, you’ve got to get up, you’ve got to get up in the morning! (repeated in reveille rhythm)
Some day I’m going to murder the bugler,
Some day they’re going to find him dead;
I’ll amputate his reveille, and step upon it heavily,
And spend the rest of my life in bed.”
Fast forward to today and the daunting creative challenge was to somehow make reveille likable, daresay even a positive motivating force, in a commercial for the American Express OPEN line of business credit cards.
More than up to the challenge from Crispin Porter+Bogusky, Boulder. Colo., was the contingent at Beacon Street Studios, Venice, Calif., including composers Andrew Feltenstein and John Nau, music producer Adrea Lavezzoli, audio mixer Paul Hurtubise and mix producer Faye Armstrong, and an ensemble of talent from Santa Monica-based Machine Head headed by accomplished sound designer Stephen Dewey.
Directed and shot by Max Malkin out of production house Prettybird, Santa Monica, “Reveille” opens on a skyscraper as the sun is just starting to peek out. We then are taken briefly to a farm followed by a succession of small businesses opening up for the day, with all the action unfolding to the unmistakable beat of reveille. But the tune’s military feel gives way to a jazz interpretation as we see a diner hopping with customers and breakfast being served. To this score, we see businesses trying to score whether they be housed in office settings, at workstations, in a custom motorcycle shop, a factory, on the farm, or at a pottery wheel.
A voiceover relates, “Reviving the economy means reinventing the way we do business. Here’s to the owners showing us the way.”
Indeed instead of reviling reveille, we find ourselves inspired by it as an anthem to the entrepreneurial mindset and spirit.
“That was the challenge–taking a song associated with annoying you, waking you up rudely, and making it instead something very positive and motivating,” said Nau. “It’s meant to be a positive wake-up call that gives you chills, that signals us taking an active role in an economic recovery. To break out of the military feel, we found that the song lends itself to a jazzy, New Orleansy flavor. And by pushing it in that direction and improvising, it evolved into a more flavorful, fun version. We reharmonized the song, put new chords underneath it, changed its flavor. We had some piano and bass come in at the end, giving the music more shadings.”
Feltenstein added, “We must have done 20 versions–from real languid ones to more orchestral. We slowly, though, kept coming back to a jazzy version which was one of the first we did. It made the piece more relatable, accessible and human.”
The jazzier rendition also served as a pre-score, before footage for the commercial was shot.
“Our score was something to shoot and edit to so you could, for instance, have the woman at the pottery wheel slapping the clay to the music, the guys on the farm stacking hay to the rhythm,” continued Feltenstein. “We had all these businesses moving to the rhythm in a natural way. Crispin Porter + Bogusky and Prettybird did a great job envisioning this and helping us contribute to this vision.”
Feltenstein also noted that Dewey contributed some fine sound design touches, citing a scene centering on a bottling machine in a factory with liquids filling the bottles.
“You feel after the diner scene that technology starts advancing and when we get to the bottle maker, things are taking off with the whirring of machines in the factory. Both the sounds of the machines and the reveille are ascending together, complementing each other,” noted Feltenstein. “It’s a great accompaniment of sound design and music which are in turn accompanying and advancing the visuals and the very feel of the spot.”
Balancing all these audio elements was Beacon Street post mixer Hurtubise, with the composers, sound designer, advertising agency, production house and editing artisans (editor was Damion Clayton of Rock Paper Scissors, Los Angeles) all contributing.
“Andrew Keller [Crispin Porter+Bogusky co-executive creative director] and the Crispin folks were camped in one of our rooms,” recalled Feltenstein. “John and I were able to come in and lend a hand on a musical level.
“This is in contrast to some jobs where we end up turning our track over to an outside audio mixer,” continued Feltenstein. “To have the mixing on this project in-house [at Beacon Street] enabled us to give even more to the final spot.”
L.A. Location Lensing Declines In 2024 Despite Uptick In 4th Quarter
FilmLA, partner film office for the City and County of Los Angeles and other local jurisdictions, has issued an update regarding regional filming activity. Overall production in Greater Los Angeles increased 6.2 percent from October through December 2024 to 5,860 Shoot Days (SD) according to FilmLA’s latest report. Most production types tracked by FilmLA achieved gains in the fourth quarter, except for reality TV, which instead logged its ninth consecutive quarter of year-over-year decline.
The lift across all remaining categories came too late to rescue 2024 from the combined effects of runaway production, industry contraction and slower-than-hoped-for post- strike recovery. With just 23,480 SD filmed on-location in L.A. in 2024, overall annual production finished the year 5.6 percent below the prior year. That made 2024 the second least productive year observed by FilmLA; only 2020, disrupted by the global COVID-19 pandemic, saw lower levels of filming in area communities.
The continuing decline of reality TV production in Los Angeles was among the most disappointing developments of 2024. Down 45.7 percent for the fourth quarter (to 774 SD), the category also finished the year down 45.9 percent (to 3,905 SD), which placed
it 43.1 percent below its five-year category average.
The two brightest spots in FilmLA’s latest report appeared in the feature film and television drama categories. Feature film production increased 82.4 percent in the fourth quarter to 589 SD, a gain analysts attribute to independent film activity. The
California Film & Television Tax Credit Program also played a part, driving 19.2 percent of quarterly category activity. Overall, annual Feature production was up 18.8 percent in 2024, though the... Read More