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.”
Michelle Satter To Be Honored At Sundance Film Festival Gala
The nonprofit Sundance Institute today announced details for the 2025 Sundance Film Festival’s gala fundraiser, Celebrating Sundance Institute, which will take place on Friday, January 24, 2025 at the Grand Hyatt Deer Valley in Utah. The event will be an evening in celebration of Michelle Satter, founding sr. director of artist programs at Sundance Institute, for her longstanding commitment to nurturing artists and cultivating independent film through the Sundance Labs, where visionary artists convene to develop groundbreaking projects through an in-depth creative process, for the past four decades. The annual Vanguard Awards will be presented during the evening to Sean Wang, writer and director of Dìdi, and Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie, co-directors of Sugarcane, who premiered their films at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival.
The annual gala enables the nonprofit to raise funds to support independent artists year-round through labs, grants, and public programming that nurture artists from all over the world. The 2025 event is made possible with the generous support of Google TV. The Festival will take place from January 23–February 2, 2025, in person in Park City and Salt Lake City, with a selection of titles available online from January 30–February 2, 2025 for audiences across the country to discover bold independent storytelling.
“For over four decades Michelle has been devoted to truly championing independent storytellers,” said Amanda Kelso, acting CEO of Sundance Institute. “She has encouraged artists to own their voice, learn their craft, become fierce leaders, and develop their resilience in our changing ecosystem. Her life-long commitment to supporting artists, especially in underrepresented... Read More