In what appears to be a strange alternate universe, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners (GS&P), San Francisco, presents polka dancers twirling to rap beats, break dancers spinning to country music, and metal heads thrashing to doo-wop. These unlikely combinations promote another improbable pairing—Apple iPods and Hewlett-Packard (HP) personal computers.
The :60 "Mash Up" begins with a familiar black-and-white iPod display menu. Scrolling through its screens, we see the words: "you > let > musical > worlds > collide."
When the live action begins, we see country line dancers slide in unison to the Black Eyed Peas’ "The Boogie That Be." Then we’re treated to a scene where punks rage at a concert in a grungy, industrial space, but oddly, the music they’re dancing to is The Bobbettes’ 1957 hit "Mr. Lee."
Next we see an elderly woman sitting at the 73rd Annual Polka Festival. This matron seems more likely to be a fan of "Mr. Lee" than the song that is making her groove. She’s tapping her feet to DJ Assault’s lyrics: "I love when you shake it, work it, shake it."
Director Paul Hunter of bicoastal HSI Productions continues to dismantle our expectations with other unexpected images such as hip-hop youths bouncing to polka music and break dancers showing off their moves to a Charlie Daniels Band’s fiddle solo.
"You have all of your favorite music living happily together in one place," a voiceover explains in the end. "Introducing the Apple iPod from HP. Your PC will never be the same again."
According to copywriter John Knecht, iPods are compatible with PCs, but many PC users don’t realize this. The partnership between Apple and HP is meant to clarify to PC users that they can use iPods and iTunes; the latter comes installed on HP computers now, associate creative director/art director Sean Farrell said. "Mash Up" sends the message that iPods are for everyone, regardless of computer orientation.
SHAKIN’ IT UP
To promote the relationship between Apple and HP, GS&P creatives focused on the beauty of the iPod—it can hold all of your music in one small place—and went a step further to propose that they can all get along in there. Noting that he has everything on his iPod from Tom Waits and Frank Sinatra to Black Flag, Farrell said, "We were thinking that if you broke down stereotypes and actually had a world where people were listening to all of their favorite songs—no matter what they were, and [were] not worried about how it applied to their image—it’s kind of like opening up a whole new world of music." (Todd Grant also served as associate creative director/art director. He has since moved to Publicis West, Seattle, as senior VP/creative director.)
The glaring discrepancy between the dancers and the music that moves them adds a bit of humor to "Mash Up." "The whole idea was if it felt really wrong but still worked, then that was successful," Farrell related.
The task of finding the "right" music for each scene was a difficult part of this production, Hunter and Farrell agreed. Many disparate music selections could go over the actions, but often they lacked humor or the ability to grab a viewer and make the point that the dancers were moving in synch to music that didn’t fit, Knecht pointed out. Ultimately the music had to be "the best contradiction and still entertaining."
Although the songs weren’t selected until post, the opposing music and dance genres had been determined, Hunter said. Once in post, Farrell commented that music supervisor Beth Urdang of Agoraphone, New York, helped the group find the right tunes on a tight deadline, "working all day and all night sending us stuff." Dawn Sutter Madell was the music coordinator out of Agoraphone. The sound designers were Gus Koven and Michael Anastasi of stimmüng, Santa Monica. Gary Knight edited the spot out of Final Cut New York.
ESTABLISHING AUTHENTICITY
To achieve a documentary quality, it was important to primarily cast real people, Hunter said. The polka dancers belong to a polka club and the country line dancers frequent the bar where they danced in the spot, he shared. On set, the dancers moved to their usual music, which was pulled out in post and replaced with the unexpected tracks.
The team not only had to be mindful of the general rhythms of the music during production in order for it to synch up well in post, but they also had to keep the dancers moving harmoniously. Coordinating the moves of the large cast required choreographer Michael Rooney to organize the masses and keep everyone moving at the same pace. "[We had to] keep them all dancing to the same beat, so that when we were deciding to cut from different sections of film, they’re dancing to the same rhythm," Knecht explained.
On location in New York and Passaic, Jersey City and Watchung, N.J., Hunter shot two scenarios per day for four days (three didn’t make the cut). Farrell confessed that the magnitude of the project was frightening until he walked on the set each day and saw that Hunter had everyone organized and ready, allowing ample time to film.
Farrell linked the director’s music video experience with his ability to keep the dancers motivated. "He threw these parties, that’s what it felt like," he said. "Each vignette, each shoot we did each day felt like a different party. It was really wild."
