The :30 is called "Within," and although it features striking visuals of athletes strutting their stuff, its most telling aspect is the haunting piano-dominated melody that underscores the images. The soundtrack is the distinctive work of avant-garde composer Philip Glass.
The commercial, directed by Ivan Bird of Serious Pictures, London, broke during the recently concluded Summer Olympic Games. The global spot, done via Foote, Cone & Belding (FCB), New York, promotes Samsung’s E316 flip phone in the U.S., Canada, Mexico and Latin America, and the E800 slide phone for Europe and Asia. The spot features images of Olympic-style athletes going through their moves, with images of the Samsung cell phones seemingly mimicking the athletes’ actions. Accompanying the visuals is the score by Glass.
Glass is primarily known for work outside the commercial arena, and made his spot debut earlier this year with two Altoids spots, "Traveling Curiosities" and "Metal Box," out of Leo Burnett USA, Chicago, and helmed by Scott Hicks via Independent Media, Santa Monica. Glass scored the spots through music house Groove Addicts, Los Angeles. The shop, under the aegis of owner/ creative director Dain Blair, represents the composer for select spot assignments. "Within" was done through Glass’ publishing company, Dunvagen Music Publishing, New York.
Glass’ talents span many mediums. He has composed music for Mabou Mines, an avant-garde theater company in New York; collaborated on the opera Einstein on the Beach, a four-and-a-half-hour epic considered a landmark in 20th Century music and theater; worked with choreographer Twyla Tharp; composed music for concert halls; and written music for many films, including The Hours and Kundun (he received Oscar nominations for both), The Truman Show and The Secret Garden. He also scored two documentaries directed by Errol Morris: The Thin Blue Line and The Fog of War; the latter went on to win an Oscar for best documentary.
It was Glass’ manager who approached Gregory Grene, a music producer at FCB, about the possibility of Glass scoring spots for the agency. That was about three years ago when, Grene recalls, he had nothing underway that he felt suited the composer’s unique style.
Flash-forward to 2004: Grene and creative director/art director Jim Mochnsky are discussing the Samsung Olympics spot, which is only in the storyboard stage. "When this spot came up, it seemed like a phenomenally perfect match [for Glass]," says Grene. "Jim mentioned that he was looking for something really sparse, and we talked about multiple ways of approaching it. The imagery was so specific and so honed it felt like something big and beautiful and subtle. It would benefit from something that would play against it in the spot, and the idea of Philip Glass came to mind to the two of us."
Glass agreed to take the job and talked with FCB creatives at two different meetings to get a feel for what they wanted. The agency team on the job consisted of chief creative officer Chris Becker, producer Stuart Raffle, creative director/copywriter Luke Bailey, Mochnsky and Grene. "Working with [Philip Glass] turned out to be just as exciting as we had hoped," states Grene. "He’s wonderfully understated. He does not come off as forbidding or overbearing; he’s very good at listening to what people are thinking of musically. We weren’t telling the chef how much salt and pepper to put in the pot, we were just saying we’d like him to bring out this aspect or that aspect of the picture. For someone who’s so accomplished, it’s a trick to [listen to] someone else, but he does. At the same time, what he brings to the table is very strong. He brings his own sensibility."
The Process
Grene and his colleagues did not talk in musical terms or play a temp track—"When you’re working at this level, you don’t want to get into the ‘tinkle it on the piano’ thing," explains Grene—but instead discussed the concept, the emotions they hoped to invoke, and the aspects of the images they wanted to bring out. "That’s where Philip Glass’ real talent comes out," Grene observes.
Over the course of a week, Glass brought in three scores. "He went in completely different directions on all of them," says Grene. "They were really, really extraordinary. He gave us three completely different, completely realized tracks."
The agency picked two and presented them to the client, who selected the final score. The recording session went smoothly. There were changes at the studio—called for not by Grene and the agency, but primarily by Glass himself. "It was extremely collaborative," Grene says. "All [the changes] came from Philip and the pianist. They’re so driven that you don’t need to say, ‘It’s kind of working but what we need is X, Y or Z,’ because they’re already all over it. … They say, ‘I don’t think it’s quite nailed yet, let me get another shot at that.’ At the very end, they asked, ‘Do you prefer this way or this way?’ It wasn’t saying one is better than the other but which one was speaking to me more?"
The collaboration was unique, says Grene, and different from the work he does with more traditional spot composers. "There are fantastic original music people working in the commercial music business who are capable of spinning on a dime and making things happen in a way that’s very hard for someone who’s outside the business," he notes. "But Philip Glass is a prodigious talent. He’s really a Michelangelo of what he does. No one feels uneasy about saying, ‘Go, and by the grace of God bring us back something amazing.’ "
The experience was also different for Grene because Glass was brought in at a much earlier stage than normal on the storyboards. "It’s the proverbial thing," Grene explains. "You see a picture with one piece of music or another piece of music or no music, and it changes the picture utterly and completely. But because of the way this business works, music tends to [be brought in last]. If it’s possible to bring the composer in at a storyboard session, it always makes a difference."
Grene says he played Ivan Bird, the spot’s director, recordings of old Glass music with the storyboards. "We used those tracks to say, ‘Look, this is the kind of musical realm we’re going to enter in,’ and it was definitely part of the equation at every step of the process. Everyone had it in their head that this was going to be the Philip Glass spot."
The music producer reports that it was all a positive experience and that he’d definitely work with Glass again—if the project was right for him. "He brings just as much to the picture as the director does, as the editor does," Grene remarks. "At times, the music can end up being treated as the poorer cousin, but it so emphatically is not. Music is really a valuable part of the equation."
