Droga5 London, and String and Tins, London, got eight countries to sing in a commercial for Ancestry.com. String and Tins produced and recorded the music as people from across Europe sing their hearts out to the 1980s track “Together Forever.” The chorus reflects the Ancestry DNA finding that the average British person has 60% DNA from somewhere in Europe. Brexit or no, millions of Brits have cultural and ancestral ties to Europe.
The track features the voices of real people from different European countries. We see characters based in their own settings. The amalgamation of accents shine through in the harmonies of the song, giving a sense of charm for each of the home countries. The commercial closes as all of the voices sing together accompanied by The City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra.
Mike Bamford, director at String and Tins, was on set in each of the locations. He said, “I oversaw the vocal performances of the actors to make sure the audio was captured in a way that would edit together naturally. In a world where Automated Dialog Replacement is readily available, it would have been possible to redo it all in post, but there’s something much more real about the recordings we captured on set.”
Directing a cast of untrained singers meant several approaches had to be taken to make the song coherent to the many different dialects. Bamford related, “Not everyone was familiar with the ‘80s track which is more famous in the U.K. than Europe, so we had a full day of vocal coaching to run through the lyrics. In a few cases, the actors weren’t English speakers at all and I had to direct them through translators.” Titled “Together Forever,” the :60 was directed by Noam Murro of Biscuit Filmworks.
