For SHOOT’s summer top 10 music and sound design chart, reels were everywhere. Despite the ongoing actors’ strike against the advertising industry, there were plenty of original tracks to choose from. Below is a look at how the top three chart-toppers were created. Lipton Brisk’s "Jailhouse Rock" involved vocals from a diverse group of performers. Volkswagen’s "Passing" featured the electronica sounds of Ben Neill who, in addition to spot work, has several albums to his credit, including Torchtower and Goldbug. Finally, "Floating Friend" for Rice Krispies Treat Bars features an interesting use besides nourishment for the cereal bar. The ad uses a ’70s R&B tune to illustrate a love story doomed by decapitation.
Number One
The images are black and white, and the figures stop-motion puppet versions of real people. "I’m bluer than my suede shoes," says Elvis Presley, as he sits morosely in a jail cell, staring at his feet. Suddenly, another inmate, James Brown, the godfather of soul, shows up and offers Presley contraband: Lipton Brisk iced tea, hidden in a hollowed-out book. Presley drinks it, mutters, "Mercy, that’s Brisk, baby," and immediately breaks into a rocking, bluesy version of "Jailhouse Rock," with special lyrics that acknowledge his back-up "band"—and fellow guests of the state—Brown, country musician Willie Nelson (on guitar) and rap artist Coolio. Each performer sings a verse of the song. The stop-motion spot ends with Presley and Brown pressing the iced tea can into a license plate, with the lettering "brisk."
"Jailhouse Rock" is the sixth installment in the Lipton Brisk campaign from J. Walter Thompson (JWT), New York. The agency creative directors on the ad were Mickey Paxton and David Smith. The stop-motion spot was directed by Ken Lidster of Loose Moose, London. The ad was unusual for the series because the music track had to be recorded first. "We had to create the music beforehand for lip-synching," explains Nick Amour, a composer/writer at Amber Music, London and New York. Amour, along with fellow Amber composer Andy Carroll, created the new version; Michelle Curran, managing director of the shop, acted as executive producer. At the first meeting, JWT’s Smith asked for a contemporary interpretation of the song, as though Presley were alive today. Amber created a number of demos, mixing traditional rock with an undercurrent of R&B and hip-hop.
The composers worked from storyboards—which meant, Amour notes, that "you had to use a lot of imagination as to what was going on, and you have to be pretty flexible. It’s a refining and filtering process. ‘Jailhouse Rock’ is a difficult tune because it’s so well-known and you want to reinvent it as a modern vehicle, but retain the integrity of the original track."
James Brown and Coolio offered brief backing vocals, and with Elvis—tabloid reports to the contrary—still dead, Amber turned to Johnny Earle, a British Elvis impersonator. "He sounds like Elvis when he sings, but when he speaks, he’s got a little bit of an English accent," says Paxton.
Creating, refining, and then recording the music took about three months’ work in London, with sound design—footsteps, jail doors clanking and the license plate creation—handled by Marshall Grupp of Marshall Grupp Sound Design, New York. "Normally, we jam-pack these spots with as many jokes and sight gags as possible," explains Smith. "This time, we had to be aware of the time—we had twenty seconds for the song, and ten seconds up front to set up the whole thing. We had to be a little tighter, very disciplined."
"We all thought it turned out fabulously," adds Paxton. "The one difficult thing about stop-motion animation work like this is that once you finish it, you’re finished. You can’t go back and re-shoot sequences. So we had to get it right."
Number Two
The image in "Passing," an animated Volkswagen spot, is a simple, black-and-white drawing of a VW Golf, with two surfboards strapped to the rooftop, driving in the mountains. The music seems just as simple: a driving rock beat—the kind of music the two guys in the front seat might be listening to. A bus appears in the distance. The driver of the VW shifts gears, and there is an electronic whiz heard on the soundtrack as he passes the bus. As his car goes by, the passengers wave. The VW approaches a camper; the car shifts gears to pass (again, an electronic whiz on the soundtrack). As it passes, a girl waves from the camper and the driver mouths something—more electronic "whizzing"—and the boys zoom by. The music pounds on and then stops. The boys have come to a halt. As the shot widens, a long string of traffic comes into view, indicating that the surfers will be there awhile. "That’s the thing about certified, pre-owned Volkswagens," observes the voiceover. "They’ve got the juice." The ad was directed by Will Barras of animation house Bermuda Shorts, London, via Arnold Communications, Boston.
"The music and sound design were essential for the overall concept of the piece," explains Spring Clinton-Smith, the Arnold producer on the campaign for pre-owned VWs, which also included the ads "Nite-Nite," "Ice Cream" and "Bouquet," all directed by Barras. "The commercial had to work on two different levels. The visuals told the story, but the music had to tell a story, as well. All the spots are black and white, and the music added the color."
To find a tunesmith, art director Paul Renner and copywriter Carl Loeb listened to a number of demos before turning to Ben Neill of Trillium Productions, New York. Neill, who created the tracks for the whole package of spots, is a composer whose electronic music had impressed them. "I had actually done a few other spots for the agency before," relates Neill, "but they also knew me from my CDs, which are mostly electronica." (Among Neill’s commercial credits are VW’s "Turbonium," directed by Nick Lewin of X-1 Films, bicoastal and Chicago.)
"Sometimes it’s hard to talk music with musicians," says Renner. "They know what everything’s called, and we don’t. But with Ben it was a great collaboration. He really nailed what we wanted. He understands music and storytelling. That’s why we used him. He doesn’t do a ton of commercials, so it’s nice to get a fresh perspective."
Neill looked at animatics before beginning his compositions. "I wanted it to be something that combined rock riffs with a heavy electronica beat," he explains. "I was thinking about the tradition of cartoons and animation. I thought a lot about making [musical] changes to accent different points. For instance, when you see the guy downshift to pass, that’s a specific cut and electronics emphasize it. When he gets to the traffic jam, the music stops very suddenly, almost like the brakes are going on. There were no sound effects, so I tried to evoke changes in the music."
There was some tweaking during the estimated two to three months it took to create the music for all four spots, but overall Neill says the process went fairly smoothly. "We got it pretty much the first time. Mostly, it was just getting the timings right," he reports. "What was great was that it was a story that was told without words. It was pure music."
Number Three
"Floating Friend," a Rice Krispies Treat Bars spot directed by Jim Tozzi of bicoastal M-80, out of Leo Burnett Co., Chicago, is one of the more bizarre and humorous spots for this treat made from the wholesome breakfast cereal. The ad opens on a shot of a fat, bearded man floating in an above-ground pool. A cultured-sounding announcer begins his voiceover: "If you’re lonely and don’t have any friends to go swimming with, consider making one with Rice Krispies Treats."
The next shot shows the hirsute man and, floating next to him in the pool, a woman made out of Rice Krispies Treat Bars. "Rice Krispies Treats float, making your new friend an excellent swimmer," explains the announcer matter-of-factly. This image is followed by scenes of the man talking to his new "friend," tossing a beach ball to her, and her "rubbing" sun tan lotion on his back. Suddenly the man’s newfound happiness is shattered; when he goes inside for drinks, a neighbor’s dog eats the head off of his new buddy.
"Kelly," the ’70s-style blues tune that accompanies the spot, was created by Asche & Spencer, Minneapolis and Venice, Calif., a shop that had previously worked with the agency on other projects. "We told the music house that this was a love story, about a man who found love and then lost it," recalls Desmond LaVelle, the campaign’s copywriter. "We thought the music was very important."
"Initially they asked for a romantic, quirky, Burt Bacharach-style piece done in a sexy-love-bossa nova style," says Thad Spencer, owner/creative director/composer at Asche & Spencer. The spot’s track was created by Spencer and composer Al Wolovitch; it was produced by Joel Smith. "We batted a lot of ideas around and explored several ‘cha-cha meets romantic’ riffs. Then we said, ‘Maybe it should be a classic ’70s R&B love song. The guy [in the commercial] looks [like he’s from the] ’70s. So we tried a Curtis Mayfield/Gladys Knight kind of sound."
The creatives referred to the "friend" as Kelly (the name was taken from the niece of Lisa Leone, the spot’s art director), so that’s what Asche & Spencer dubbed the song. "We tried to make it as funny as possible, having this soulful voice singing ‘Kelly’ while looking at the girl," observes Spencer.
He notes that the tune was composed and produced in a day and a half and went down "straight up" without any changes. "We hit it right the first time," he relates, "which is what happens when an agency trusts you."
LaVelle adds that everyone is pleased with the result and that he has gotten a number of queries about the music: "Everybody asks me, ‘Where did you find that old song? It’s great.’ It definitely sounds non-‘addy,’ like an old Motown piece," he explains. "I think it’s cool."r
