COMMERCIALS 30 MUSIC
LANCOME VISIONNAIRE 30 Agency: 133 paris Music: Original composition written by Adam Smyth at Soho Square Studios and Quinton Du Preez and Christopher Lukins at Qubestudio
The composers for Lancome’s ad were briefed to include emotive, technical and feminine aspects in the music.
O2 CHRISTMAS Agency: Brando Music:Winter Song by Sara Bareilles and Ingrid Michaelson, licensed by Jimmy Turner
O2’s Christmas campaign makes great use of this winter- themed piece of music, licensed by Jimmy Turner.
How did you go about finding the tune? We wanted something that said ‘Christmas’ and ‘love’ but that didn’t involve Mariah Carey or Wham. In the past we’ve called the guys in O2 over to the agency and we’d crack open a few beers and listen to some music. Before too long we have a shortlist and we see how it looks against the pictures – the best match is the one that feels right. This time was different. Research said ‘we like our Christmas traditional’ so we looked at a couple of tracks and we even played with the idea of re-recording a traditional tune. Then along comes John. John was the editor and he put an animatic together with a tune he happened to be listening to – Winter Song by Sara Bareilles and Ingrid Michaelson. We saw it and it felt exactly right.
Did you have a shortlist of music possibilities? We had about 19 tracks. Our clients have a brilliant way of whittling these down. It goes like this. “No.” “NO.” “Meh.” “No.” “Nope.” ‘NO!!” Pretty much exactly like that. Until you get a “Eh… Maybe.” When the guys heard Winter Song we were at the “Eh… maybe” stage, but that song just nailed it. We got a “YES!” almost right there and then. Brendan O’Flaherty, exec creative director, Brando
How did the music get licensed? Brando called us as they couldn’t find the rights owners and were up against an extremely tight deadline. We traced the artists’ representatives down in LA and sought approval from artist management, co-publishers and label. The client wanted options for extra edits, a possible roll out to other territories and all sorts of digital media. After budget adjusting and negotiation, numerous late night transatlantic phone calls and a stack of emails, we got there, in time and within budget.
Ben Walter, md, Jimmy Turner
How did you go about creating the music? Lancome wanted the music to be ‘beautiful, feminine, technical, cinematic’ and this inspired us to start constructing our own synth sounds from scratch. In order to create a cinematic score we had to construct our sounds with multiple layers of pads, intricate arpeggiations and high drawn out tones. Once we had our base sounds set and our chord progression formed, we started to add more layers paying particular attention to the sonics of the piece, relating them the whole time to the client’s brief. Adding orchestral instruments like violins, cellos and double basses took the music to a whole other level. We worked the orchestral elements around the synths to avoid creating a wall of sound. The groove is entirely created using arpeggiations and we enforced a nice low-end to the piece using some timpani. There are a lot of sound design elements in the ad, most of which we pitched to the key of the music. It helps to sit the effects into the score and actually turn them into a musical element.
Adam Smyth, co-composer
C42
www.televisual.com | November 2011
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