Bspoke Music for Samsung & ITV
Bspoke Music provide compositions & sonic logo for new Samsung & ITV campaign.
Ever wondered how the world of music synchronisation works? We all know that music is the often-needed cherry on top of a screen work. But how does it get there? Let’s take a deep dive into Bspoke’s latest collaboration with Samsung & ITV to give you an insight into the mechanics of this exciting industry.
I caught up with Creative Director of Bspoke Music, Scott Lawrence, to explore the process from start to finish…
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How did the conversation start?
SL
“We were approached by ITV to pitch for a brand collaboration with Samsung. The brief was for 4 adverts featuring Fleur East & Olly Murs completing a series of challenges, using the new Samsung Galaxy S23.
After some initial dialogue and references of our work, we were delighted to hear we had won the pitch. We would be the only company providing music for this prestigious brand, on one of the biggest UK broadcaster’s prime time slots.”
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And what happens next?
SL
“We had a Zoom call with the Producer & Director (KC Locke) who asked us to come up with 4 bespoke compositional works and a sonic logo that would be used in each episode to give the series a cohesive theme.
This was a tough task as none of the content had been shot, so we were only going on the director's vision for how he wanted to shoot each episode.
We were given some reference tracks and sent back some existing songs from our library to give him more ideas to work with. We studied the shot list and provided playlists of commercial tracks as additional reference tracks.
We knew each episode would require a different sound and style, so we briefed our composers and quickly got back some 20 track options - our composers work fast, and as ever the quality was extremely high.”
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How do you know when you’ve got it right?
SL
“After some back and forth on ideas for music we finally saw the first episode edit and everything clicked. We turned to our composer Nathan Cross to provide a track that set the tone for the opening episode of this 4 part mini advert series. The brief was to convey excitement, but also had to have the feel of Saturday night entertainment TV, as that was where the advert would mostly be appearing.“
The result can be heard here.
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What was the journey from episode 1 to episode 4?
SL
“The next episode was based around a choreographed dance with Olly joining in. We knew that the music we submitted had to meet the energy and tempo of the track the dancers originally choreographed their moves to. It might sound easy, but when you're asked to write something similar to an existing track, it’s always hard to make sure you don't go too close to the original.
For this piece we turned to our composer Louis Read who is a master in programming beats and synth lines.“
See episode 2 here.
“The 3rd episode was going to be a high octane go karting race between Olly and Fleur.
Since Louis was on a roll, we asked him to work on a new track for this piece and he nailed it first go. “
Listen here.
“Episode 4 was going to be a look back over the challenges, with a final reveal at the end. We had some good tracks to submit for this, but one of the original tracks from our production music library we sent over (called Saviour by Tommy McFadden) was the track that the execs at ITV & Samsung both liked.”
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So an existing library track was used for episode 4, rather than a new, bespoke piece. How did you make it fit with the moving image?
SL
“I was tasked with editing the track to work to the cut of the edit so that the reveal moments lined up with the breaks and drops in the track. It was nice for me to be hands on and creative again in Ableton. I really enjoyed cutting and looping the track to work to the edit.”
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And what about the sonic logo, how did that creation process look?
SL
“The sonic logo was left up to us to pitch ideas for. We knew that the whole theme of the adverts was to show off the amazing photographic capability of the Samsung Galaxy S3. We wanted to incorporate the sound of a digital camera shutter, but with our unique, Bspoke twist. We tasked Louis Read with this and I think he knocked it out the park. It can be heard on each advert when the ‘capture the night’ text appears on screen. We had to harmonically tweak this on the first episode so that it fit in with the key of the track composed by Nathan. I think this worked really well.”
The steps to creating bespoke composed music for the screen differs each time.
But in this case, it was a truly collaborative project, between the clients (ITV & Samsung), the video director, (KC Locke / Swords & Eagles), the Bspoke Music management team, and their network of talented composers. Deadlines tend to be tight and information sometimes limited or changing, so it takes creative minds to come up with solutions and keep a cool head for crunch time.
If you think you’ve got what it takes to write music for sync, or if you’re looking for composers for your next project, drop us a line at [email protected]
Read more about Sonic Logos here.
And see all the final episodes here.
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