MUSIC+SOUND AWARDS 2021
BEST RE-RECORD IN ONLINE, VIRAL + AMBIENT ADVERTISING
BEST RE-RECORD OR ADAPTATION IN ONLINE, VIRAL + AMBIENT ADVERTISING
Burberry Festive
Entrant: Twenty Below Music
Track: ‘Singing In The Rain’ Arthur Freed + Nacio Herb Brown
A little behind-the-scenes info from Twenty Below…
“We were asked to produce a contemporary re-record of the classic song ‘Singing in the rain’ for Burberry's Festive Campaign 2020 ‘The freedom to go beyond’.
The campaign is accompanied by the quote: “It’s about that fearless spirit and imagination when pushing boundaries” (Riccardo Tisci).
We wanted to do exactly that; fearlessly reimagining the original song ‘Singin’ In The Rain’, bringing a fresh and modern take on the song.
The challenge was to reflect both the timeless and timely nature of the brand's story, to elevate the feeling of freedom and attitude of the film and most importantly to make you DANCE. With the film’s message and brand's heritage in mind, our approach was to keep the positive and dancing spirit of the original but introducing an element of soul and attitude in context with the London Street setting of the film.
The musical challenge was taking a song that lends itself to musical theatre and rearranging it into something modern, cool, nonchalant, simple yet powerful, as well as meeting the challenge of writing to an energetically choreographed film.
We pursued early gospel as our reference, exploring traditional accapella with simple stripped back percussion. The resulting inspired track brings rhythmic energy via the simple syncopated drum stick beat, accompanying a laid back vocal from London rapper Dreya Mac, a singer and rapper from West London, who was perfect in her effortless delivery and charismatic style. We recorded using vintage and studio mics, reflecting both the stylised modernity of the film and the brand’s heritage.
Working closely with our sound partners 750mph, the final result is a unique audio composition, combining rhythmic percussive accompaniment and melodic phrases with multilayered rhythmic SFX. The creative solution was to rhythmically connect all musical, vocal, VFX and sound elements. Ice hits were timed against the snares, kickdrums and phrasing of the song, the composer incorporated icey SFX into the percussive track, and the sound engineer replaced certain drum hits with SFX in the music stems. VFX was then adjusted to match all the rhythms to create a seamless audio composition to match the seamless editing and choreography of the film.”
Full Credits:
Entrant: Twenty Below Music
Track: ‘Singing In The Rain’ Arthur Freed + Nacio Herb Brown
Re-Record Arrangers: Jonty Howard + Joe Murphy
Re-Record Vocal Artist: Dreya Mac
Music Producer: Emily Pritchard
Music Supervision: Twenty Below Music + Burberry
Publisher: Sony Music Publishing
Agency: Riff Raff Films
Executive Creative Director: Ricardo Tisci
Director: Megaforce
Executive Producer: Matthew Fone
See more of Twenty Below Music’s works at: www.twentybelowmusic.com
