- Product/Brand - Audi RS 6 Avant
- Spot - The Ring
- Song Title - The Ring
- Composer - Raeburn, Almau, Jolly
- Publisher - Soundtree Music
- Artist - Peter Raeburn, Luis Almau, Evan Jolly
- Master Rights Holder - Soundtree Music
- Music Supervisor - Soundtree Music
- Ad Agency - BBH
- Creative - Matt Doman, Ian Heartfield, Simon Pearse, Emmanuel Saint M'Leux
- Film Company - Academy Films
- Film Director - Jonathan Glazer
- Post Product - MPC
- Air Date - August 27 2013
It’s all been carefully staged for the camera, of course. But there’s no doubting the underlying authenticity that two of the world’s top boxers bring to Audi’s action packed RS6 Avant ad The Ring.
Under the sharp eye of director Jonathan ‘Sexy Beast’ Glazer, US Cruiserweight contenders Steve Cunningham and B.J. Flores brave the flashlights, duck under the ropes and then slug it out for a 60 second film which must surely rank as one of the most atmospheric of the year.
But we’re not talking Raging Bull or Rocky here. Nor are we counting which fighter lands how many punches on the other. It’s real life referee Tony Weeks who is the true focus of Glazer’s attention.
As the third force who always goes the distance and wields the true power in any bout, Weeks is the inscrutable star of this mini-movie which comes as close to being a psychological study as the ad breaks will allow.
Yet it is still a commercial, and, as he vanishes down the tunnel to emerge out of the darkness at the end re-incarnated as an automobile, we are invited to see Weeks as a metaphor for Audi’s top of the range saloon.
Resisting the obvious temptation to license in a piece of known music to artificially heighten the tension, Glazer and the creative team of Matt Doman and Ian Heartfield at BBH commissioned Soundtree Music to write a score which would capture Weeks’ character without compromising the film’s artistic integrity. And would also inform the ad's strapline of Power From A Less Obvious Place.
Soundtree’s portfolio bulges with soundtracks to blue chip commercials for brands such as Stella Artois, Sainsbury’s, Heinz and Hyundai. So the East Londoners are clearly no strangers to this kind of project.
But according to Founder & Creative Director Peter Raeburn, who worked on the Audi ad with Soundtree colleagues Luis Almau and Evan Jolly, this was one soundtrack which had to function on a number of levels and fulfil a range of requirements.
“The immediate purpose of the work was to create a musical solution which would complement rather than take over the film,” he says. “At the same time we wanted to come up with a sonic signature for the referee himself, which would illustrate how much power and adrenalin he uses and also how much he has left in the tank at the end of the evening.”
Work began in earnest on The Ring at the end of July when Glazer’s final cut was delivered to Soundtree’s Hoxton HQ. After due experimentation, in which Evan Jolly’s skills with samples came to the fore, the team agreed on a simple percussive piece structured to match the internal beats in the film.
Then it was off to Abbey Road’s world famous Studio 2, once The Beatles’ second home and still one of the best live rooms in the world. There Bill Lockhart, principal tympanist with the English National Opera, was waiting to transform Soundtree’s synthesized sketch into real, red blooded rhythm.
“Bill is an excellent percussion player,” Raeburn continues. “He brought along dozens of drums and hundreds of different mallets and beaters and we spent many hours painstakingly exploring every conceivable combination until we found the sound we were looking for.”
With top flight sound engineer Simon Changer at the controls, Lockhart then performed the piece live to the film, ensuring that the track would come across as big and brash and yet still as understated and, paradoxically, unobtrusive enough to satisfy the client’s requirement.
And was that the job done? Well, not quite. The final icing on this cake came after a mixing session in which Changer and Soundtree’s Luis Almau were challenged with making those tremendous tympanis sound tiny again!
“It’s vitally important these days that your track sounds equally as exciting when you hear it on the internet through a laptop or a mobile phone as it does when you’re sitting in front of your TV or in a cinema,” Raeburn explains.
“Simon was great at dealing with the technical problems involved in making sure the power and the intensity of the tympanis never gets lost. He really helped us get over those final hurdles.”
The whole creative process took two weeks from beginning to end. Barely a month later and the Audi ad is on air and gathering critical acclaim from all who see it. On-line marketing magazine The Drum is particularly lavish in its praise calling the spot “an immensely clever celebration of discreet power.
“ When we picture a boxing match, we see two individuals going at it hammer and tongs,” it continued. “But they're not alone - there's a third person in the ring and he's in charge.”
In this instance we’d say there are three more men in this particular picture who should not be forgotten or ignored. Step forward Soundtree’s top team of Peter Raeburn, Luis Almau and Evan Jolly.
