Apple just posted a video on its YouTube channel to explain how they made the most recent TV ad for the holidays, “The Song.”
In the ad, a young woman uses GarageBand to sing a duet with her grandmother’s recording from the past. It’s a touching video that strikes a sentimental chord for many of us with grandparents who came of age back in the 1940s, as well as audio geeks who might remember the technology back then to create records: the audio booth.
Check out the video below for the full story from Apple, including the cool fact that they made an actual record using one of these old audio booths, The Voice-o-graph, for the young woman to sing along with.
https://youtu.be/77hi9SuKfiI
Dana Williams is the young musician in the short film who makes the modern day duet with the help of her Mac and GarageBand, while Rhiannon Giddens is the woman playing the younger version of the grandmother. Giddens actually recorded the “original” song in an actual recording booth provided by label Third Man Records.
The old audio booth was a novelty at the time, as most people hadn’t heard their own voice coming back to them. Making an audio postcard, complete with mailing envelope, cost $0.35. That’s a heck of a deal.
Williams says she uses GarageBand all the time to make her own music, and Giddens says that her husband used the multi-track recording program to make her a remixed version of one of her own songs when they were courting. Awwww, so sweet!
This lovely behind-the-scenes video is pretty fascinating to watch, with the juxtaposition of the old and the new. Seeing into the process of making this very musical ad is a way to see how Apple sees its products: as tools to enhance our lives.
As Giddons says at the end, “It’s not just the tool; it’s the message.”
Source: Apple
Rob LeFebvre is an Anchorage, Alaska-based writer and editor who has contributed to various tech, gaming and iOS sites, including 148Apps, Creative Screenwriting, Shelf-Awareness, VentureBeat, and Paste Magazine. Feel free to find Rob on Twitter @roblef, and send him a cookie once in a while; he’ll really appreciate it.
4 responses to “The retro backstory behind Apple’s holiday TV ad”
Very nice.
I love it when advertising transcends. Because the thing is, that ad is, of course designed to sell apple products, but it also imparts a depth of humanity. The fact that they really recorded the source song using 40’s tech just seals the deal for me.
Whats this crap? You can’t have a commercial that doesn’t mention your competition and make fun of them and calls them names, and that tells everybody how much better your product is than theirs. Thats not a commercial, thats just, …. classy and cool, and I wish other companies would figure that out.
I’ve shared this ad with my whole Chicago marketing agency and it seems to be a hit. I think it’s even better than 2013’s.