Music for a commercial

I went to Joel's film shoot yesterday for the Chipotle commercial he's shooting for a contest. My music will be in the spot, as long as I can turn it around in a little over a week. But that's cool. I need something to take my mind off job hunting. After a certain amount of applying, one has to do some waiting. I'll do all my follow-ups at the end of the week.

Anyway, the shoot was at Joel's studio in Chelsea around 26th street. Being right by the Hudson, they had to put up with the occasional helicopter taking off from or landing at the heliport for tours of Manhattan. So that was a consistent thing throughout the day. As for the shoot itself, essentially, the actors and actresses that showed up were asked prior to have come up with a name for the favorite burrito from Chipotle. On set, they had to name the ingredients and subsequently answer a series of questions about their burrito, while doing some physical actions, ranging from gesticulation to all out dancing (some lighting stands were almost knocked over). Boy, were there some hams present. But, it was amusing. I got a few good laughs and more importantly a few good ideas for the music to add to what I had brought to show Joel.

The music is going to be simple, since the set design was simple and the commercial has a very intimate personal feel to it. I think Joel is going to cut between several of the best auditions but of course, it's always one person on screen. To me, that translates into a single instrument with a very simple idea. So I was banging on my guitar all week coming up with rhythms and showed him that. I think he liked it so we're going to go with it but we got talking while I was there about making it slightly more catchy, with some graspable melody, that's quick and not too busy. We don't want it covering up any of the dialogue or distracting from any other element in the commercial. It's going to be a 24 second spot.

Last night, I had an incredible moment of clarity, in which I bounced out of bed and cut the light on, grabbed a pen and started scribbling an idea I had had: over dub some "hums" onto the guitar track. There's a lot of actors going, "mmmm" in the commercial and it occurred to me that that might really tie the music in.

I don't often get those Eureka moments, so pardon me if I sound quite excited about it. I just hope Joel likes the idea.

Tomorrow, I'll see the first cut and then get to work cutting my ideas down to size. More later.