The Cacophony That Made C4’s Paralympics Campaign Stand Out
“It’s not often that you see briefs like this,” says Factory executive creative director Jon Clarke about Channel 4’s newest Paris 2024 Paralympic Games campaign. “It was one of the treatments that get your head buzzing with ideas as soon as you read it.”
The campaign positions Paralympians as exactly what they are – world-class athletes, not competitors ‘overcoming’ their disabilities. Dubbed ‘Considering What?’, the film presents viewers with the varying reactions of the Paralympics audiences, often subtly underlined with pity, all spun around the culminating line “She’s doing so well, considering…”
Parallel to the backhanded commentary, we watch athletes Aaron Phipps, Sarah Storey and Emmanuel Oynbo-Coker dominating the forces standing against them – gravity, friction and time – and ultimately coming out victorious.
It was these forces that gave Factory Studios the free creative range to create the chaotic, but rhythmic, soundscape, which is so unique about the film. “The vision was to create a soundtrack made entirely out of the struggles and the elemental forces that Paralympians face,” comments Jon. “It gave me a unique chance to blend sound design, music and voice over into one cohesive piece and make something really innovative.”
The result is a symphony of thuds, breaks, laughter, screams, grunts and an array of recorded and pre-existing sounds, all coming together with Rich Orrick’s equally genius edit, to show us, the viewer, what the Paralympics are actually made of.
Here, Jon and Rich tell LBB’s Zoe Antonov more about the unique challenges of the campaign.
LBB> What was the brief for the project and why did you want to pick it up from a creative perspective?
Jon> The brief was to keep things as raw as we could and not overly stylise the sound, instead focusing on building rhythm out of the action on screen and the elemental forces that are metaphorical characters in the film. This presented a unique challenge and required a close working relationship with the editor, Rich Orrick, to make it work. We supplied an initial mood board of SFX cut to a tempo-mapped kick drum, giving him a specific pacing to edit to. This was crucial to make sure we would have the flexibility later to change and manipulate the offline sound and make sure we were hitting the edit perfectly across the main film and cut downs.
I’ve spent a lot of time over the years working as both a sound designer and composer and getting to seamlessly work in both disciplines of the job at the same time is what I love. It really gives you the opportunity to let both parts inform each other and make something unique.
LBB> What stood behind the idea of layering sound and achieving this chaotic, but rhythmic feeling the film gives you?
Jon> We knew from the start that in order to achieve the synergy between the SFX and edit, we needed to have a close relationship with Rich. It needed a real collaborative approach to make the whole thing work. We started off by creating a batch of SFX for Rich to have on hand in the edit as well as some rough test ideas with beats made from SFX working off the script. We supplied all this to Rich before he started editing, so that he had things to work with and specifically had a good tempo map to lock into. What came back from him was incredible and was the start of the whole Idea. He managed to cut some really interesting rhythms into the edit with the shoot sound and the offline already showed how visceral and emotional the final film could be, giving us a great base to go and expand on.
LBB> Rich, did the sound or the editing lead the direction of the film, or did the two develop parallel to each other?
Rich> The brief I had was to use the elements filmed to then create a rhythm and build this into a musical track of sorts. So the two very much developed in tandem. Firstly I built out some of the scenes in a fuller form, and added sound to the actions happening in them. I then decided to base the timing of the 'track' on the laughter. Jon helped with timing out a bar of his laughter and then supplied a click track based off that which I could use for tempo throughout.
I then built the edit by creating a percussive bunch of hits to the ceiling and laughter from gravity, and repeating shots, essentially using them as building blocks for percussive sounds. Then that continued throughout each of the forces, using the whoop of the friction character as another sound bed element, and also keeping hits from gravity running through, so that the track builds more and more.
Alongside this building of a 'track' was also the building up of the separate stories and their resolutions, so in short, yes, the two developed simultaneously.
Once the edit was approved, Jon then took the track I'd built and used his skills to create something from that that was a little more harmonious as an overall piece of music.
LBB> Did you record all the sounds you used, from the furniture 'falling', to the laughs, screams and breaking noises, and how long did it take you? How did you know each of them was necessary to paint the audioscape you were going for?
Jon> The sounds are a mixture of bespoke recordings, shoot sound and library. It took a long time trying to decide what to use! There was a lot of trawling through the audio rushes for the best vocal parts and impacts.
We also recorded the foley bespoke with a great team led by Shane Tremlin at Foley House in Bristol. What was interesting was as soon as we started laying foley against the percussive beats it served to add more depth in places but muddy or clash in others. It meant we needed to really curate what we included by cheating the timings, removing things and really thinking about how the audience would listen to the piece as a whole. The team at 4creative were great and gave us a lot of creative licence to try things, because the script is so multilayered in its narrative and use of metaphor. The shackles were off when creating the soundtrack, there was suddenly justification to repeat Gravity's Laugh, or Friction's ‘Woooo!’ throughout, as we see these forces reaping havoc in the athletes. It gave us the licence to push things as far as we could
LBB> How did you know when to stop before the film lost the rhythm and became just chaos? And how did you hide that rhythm within the chaos?
Jon> To be honest I’m not sure we did know when to stop but the deadline helped! The process was about experimenting and trying out as many ideas as we could, then we needed to really curate things and zone in on the importance of each shot. That meant deciding throughout, is the in camera foley leading here or the percussive smashes? how do we make a cohesive through line for the audience to follow. We spent a huge amount of time on the mix, so we wanted it to feel overwhelming in parts exactly as these elemental forces do in reality, but it also needed to work and complement the voice over. Finding that balance was the real challenge.
LBB> You also have the music running in the background, tell me a bit about that.
Jon> When we started working, we all felt the film would need some sort of harmonic bed to work against that would help steer the emotion. We tried a few different executions on the more musical elements to support the rhythmic sound design. At one point we tried an almost thumping techno arrangement but what we realised was it killed some of the emotion in the voiceover. We ended up making the music feel more organic which helped to fit in against the physicality of the sound design. We used a mixture of electric guitars played by SIREN’s talented Josh Gibbard, feed-backing and pulsing along with synths like the Lyra 8 which has a very lively almost uncontrollable sound to it. The music really was there to set the tone, so the opening synths are off kilter and a bit warp-y. They make you feel on edge. Then as the film progresses, things slowly turn more determined and hopeful as the athletes overcome the forces to achieve their goals.
LBB> What did the voiceover bring to the audioscape of the ad? What were you looking for when casting for it?
Jon> The voiceover is so important to this ad and I loved the script and its message. It asks the audience to reconsider their preconceived ideas of Paralympic greatness. The film captures the reactions of people as they watch Paralympic sport which, although well intentioned, are misguided and don’t appreciate Paralympians for what they are – world class athletes. It needed the voice to have gravitas, but not point fingers. We tested a few different people for the part but as soon as we heard Nabil Shaban's read, it was clear he was perfect for it. He has gravitas and a weight to his delivery that just nailed the message in the right way.
LBB> What was the most difficult aspect of the campaign and how did you overcome its challenges?
Jon> The tracklay itself was incredibly complicated, consisting of the usual VO, dialogue, full foley, spot FX, and atmospheres, plus we also had further groups of SFX that were part of the beat, more abstract sound design and full music stems. I built the music and SFX together, so mixing everything in one session was tricky! Grouping everything was key though to giving us the ability to focus on what was needed. It needed an organised approach and submixing each group was really important before balancing against the VO.
LBB> Rich, talk us through the challenges of the editing process, as well as how you overcame them?
Rich> The challenge was twice the size of a normal project, simply because I was creating the entire rhythm bed as well as trying to tell unfolding stories simultaneously. And after I'd initially chosen the tempo of the piece, based off of the laughter, I was then tied into that pace, meaning if I needed to add a shot in I was trying to work out how the sound of the shot would fit at that point, and if it didn't, then I would have to add an entire other bar of sound, and find corresponding shots to keep everything in time and the story flowing.
LBB> What was the most fun part of the edit to you and why?
Rich> The most fun part of the edit was that it was testing me in a very unfamiliar way, so the whole process felt very satisfying when you finally got to a point where everything seemed to align! And working with the whole team on it. There's something great about the compact way that things get approved internally at Channel 4 which allowed us all to fight for and keep hold of the piece of work we all believed in.
LBB> The film is quite action packed, but also very funny. How did you balance this in the edit and manage to keep the tongue-in-cheek tone?
Rich> I think Steve did a great job in giving the forces their looks, and in doing so set the tone that then allows action to play out, keeping a lightness around a very strong message. My part was just trying to keep a balance of humour without losing sight of the struggle that each of these forces plays against the athletes. I think another key reason for keeping a lightness to the action is to then let the lines of the viewers land much stronger when we cut to them, since this is the first time in the piece that everything is played straight.
LBB> Finally, tell me about some details that regular viewers might have not noticed?
Jon> I think some of my favourite parts are the treatment of the dialogues and struggles in the film. I tried to use different delays and effects on these more incidental sounds so that they helped layer up and add more interest and variation to the beats.
Also, the bits I really love are moments where we use the fridge hum as a bass line and a huge reverberant snare hit is used as the starter gun. Getting the chance to use these things in a non-traditional way was a lot of fun.
