The creative idea

Travelling from the west coast to the east coast of Ireland in one never ending panning shot, we see the soundtrack of our film visualised by the sequential turning on of lights in homes right across the country. The lights pick out the notes of our track, a music box interpretation of Blur’s ‘Tender.’ Not only is every unique note represented by a unique window, where the note appears on the musical register is also represented visually by where the window appears in different types of buildings, from small cottages, to dense apartment blocks. Every light that turns on, represents the belief of customers across the country who turn houses into homes every day.

Describe the execution

We sought a well-known commercial track to drive the narrative of our film – ‘Belief’.

Blur’s ‘Tender’ was chosen. Lyrically, it aligned with our message and it was anthemic enough to be re-imagined musically. As each note was going to light up a window in our film, we needed to simplify the song, but we didn’t want to re-instrument it in an expected way. Instead, we looked at the most simplified forms of musical interpretation – the music box.

The music box not only allowed us to simplify the song, it gave us our visual map for the film in the form of the music box punch card. Every note was represented by a punch hole on a scale from low to high. We then found locations that corresponded to those punch holes so that we could bring the song to life visually. In post we stitched the locations together to create one shot. Every note, a unique window; every window a home, representing the belief of our client’s customer’s across Ireland.