A Road Line Painter Fights Against Traffic in This Whimsical Film for Bird

Electric scooter company Bird's first brand film is a whimsical imagination of life in cities with less focus on cars and more on their people. 

Created with Not to Scale and directed by BAT, the animated clip opens on a man painting road markings along a street stacked up with vehicles. He enjoys his experience until the the traffic leads to endless horns and exhaust fumes in the air, startling the painter and causing him to paint a crooked line. 

Eventually he takes matters into his own hands and paints a traffic line through the cross-junction, giving the Bird users behind him free roaming of the roads. The tagline then reads, 'Be free from traffic. Be free from pollution. Be free.'

19 Sound handled sound design and music composition for the film. The team there commented: "This was a great film to work on, from start to finish. The brief came from Bird, the Californian based scooter company, via our colleagues at Adelphoi, who presented us with the challenge of creating a score that blended sound design & composition. The film is an animation about an unhappy worker who is painting lines on main roads. He realises that he has the opportunity to re-draw the markings to push all the cars into one lane and enable 3 lanes for bikes and scooters! It juxtaposes the perils and pollution of the petrol guzzling present with the hope of a peaceful emissions-free future. To reflected this we wanted to use a natural sounding composition but cut into some more urban sound design.

"The piece began by writing the core melody, harmony and rhythm, on piano, flute and stings all run back through analogue effects to give an old vintage feel to it. This was to reflect the ‘natural’ side of the film and the company, using acoustic instruments along with particular processing help create a rural, innocent almost pre industrial feel to it. Then we were able to use the sounds of the city as musical motifs to represent the hustle and pollution. 

"We received an early detailed animation along with the brief which enabled us to start building the sound design in straight away. The car horns became a vital part of the score; using its unique tones and creating an arpeggio that acted as a counter melody. We then built a drum machine using car screeches, skids, and squeaks which became the clattering rhythm section of the score.. As the sound design and animation became more detailed, we were able to grab more of the SFX and incorporate them in as well. The truck horn for instance became a useful element later in the film, acting as a pad, harmonising with the melody. 

"Blending music and sound design is something we work on in our own personal projects and being able to utilise it commercially, to picture, enables a world of emersion and environment not possible without close collaboration between the two. 

"After winning the pitch we added another layer of diegetic sound design to the film and really bought it to life with a final mix. The client was very happy and the film has gone on to feature as part of their promotional activities and help build towards an emissions free future…"