Little Simz on Visualising the Power of Sound with Bose

For those familiar with how a star like Little Simz would usually get involved in an advertising campaign, the free-flowing creative process of Bose’s ‘Sound Is Power’ campaign sounds refreshingly trusting.

 

“I had been looking at Bose stuff and wanted to collaborate with Bose for a long time, so it really is a blessing that this came about,” said Little Simz, speaking at an event unveiling the campaign in London. The Mercury-prize winning British rap star knew director Dexter Navy and his work, but had never worked with him, so she reached out. “It felt like this could be the perfect marriage of two creatives to do something really interesting and special. So I just kind of put it in the atmosphere and was like, 'Yo, love what you're doing. Lets sync up, let's do something cool.' He was super down and we made it work. It all felt really seamless and natural. Because there's a mutual respect for what we do, it just felt like a no-brainer.”

Soon Dexter and Simz were throwing ideas at each other about how to visually convey the sound and Bose's vision, while maintaining the artist’s well-established aesthetic. Dexter shared that the pair went through several different treatments until they landed on the idea they were happy with, showing the power of Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones visually using pyrotechnics, which surround Simz and even appear to shoot from her hands in the spot. Involving Kelvin Krash to compose a bespoke soundtrack for the spot, the three came together to meld their ideas. “We came with three different visions that married into one visual,” said Dexter.

“It's conveying sound in a way that using these headphones puts you into a world where the sound is visual. Kind of like synesthesia when you can see what you hear and what you hear has its world. I think with someone like Simz, across all of her videos and creative, is at such a high level, I wanted it to be something that looked like it was really hard to put together and intricate.” 

For Simz, this was as much a collaborative artistic project as it was an ad for a technology brand, and she threw herself into it in that spirit. “I'm always interested in working with people that are just not afraid,” she said. “You can't keep doing the same thing and expect different results. So I knew working with someone like Dex, someone like Krash, I want to get something different for myself, something that I'd not done before and the prospect of that was exciting for me.

“What's also great is that there was no ego, like Dexter was saying, he'd send me something and [I wasn’t sure]. His ego wasn't bruised by that. It's not about him. It's not about me. It's not about credit. It's about the project. All three of us had an understanding from the jump that we wanted to serve the project and serve the art.”

Although Simz is no stranger to filmmaking – her starring role in Netflix’s ‘Top Boy’ has cemented her as one of the UK’s most influential cultural powerhouses – she admitted at the Bose event that she needs reassurance on set. “As an artist, me being in front of the camera is such a vulnerable space,” she said. “Everything that's happening around you, your senses are so heightened. When you have a crew or a team of people that are so accommodating, and so invested in the care of the working environment, I think it helps you elevate your performance even more.” Working on this project, she is thankful for the relationship she built with Dexter and the crew. “Those things are so important as an artist in front of a camera, and it's really reading in the visuals that I'm comfortable.”

Pyrotechnics aren’t toys and Simz was taken aback when she first heard about Dexter’s idea: “When Dexter first expressed that we're gonna have explosions, I was like 'Bro! Explosions where!?'” But she trusted in the director and crew to keep her safe. “It really has to be choreographed. Otherwise, it could be dangerous for you,” she said.

The pressure was on Krash to ensure the music delivered too, not just creatively but technically. He’d worked with Dexter before but not like this. “This time it was very meticulous. We had to get every sound pinpointed to the second, because it essentially had to trigger the visual. I had to work very much in tandem with what was going on with Dexter and the pyrotechnics guys,” he said. 

 

One day Dexter called him asking for the stems of his composition. “I always ask when someone needs the stems because that usually means something serious,” said Krash. “He FaceTimed me and he was in a sort of laboratory and there was like, all these circuit boards and things. I was like, 'OK, you definitely need the stems.' He was really excited about it.”

Krash exported the MIDI from the composition and it acted like a trigger to explode the visual 'sound' that you see in the film. “It was probably one of the most interesting ads that I've had to do the music for,” said the composer. “It expresses the immersive headphones and the sound experience that you have. That's very important point was for someone from a sound background to have the music express itself in its true form.”

From a filmmaking perspective, timing was crucial as well. Two out of the three sequences included 20 explosions, all of which had to be synced to the music. “It was very specific,” noted Dexter. “And we were shooting on film. So we didn't have loads of film to waste. It was a lot of moving parts. But because Simz is not only a great musician but an actor as well, it was quite easy to get it right the first time – after a few practices.”

For Simz, it was important for people watching the ad to feel the power she experiences in sound. She felt it while making it. “The scene where I've got the headphones on and I close my eyes, it just feels like I'm really letting go. I want people to take that away,” she said. “ Just generally speaking, as someone that loves music, I want people to have that feeling of, 'it's just me here', you know?”

The overwhelming impression of the conversation between these three creative collaborators gave a strong impression that Bose’s marketing is about facilitating creativity for people who love sound. Simz was impressed with the process. Summing up at the event she explained her relationship to the brand: “I think they respect each of us as creatives and was like, 'Yo, we don't want to get in the way, just do your thing.' And again trust. On the day, they were super happy for us to come in and lead it. What that says about them is they're super progressive as a company, and really collaborative. As much as it's their budget and all of that, they're still very much happy to allow the creatives to lead the project.”