14 DAY TRIAL // When a movie makes it big, everyone wants to see what it was like to shoot it. Behind the scenes videos are sometimes equally fun to watch, and in the case of Apple’s new short film – “The Song” – things are no different.
“Whether it’s making a record in a booth for someone thousands of miles away, or a song in GarageBand for someone you love, it’s not just the tools that count, it’s the thought behind the gift,” Apple says.
The making of clip is almost twice as long as the ad itself, but boy is it worth watching. In the video, Apple lets the artists starring in the ad explain how the whole thing was made.
Voice-o-graph
Apple approached Third Man Records to use their voice-o-graph, a booth from the 1940s that recorded audio directly onto a vinyl record. The Cupertino giant wanted to create a story where GarageBand was used to restore and improve a recording made using this particular machine.
Protagonist Dana Williams, who is not only a real musician but also a pretty good actor, tells the backstory, which is about a woman who decades ago recorded a song for her husband who was going to war. The ad centers around this woman’s granddaughter, who happens upon the recording and some pictures of her grandparents when they were young.
She decides to turn the recording into a duet on her MacBook using GarageBand’s recording and editing capabilities, and later gift the edited song to her grandma, along with the pictures. The granddaughter puts the finished song on an iPad mini, places a “Play Me” sign onto the device, and waits for grandma to find it. Grandma eventually listens to the song, which brings her to tears, while the granddaughter watches the powerful effects of her gift from afar.
Who is the singer on the record?
While Dana Williams’ voice can also be heard on the finished duet, the original recording is the work of Rhiannon Giddens, a vocalist who also stars in the making of clip.
Williams had to do a photo shoot for the pictures that depicted grandma in her youth. The footage also shows Williams demoing a recording using the voice-o-graph.
The video is embedded below for your viewing pleasure, followed by the finished ad, which we highly encourage you to watch. We’d love to hear what you think of Apple’s effort in the comments section below, but for now just hit the play button and enjoy “The Song.”
