Suzuki: Good Different

Culum takes us through the process of adding a touch of magic to this Willy Wonka-inspired spot.

Suzuki's new ethos of 'Good Different' allowed a fair amount of wiggle room for play in their latest spot; the main order of the day was fun. We utilised the sense of 'different' throughout the spot, however there were a few major sequences where we took an even more unorthodox approach.

First off was the factory. Being the first scene we wanted to do something a little different, so we used recorded vocal samples of us doing silly factory noises instead of the more traditional library FX... essentially lots of me saying 'chugga chugga' and 'Pst Pst' and other rhythmic type phrases. It added a fun, Willy Wonka style to the soundscape and gave the factory floor a live quality. We also added a high pitch giggle to the bolt on the helter skelter for maximum silliness.

The next was the choir. Again we all took a turn in the booth to record the vocal elements, then used a plug in called MORPH to blend the more traditional choir we'd recorded with - an actual car horn giving an effect that is a little bit of both. The effect is very peculiar but works a treat! You can't quite tell if you hear the horn or the choir more. That ambiguity leant into the 'Different' nature of the spot. Shout out to Adam Smyth for his out of the box thinking on this particular scene!

The next shot probably posed the most challenge narratively - we needed to make car jargon feel complex and incoherent whilst making sure the viewer still understood what was going on, which was vital to the comprehension of the scene. We initially had loads of voices, all overlapping each other to make a cacophony of jargon until one gets focused in on and the rest take a back seat. The effect was great, but however we tried, the main line still got lost in the chaos. So we stripped all but three out to make room, and used the plugin Speakerphone to tune between them so we felt like we were sifting between them as opposed to all of them playing at once. That way, when we tune into the main VO we didn't lose anything creatively when we stripped the other voices away.

We also had the pleasure of recording Andy Serkis to add the final story book type narrative, rounding out what was a wonderfully creative spot to craft.