Antfood teamed up with Adobe and DentsuACHTUNG! to celebrate David Bowie’s 75th birthday and Ziggy Stardust’s 50th anniversary. In addition to scoring the launch film for an Adobe toolkit highlighting Bowie’s lasting impact on creativity and self-expression, we collaborated with digital experience agency RESN to produce an immersive, virtual gaming experience taking you back to where it all began – the dressing room where Bowie first became Ziggy.
The Ask
With the Adobe x Bowie toolkit, you can unleash your creative personas, just like Bowie. The launch video begins with a montage of archival footage celebrating Bowie’s most memorable personas, from Aladdin Sane to Ziggy Stardust, before returning to the present where you, the viewer, are invited to create your own creative personas using Adobe tools. The primary launch film features Bowie’s 1972 track Star, but our team at Antfood Amsterdam also had the opportunity to compose original music evoking the Ziggy Stardust era for an alternate soundtrack for the launch film.
Next, you’re invited to step into Bowie’s own dressing room in an immersive gaming experience to discover and collect Ziggy Stardust’s treasures. We were tasked to craft the entire sonic world of the experience, bringing to life Ziggy’s final encore in a way that pays homage to this icon and his era - from ambience & foley to custom sound design, music, user interface & voice-over.
Gus Machado, Copywriter at DentsuACHTUNG! Amsterdam explains:
Sound is the theater of the mind. It is the most elementary way of stimulating somebody else’s imagination. So, when we decided to put up an experience that transports the player to Bowie’s dressing room, we knew that to make it really immersive, the sound would have to play a huge part.
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AdobexBowie Toolkit: Antfood Amsterdam Team |
Making the Sound: Launch Video
Across the entire project, we aimed to recreate sounds and textures of the 70s and to build a soundscape that is true to the era. We used late 60’s electric instruments to create everything - such as a Fender Jaguar, Gibson Les Paul, Fender Rhodes, Precision bass, a Princeton guitar amp, and analog synthesizers such as the Korg ms-20 & the Minimoog. We recorded through analog equipment from that era such as a Pultec EQP-1A, UREI 1176 and preamps inspired in the vintage API consoles from the 70’s.
For the launch video, titled Hidden Treasures, we wanted to the composition to evoke the sound of the Ziggy Stardust era; building a portrait, through sound, of Bowie’s trajectory from the beginning of the 70s into the 80s. This campaign is designed to celebrate individuality and freedom of expression - so as well as drawing inspiration from the soundscape of the 70s, we infused the spirit of Bowie’s personas and art. The beginning of the track is a little flatter, allowing the archival footage to take centre stage before transitioning towards a punchy, 80s-inspired compressed sound.
(Insert track here?)
Making the Sound: Virtual Experience
In the virtual experience, we learn the story of Bowie’s treasures while backstage during Ziggy’s final performance. Working alongside Adobe’s substance team, experience studio RESN, and Uni_Verse Studio our goal was to create a sonic world that is as authentic as the original, paying homage to the creative legacy of Bowie.
The centrepiece of this world: the 9 hidden Bowie treasures. When users discover each of these, they are rewarded with a custom musical cue. We crafted 9 signature sounds using instruments used in Bowie’s performances and albums throughout his career, from the colourful DX7 digital synthesizer (used in Bowie’s track “Magic Dance”) for his make-up kit to an analog synthesizer for his iconic red platform boots. For his silver bracelets, we used Mellotron – a sampler instrument which uses analog recordings that were used on his album “Space Oddity”. We also used saxophone, acoustic & electric guitar, tambourine, and other percussion to bring the treasures to life.
Through a 1970’s radio in Bowie’s dressing room, a narrator guides us through the experience and Bowie’s heritage. Charley van Velhoven, Composer & Sound Designer at Antfood, describes how we took this concept and ran with it:
Simply using a plugin to process the narrator’s voice would not be convincing enough. The user must recognize the sound as truly coming from the radio speakers in the dressing room. To achieve a perfect, authentic sound we recorded the narrator’s voice onto a cassette, then recorded the tape playing from a tiny radio in the studio. Processing the VO in an analog style added character from the radio speakers and reflections of the studio and gave a really realistic feel.
We meticulously crafted foley to add texture and depth to the experience, as users interact with objects in every nook and cranny of the dressing room in search of treasures. In our Amsterdam studio, we dropped rotary dial telephones, rolled apples, clinked bottles, and everything else imaginable – bringing to life a symphony of objects in the dressing room.
Of course, a backstage experience of Ziggy’s final performance wouldn’t be complete without music & ambience. Working with RESN, we created several specialized ambience layers to give the feeling of being in an immersive, 3D space. To create depth, we layered loops of crowd sounds, feedback, musical stabs, footsteps, rattling furnaces, light bulbs, radio static, and more. Bowie’s voice even makes a sonic feature, used in a 1983 documentary where he says goodbye at his final 1973 London’s Hammersmith Odeon performance.
The consistent goal throughout the creative process was to intentionally craft a realistic and authentic experience. Gus Machado adds:
I think one of Antfood’s most interesting achievements in this project was to do everything on purpose. From coloured tube saturation to outdated magnetic tape processed voices – sound equivalent to technicolour film – to Bowie-esque arrangements and even the appearance of his own voice down the hallway. It was all to make you feel at a concert backstage back in the days when everything was more texturized and artisanal.
Reflections
Looking back at Bowie’s legacy, his impact on creativity, the pursuit of art and expressing one’s individuality cannot be overstated. This campaign aims to celebrate that, and to encourage others to follow the same journey. Alette Boogman, Creative Producer at Antfood reflects:
This was a dream project for us as a music company. It encompasses so many things we love - designing sound for a virtual experience, original composition, creative sound design, foley, UI, even a level of sonic branding strategy, and of course the one and only David Bowie. Projects like this demand a non-linear way of thinking and an integrated approach to collaborating with partners, which is exactly what made this one so rewarding. It was such a pleasure to work so closely with dentsuACHTUNG!, RESN, and Adobe. I’m really proud of what we could create together - something that’s a true homage to an icon, but also fresh, creative, and different.
“Hidden Treasures” Credits:
Client: Adobe x David Bowie
Agency: dentsuACHTUNG!
VFX: UNI_VERSE
VO & Sound Design: Antfood
“Dressing Room Virtual Experience” Credits:
Client: Adobe x David Bowie
Development/Production: RESN
Agency: dentsuACHTUNG!
Music & Sound Design: Antfood
Voiceover: Anthony Rudd