Ampersand & Company approached us to make a content video for Cambridge Audio. Cambridge felt it was time to tell their story, and they wanted to use video to do it. Here is a look at Cambridge Audio behind the scenes.
Their story captured our imagination immediately. Being music lovers ourselves, we were intrigued to hear that what sets Cambridge apart from other brands is their ‘British Sound’.
Cambridge prides itself on the pure, unfiltered and natural sound its HiFi’s deliver, allowing us to hear music “as the artist intended”. After learning about the different sound and quality that other countries and brands have, we were hooked on creating a video that told the story in the most authentic way. We worked together with Ampersand and Cambridge to develop some initial ideas and directions for a video.
We wanted to tell the story in a relaxed and approachable way. It’s not a short story, the company was founded in 1968, so we wanted an engaging and fluid narrative told by a great actor to deliver that for us. Getting the balance between informative and engaging is always key but we also wanted to make the story more cinematic and captivating by using historical scenes with a great British tone to really bring the story to life.
We researched the specific years that Cambridge had key developments take place in their technology. We then added our personal touches to the story and created scenes that reflected that year, with a British emphasis.
With 1964 came Beatlemania. The beginning of rock and roll and a new era for music pushed forward the engineering of technology and the need to create more usable pieces of kit for a bigger market. We wanted to create a sense of hysteria in our scene – but without having the budget for huge crowds and thousands of screaming girls – we decided to see tat era through the eyes of a young teenage girl that would have been caught up in the hysteria of that era. The styling and art direction of our girl and her bedroom submersed us in a great 60’s memory.
1965 and the P40 amplifier was built by a couple of students studying at Cambridge University. We wanted to create the feeling of a couple of guys in a garage surrounded by wires, circuit boards and big ideas. We wanted the scene to reflect the feeling that this was where it all started. A back yard of their parents house. Personal posters on the wall, and a vintage car from that year really bought to life a sense of that era.
1968 and with the emergence of Rock and Roll recording facilities and technology took a leap forward. Cambridge was at the fore front of this. The best way for us to illustrate this key moment in their history was of course to take us back in time to a young rock and roll band jamming in a studio. We wanted to re-create early scenes of the Beatles in Abby Road. Cups of tea, frilly lampshades and old rugs set the scene perfectly. The equipment and mic’s we used were all from the mid 60’s and finished of with a soft black and white grade filter, film noise and flicker to the picture it feels gritty and authentic.
1980 and anarchy. We wanted our punks to feel youthful. We wanted to feel the new wave, so we made a contrast between them and their environment. Placing them in a quaint grandmothers type living room, really accentuates this new era explosion and their desire to revolt……as does them making out on the grandmothers couch.
Early 90’s and bad hair, bad clothes, but still some great music, the 1990’s was just a bit baggy! How could we highlight the CD in a not so obvious way? Of course, a girl doing her lipstick in the reflection.
We had a brilliant time bringing those scenes to life. The hair and make up, and art direction took some real skill by some very talented people. Thanks Cambridge Audio, let’s do it again some time!