Move to the Beat with Somesuch & Coke

If you’re planning on throwing a pre-party for the fast-approaching London Olympics, you might want to give Somesuch & Co.’s Kim Gehrig and Lucy Kelly a call for some tips. The director has helmed a massive global Coca-Cola campaign for this summer’s 'greatest show on earth' featuring a documentary and music video fronted by Grammy Award-winning producer Mark Ronson, a team of hopeful international athletes and the voice of Katy B. Created out of Mother, the final result of months of work is a unique overarching spot for the drinks brand, merging sport and music, and will be screened at tomorrow’s Brit Awards from the O2 Arena in London.

With a brief to create an innovative soundtrack featuring the different sounds from the young athletes’ training sessions, Ronson and the Somesuch team first embarked on an international journey to meet the hopefuls to learn about their respective disciplines and capture sounds for the proposed track. The video footage from the various sessions - in places as far as the US, Russia and Singapore - aired on Channel 4 last week offering fans insight before the commercial airs at tomorrow’s big event.

“We looked for athletes from very different parts of the world, competing in some of the lesser-watched sports like archery and hurdling,” explains Gehrig. “[They] are all at different stages of their sporting careers – from gold medallists to juniors – which felt really interesting.”

All the athletes who feature in the campaign are training for the 2012 Games, but as yet, have no idea if they’ll make the cut or not. Darius Knight, a table tennis extraordinaire hoping to represent Great Britain; David Oliver, hurdler for the USA; Kseniya Vdovina, a Russian runner; Dayyan Jaffar, training for archery in Singapore; and Maria Espinoza from Mexico, a Taekwondo master, all took time out from their intense training regimes to offer up services for the Move to the Beat project, which furthers Coca-Cola’s Open Happiness campaign.

"The friendships we formed with the athletes has made the London 2012 selection process really nerve wracking," admits Somesuch producer Lucy Kelly. "We follow each athlete’s national and international competitions and have our fingers crossed that we'll be watching them perform in London again this summer."

When Kelly says 'again', she's referring to the fact that it won't be the first time they’ve ventured to the capital. Last September, after the five-month round the world shoot for the documentary, the production peaked with a separate two-day shoot held at an open air location in Hackney, East London for the main commercial.

Around 1000 fans were invited to a free festival-style event to feature in a live performance of Ronson’s track with Katy B also appearing, and the day’s activities would eventually make up the scenes of the final commercial, with the producer acting as a conductor on stage. It was the first-ever time that Coca-Cola has offered insight into its creative process.

“The audience performance was almost as important as Mark’s, Katy’s and our athletes’ for a take to work,” continues Kelly. “So whilst dealing with an incredibly complex commercial (and music video) shoot, Gustav Geldenhuys (producer), Tim Nash (exec producer), Kim and I also had to organise a great festival to keep them entertained. Knowing we had only five or six takes to get it right before losing our audience made it even more tense!”

“The doc crew was super-small and intimate,” adds Gehrig, “just six of us running around together. But the ad crew - that was big; four cameras and a helicopter. We had a live crowd with a teenage attention span. We only got five takes, then a noise complaint and had to stop… so it was pretty intense.”

The crowd was chosen on a first-come, first-served basis if they responded to a web video call put out prior to the event and the lucky early birds were also treated to free Coke, all the burritos they could eat and banging DJ sets in between takes as dusk fell in East London.

“The performance was a pretty mad spectacle so the crowd got really into it every time we did a take,” adds Kelly. “Resets took a while though so Kiss DJ Shortee Blitz kept the crowd hyped in between takes, not to mention a cheeky DJ set by Ronson himself. I don’t think it would have worked if we had normal extras, but London teenagers enjoying summer festival vibes rocked it!”

The final track from Ronson is a catchy motivating piece of music set to become the soundtrack to the Games but having worked on the project for so long now is Gehrig bored of hearing it?

“I’ve heard it a lot in many incarnations and sure, there will be more. What was interesting about working with Mark was that the track was constantly evolving. I’m not bored yet, but reckon I might be by the time the Olympics roll around!”

It’s clearly been a mammoth journey for everyone involved and while the commercial will be broadcast at one of music’s most high-profile events tomorrow, the athletes continue their training in the hope that they’ve made the sporting world’s equivalent.

“My fingers are crossed for them all. They’re all such delightful and dedicated people,” concludes Gehrig. “I hope I get to watch them in the summer. That would be amazing.”

Anywhere in the World will be released as a single in May and Somesuch & Co is holding a screening of the extended version of its Move to the Beat documentary on 29 February.