Ogilvy & Mather Beijing gets Stephon Marbury and Kevin Love to star in music and basketball experiments for Chinese sportswear brand 361
Tribe (Shanghai) and Greenpoint Pictures (NYC) joined forces to create a music basketball experiment for Chinese sports wear brand 361 and Ogilvy Beijing.
Directed by Greenpoint’s The Hudson Dusters (Michael Kuhn and Niles Roth), the experiment saw basketball superstars Kevin Love and Stephon Marbury each jam with musicians for a day to a create an original melody. In this impromptu-unscripted scenario, the basketballer’s movements served to inspire the beat and melody played by the musicians. To compliment each basketballer’s style, the directors’ chose a different musical genre and environment for each scenario.
The first experiment saw Stephon Marbury jam with a world champion hip-hop DJ (DJ Shiftee), on an urban roof top court. Both native New Yorkers, Marbury is a quintessential street ball player who grew up playing ball not far from the same streets where hip-hop was invented and Shiftee learnt his craft. Marbury’s style and Hip-hop music are perfectly in sync. Throughout the day, Marbury and Shiftee experiment and develop a routine of plays, tricks and handles that makes for a frenetic and electrifying performance.
For the second experiment, The Hudson Dusters felt Kevin Love’s more classic style of play lent itself perfectly to classical music. Filmed at his old alma mater UCLA, Love is paired with 3 classical musicians – a cellist, timpani drummer and violinist. The cellist and timpani drummer were chosen to bring powerful, big, and gassy sounds much like Kevin’s plays on the court. To accentuate the more elegant and graceful elements of Love’s game, his speed and ball handling skills, a violinist was chosen. In contrast to the frenetic pace of Stephon Marbury’s & DJ Shiftee’s performance, Kevin Love and the classical musicians developed a piece that starts suspenseful and then builds in a powerful and dramatic crescendo.
Depicting basketballers’ style through music in this experimental and unscripted approach, made for a unique experience for everyone involved. The resulting TV commercials have just been released nationally in China and the longer form “documentaries” of the experiments are available on the web.
Credits – Production Companies: Tribe (Shanghai) & Greenpoint Pictures (NYC). Directors: The Hudson Dusters (Michael Kuhn & Niles Roth). Executive Producer: Monique Lillicrap (Tribe). HOP/Producer: Tatiana Rudzinski. DOP: Chayse IrvinOffline: Greenpoint Pictures
Grade & Online: PO Shanghai.