The story behind this job is great and it was such an amazing project to work on; the turnaround was UNBELIEVABLY fast and the brief was a little tricky – with another company already in the mix, submitting demos and library tracks the old fashioned way. It wasn’t working.

The CDs, Bronwyn & Loren put Lost Boy forward as a save-the-day option, encouraging their client to give music a little more thought. It’s worth saying that this team is absolutely KILLER – two of the most genuinely talented, funny and kind creatives in town. They make consistently sick work and I’ve admired their book for a long time. Bronwyn was actually voted the second funniest woman in The UK last year at the Funny Women Awards and I strongly recommend you all go see her stand up show, which is all about her life as a creative.

This being a stupidly quick turnaround we had to take the brief and set to work on it immediately – I took an EOP call with Bronwyn and Loren who explained that they wanted to make a folk cover of a Christmas song. It had to be simple, joyful and beautiful. We spoke for an hour, sharing ideas – the song had to be uplifting without being cheesy, pretty without being saccharin and folky without bearing any resemblance to Mumford and Son’s. It had to be a Christmas song in the public domain, instantly recognisable and utterly available. I said I would get on referencing right away and I put together a playlist of about 30 folk artists that might help us to hone the brief – Loren painstakingly listened whilst wandering around Westfield late that night. By the morning we had 3 client approved Christmas songs to cover and 3 key artists to serve as influences, with bits the team also loved from some other tracks on the playlist. This was unbelievably helpful to us, and with this information I was able to set to work immediately, with a small team, putting down the demos in exactly the way the team had imagined them.

We got to work at about 10 am, and by the end of the first day we had 4 demos to share with the team – a cover of each of the key tracks and an original which I am SUPER proud of and plan to release as part of my solo project next year…. The team shared with the client and together they picked out Jingle Bells which we had provided with and without lyrics, and we spent the next day getting it up to scratch. Once again, because of how clear the brief had been, the rest was really quite simple, with a few minor bits of back and forth around making the track more recognisable, adding some more Christmassy elements etc. We tracked 7 different brass parts, which gave the film the lift that the team wanted and they chose the best one. That concluded our two day cover session and our first ever Christmas project.

Below are the other tracks that didn’t make it. You can hear across them a very clear sonic identity; this is down to nothing more than a clear brief and an open channel of communication with an agency committed to doing things right.

… It's also very worth mentioning that all the above are available to licence for next year's Christmas campaign… And I know you’re already thinking about it… ; )

All of us at Lost Boy are really proud of the result and we hope you guys enjoy the film as much as we enjoyed working on it.

For all enquiries, contact Luca Antoniazzi

luca@lostboy.tv // +447847899041