Making of BBC Olympic theme tune and trail

The BBC ran a campaign to create a soundtrack and use the music for their theme of the Olympics over the summer. Creative agency Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe Y&R developed the concept and the animation was created by Passion Pictures and produced by Red Bee Media. The landscape of the United Kingdom inspired the animators to transform the surroundings of both rural and urban locations into a giant sporting arena inside the Olympic Stadium. When i first saw these adverts during the course of the Olympics, i was amazed at how well the music complimented the animation and how it really captured many aspects of the high emotions running through London and the UK at the time.


This video is mainly focusing on the soundtrack, and how Elbow took the concepts of the animation and the development of how they managed to produce the end product.


Their task; to create the soundtrack and theme tune for the Olympics. Telling a story; comes from the script written by the agency.


The agency wrote a script, and the animators then did an interoperation of it. Pate Canderland, the animation director said theres a classic 3 X stretch at the athletics which he wanted to work around. If you take sprinting for example theres the waiting, the gun that goes off, the running and then the finish line. He could then work on the emotions of all steps in the course, at the same time Elbow wanted to incorporate these same emotions in the music.


Elbow started off just by tapping their own legs and making a beat, slowly making a rhythm and moving on from there. It had to be epic and over the top. They creating the music from the storyboards. The first thing you hear in the soundtrack is the brass fan fair, the first 5 notes represent the 5 rings of the Olympics sign. The aim was when people heard these notes they knew it was the Olympics. 

Inspiration comes from anywhere and every where. During the course of writing the lyrics, Guy Garvey was most inspired when Pete baby daughter walked for the first time. He took that feeling of pride and passion and wrote the lyrics about being there with you and backing your team. At the Olympics there are so many more losers than winners, Garvey felt it was only right to include the sadness of losing, yet let the music make you feel reassured. Elbow were purposely chosen for the writing of the music as you can feel whats going on within their music, it's ups and down and the emotional attachment to their writing.

As for the animation, Pete was inspired by the lighting on the streets outside his office. Born out of London and the UK, it's the small things aswell he felt that had really inspired him like the mood on the streets and just people walking around. You can see how he's incorporated this in the animation itself. Understandably he wanted to pay as much respect to the athletes as possible, creating fantasy superhero yet at the same time realistic characters in the animations. He mentioned it would be a classic theme to include sunny skys for the Olympics, but instead they wanted to create mood by showing overcast skys with sun breaking into the gaps.

By throwing in a gospel choir it made the music more powerful and emotional. It was the coming together as all of the UK as viewers of the olympics.


I've wondered a long time, when making a short film that what would be more suitable, creating the music first or making the film first. For a band as talented as Elbow they quickly got off the mark with a quick beat that they could then build and add on to over a period of time. I can take the inspirations of the quality of work that was done both with the animation and soundtrack; they wanted an epic, emotional sound to compromise the large scale event, and when i was watching the Olympics i felt all of this. Thinking of sound for our animation with the two characters, we don't expect to use much dialogue, and with the type of mood we're going for i think a simple piano soundtrack could work but we will decide once the animation is complete.