Alfa Romeo – The Road of Passion

Working on assignment for the Vienna based creative advertising agency Mama Said No (Formerly The Troublemakers), Mark worked on the music for a series of emotive short film pitches for Alfa Romeo’s 2019 Automobile marketing campaign. There were a series of projects pitched, and we are now very proud to present the resulting project in it’s full length form featuring our exclusively licensed score.

Having discussed the brief at length with the agency and film director, Mark set out scoring a soundtrack for the then unfinished edit. The goal was to evoke a magical nostalgia with the music, re-igniting childhood memories of driving in a father’s classic Alfa Romeo, indispersed with sagely wisdom in the form of his monologue prose voiceover (written by producer Istvan Simon).

Mark says, “we settled early on a theme written on my upright studio piano, a movement rich in tonality and dynamic build and tension. We wanted to support the emotional journey of the copy text with a simple orchestration so we kept the piano as the lead instrument and opted to record Hans Wagner, a cellist colleague and regular collaborator.

Adding programmed synth elements and some studio magic to the recorded piano tracks (reversing, resampling, reverberation) the end result is a balance between rich storytelling thematics and careful underscore dynamics.

Here is a short reportage by Der Standard about the campaign.

Credits:

Directed by Julian Sharp
DOP Marcel Schnellinger
Produced by Istvan Simon (Mama Said No Gewerbes m.b.H)
Mixed by Florian Machek-Tomasch (Wunderbros)
Music by Mark Peter Royce
Cello recorded and performed by Hans Wagner