Nintendo has a tough row to hoe against the likes of Sony and Microsoft, which is perhaps why, for its latest Game Boy campaign, Leo Burnett's creative team requested a soundtrack that sounded like nothing they'd ever heard before.

"We don't get that very often," observes sound designer Tim Gedemer of Spank! Music, LA.

Lacking any solid direction, he came up with a back story for the commercial, imagining the tiny videogame console was from outer space. "[I said:] 'Let's make it an alien life form, letting everyone know it's here and ready to be used'. They said: 'I don't know what you're going to do with that, but it sounds cool'."

The Game Boy isn't shown until the end of the spot, which is set both above and under ground. For the setup, Gedemer used opening sounds of cricket chirrups and dog barks, then removed them for the underground shots. The dog served another purpose as well, one familiar to sci-fi fans: "[It] is freaking out because it's sensing, before everyone else does, that something's not right."

In the spot, a seed sprouts and carves its way through the ground until it bursts forth and blooms due to a bright light [the Game Boy]. The sound of the flower pushing up through the earth was supplied by recording and processing the cracking of crab legs. Road flares were used for 'whoosh' accents, and an underwater recording created a sense of claustrophobia, enhancing the underground ambience. Gedemer also mixed in some heavily processed vocals previously used in the movie From Hell.

To herald the appearance of the Game Boy itself, he recorded a trailing-off cluster of piano hits and then ran it in reverse.

Everything was put together with a Pro Tools Mixplus system, a digital Mackie console and a Synclavier keyboard.

Apparently, Gedemer's interpretation hit the mark straightaway with Nintendo.

"The first presentation I made to the client was a slam-dunk," he says proudly. "They immediately started talking about the music."

COMMERCIAL: "Flower"
SOUND DESIGNER: Spank! Music and Sound Design, LA
CLIENT: Nintendo Game Boy
AGENCY: Leo Burnett, Chicago
DIRECTOR: Dante Ariola, MJZ, LA
THE SPOT: Opens with a shot of a backyard accompanied by suburban, ambient nighttime noises, before the camera dives underground. To the abstract plucking of an acoustic guitar, the viewer watches a seed sprout due to a bright light, and then it loudly carves its way through the ground until it bursts forth and blooms. With a burst of metallic noise, the light source is revealed to be a Game Boy.

Web.files:
Spank! Music and Sound Design> http://www.spankmusic.com