If you thought the Superbowl ads were good…

If any event could challenge the Super Bowl for outstanding TV advertising it is the Olympics. This week saw a round of amazing and arresting new spots hit the airwaves. A spot that really caught our attention is an amazing United Airlines Sea Orchestra spot, one of five major spots that will be shown during the Olympics.

Created by artists from around the world, including South Africa and India, each of the six spots paints a picture of optimism and exploration using unique artistic forms such as shed bird feathers, coloured sand and plastic modeling clay on glass. Musical scores of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue were performed by members of the L.A. Philharmonic Symphony and in one of the ads, Grammy award-winning American jazz legend, Herbie Hancock, and the classical world-renowned Chinese concert pianist, Lang Lang, who is performing live during the opening ceremonies, played a piano duet. The voiceover tag line is read by Robert Redford.

To see the spot click read more below.

“Sea Orchestra” (60 secs) – is a lively and visually rich commercial that introduces United’s new international first and business class cabins. In it, a United airplane crosses the ocean and is serenaded by an orchestra of animated sea creatures that are playing a unique version of Rhapsody in Blue using tubas, violins, French horns and the Indonesian gamelan. The score was created by Shy the Sun, a South Africa-based directing team, which used hand-drawn textures, computer animation characters and photographs of water, reefs and skies. Shy the Sun is Ree Treweeek (26) and her collaborator Jannes Hendrikz, (28). Ree has a strong background in illustration, while Hendrikz isboth a director and a compositor. The spot took over 6 months for 5 people to complete. These two Cape Townians along with Markus Smit can be found at The BlackHeart Gang