Carol of the Balls: Marty Supreme and ESPN’s Ping Pong Singalong Is Musical Magic

Already much anticipated in its own right, Christmas Day this year has a couple of extra exciting spectacles in store for US audiences. Not only is ESPN putting on an all-day schedule of NBA matchups, but December 25th is also the release date for A24’s new table tennis blockbuster, ‘Marty Supreme’, directed by Josh Safdie and starring Timothée Chalamet.

Disney CreativeWorks and A24 paired up to release a shared promo film for both of these festive events, created by ESPN Creative Studio and directed by Julia Pitch of Greenpoint Pictures. Edited in-house by Greenpoint’s Ben Schwaeber, the ad shows Timothée Chalamet and retired NBA superstar Metta World Peace battling it out over the table.

This unleashes a percussive symphony where the noises of the game become rhythmically entwined to play the Christmas tune ‘Carol of the Bells’. Pings and pongs become dings and dongs as a dramatic choir builds up the tension in haunting, if slightly ludicrous, style – and that’s not a comment on Chalamet’s windbreaker-glasses combo.

“Knowing the track was Carol of the Bells, I wanted the spot to tonally match the song’s hypnotic undertones, joyful spirit, and precision from the very beginning,” said director Julia Pitch in a statement. “The film is designed to create a sense of mystery. The song. The choir. The boom operator. Every beat became an opportunity for surprise.”

The music and sound is at the very core of the idea, and with an A-list actor and an NBA icon attached, Machine’s senior sound designer and composer Michalis Anthis told LBB it was one of those briefs where the answer was “an immediate yes”.

“We jumped straight in,” he said. “During the initial animatic stage we worked closely with Julia Pitch, Ben Schwaeber and the ESPN team; producer Mike Prado and CD Justin Swiderski, to figure out the music structure. This was then used as reference for filming and ultimately guided the edit.” Having locked in the BPM, the ‘Marty Supreme’ table tennis consultant was on set to make sure both performers were hitting the exact rhythm during filming.

^{Above: Behind the scenes with Michalis Anthis}

Discussing his approach to creating this ambitious track, from which the rest of the ad could be shaped, Michalis said, “We experimented with different parts of the composition and different phrases. The ambition was for the main theme to be played solely with ping pong hits, but none of us were sure how well this would translate. The challenge was melody recognition without the support of classical instrumentation.

“After a few rounds of testing we knew it would work, so we rolled up our sleeves. Yes, we have taken real-world sounds, and incorporated them into a musical track before, but not in this form and not for a classic Christmas piece.”

Having first built out the foundation of the track, to dictate the placement of the other musical and sound design elements, Michalis and his team tested various tempos and sections to land on quick audio recognition. And from that point, they moved on to foleying, layering sound design, composing and arranging the choir, and more.

^{​Above: Behind the scenes with Michalis Anthis}​

“We recorded all of the table tennis sounds – paddle hits, table hits, shoe squeaks, clothes and grunts – edited them and added them to a sampler,” he explained. “This allowed us to tune and pitch these sounds and play the main melody on a keyboard with each of them.

“The key was figuring out the right pitch, so we [could] get the idea across and the listener recognises the melody. The sounds were used as an instrument that introduces the main theme and then gradually transitions to the background as the choirs come in. For the choirs the parts were also written in advance and placed in the sketch. In the first part, the choir is singing the secondary melody of the track but then changes into an original part we composed.”

The process was as experimental, and as difficult, as it sounds. Nailing the pitch of the ping pong balls was especially challenging. “It took multiple rounds of tuning to get it right,” he added. “Another challenge was how to fit the most recognised parts of this iconic song in such a short amount of time in the edit.”

^{​Above: Behind the scenes with Michalis Anthis}​

That said, the Machine team is proud of the final result, with the opening of the spot being a particular cause for celebration for Michalis. “It has a little bit of mystery, magic and the four notes of the song played really slow from a distant cello in the background.”

It’s an expertly crafted soundtrack for an ad that perfectly balances dual brands in a way that feels unique to Timothée Chalamet’s recent promotional tour de force.

A vocal New York Knicks fan himself, the actor has had his fun bringing a different sport into the spotlight in recent weeks, culminating satisfyingly in this inventive collaboration. And of course, while ESPN’s Christmas schedule gets its own shoutout, Timmy makes sure to get his much repeated call-to-action heard, for perhaps one final time, before the big day – but this time, from the mouth of Metta World Peace: “Marty Supreme. In theatres Christmas Day.”