It’s another short dance film from Apple, but unlike the one that followed Welcome Home, Bounce for AirPod by TBWA\Media Arts Lab is a visual treat. A wonderful behind-the-scenes touch is that the commercial’s the gravity-defying movements were made without wires or a harness – like the wire-free AirPods. Instead, trampoline surfaces were silk-printed to blend into the sets. Almost all of the movements were captured without CGI.

The story is simple. A man begins his city work day without relish, but when he puts his AirPods in his ears, he finds that he has acquired a “bounce in his step – which is wildly and wonderfully exaggerated. That the film is shot in black & white adds an alluring sophistication – which (to me anyway :ed) seems to evoke the glamour of a Gene Kelly movie.

https://youtu.be/yyNtm0LZiKc

The film was directed by Pulse Film’s rising talent, Oscar Hudson, and the outdoor scenes were shot in in Kiev before the entire town was recreated on a set inside Ukraine’s largest aeroplane hangar, with the ground constructed three metres off the floor so that the trampolines could be built into the sidewalks. It was shot in just 12 days, using 200 artists and technicians.

Bounce’s star is a French actor who is neither an acrobat nor a professional dancer but does have trampoline experience as a protégé of choreographer and acrobat, Yoann Bourgeois. The team wanted to make sure that he moved in a natural, not an obviously choreographed way. The scene in which he falls sideways beside a woman on a bench was created using practical effects. Two shots were merged into one. The actor bounced off a specially-crafted surface. The woman was lying on her back strapped into a bench built into a wall and the film was rotated 90 degrees so that she appears to be sitting.

The film’s song is a version of the 2016 song, I Learnt Some Jazz Today, by producer and songwriter, Tessellated. The original track was less than two minutes long, so it was re-recorded into a longer version, which is now available on Apple Music.