Thursday, December 12, 2024

Apple’s Christmas ad showcases its hearing loss features

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Apple’s new festive ad shows how its latest software and hardware can support people with hearing loss, namely the Hearing Aid feature available through its AirPods Pro 2 earphones.

Directed by Henry-Alex Rubin, the ad takes place in a family home on Christmas Day, where we find a father, who has moderate hearing loss, sat with his family as his daughter opens her presents. The spot involves flashbacks evoking the father’s memories of his daughter growing up, but with the sound modified to reflect his hearing loss.

When he puts in his Apple earphones, he can hear with more clarity, including his daughter playing a cover of Crosby, Stills and Nash’s Our House on the guitar. This element of the story lends the film its name, which is fairly direct in what it’s trying to achieve in the audience.

The film’s sound editing was led by award-winning sound designer Paul NJ Ottosson, who has previously worked on films such as The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty.

The spot ties in with International Day of Persons with Disabilities on December 3, and comes after last year’s The Lost Voice – a fantastical adventure directed by Taika Waititi – and 2022’s celebratory spot The Greatest, directed by Kim Gehrig. Though it always falls around the Christmas ad season, this seems to be the first instance that Christmas is directly incorporated into the storyline.

The earphones have been given FDA De Novo clearance, a band dedicated to products that have no equivalent on the market. A recent reviewer who has mild hearing loss suggests the earphones and accompanying device features work fairly well.

Credit:
Agency: TBWA\Media Arts Lab LA
Production Company: Smuggler
Director: Henry-Alex Rubin
DoP: James Laxton
Post-production Company: Trafik
Editing: Cabin

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