Donald Trump

[Newsa] Elizabeth Banks' 'Fight Song': How the Celebrity-Studded Video Came Together

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• published: 28 Jul 2016
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Inspired by the 'Pitch Perfect' movies, Banks, producer Bruce Cohen and video creator Mike Thompkins corralled their celebrity pals to sing the Clinton campaign's unofficial anthem. The idea for the celebrity-studded, a cappella video of Rachel Platten 's "Fight Song" that served as a rousing centerpiece of the second night of the Democratic National Convention was triggered more than a year ago. Actress-turned-director Elizabeth Banks and Oscar-winning producer and political activist Bruce Cohen ( American Beauty ) found themselves chatting at a fund-raiser for Hillary Clinton at the home of Tobey Maguire and his wife, Jennifer Meyer, back on June 19, 2015. Banks' first feature-directorial effort Pitch Perfect 2 , about an all-girl a cappella singing troupe, had opened in theaters just a month earlier and was already well on its way to its eventual worldwide gross of $287.5 million. And the two began talking about how they could help boost Clinton’s candidacy. Sia, Elizabeth Banks, Aisha Tyler and Other Stars Sing DNC Anthem 'Fight Song': Watch In 2008, Cohen had produced a video that went viral in which Jack Nicholson, slipping in and out of character in some of  his signature roles like The Joker and The Shining ’s Jack Torrance, endorsed Clinton’s previous run for the nomination. “I had it in my head to do something like that again,” Cohen recalls. As he and Banks huddled, Cohen says, “We got the idea right on the spot to do something inspired by Pitch Perfect .” Once the convention neared, they took the idea to the convention planners. By then, Platten’s “Fight Song,” first released in February 2015, had become an unofficial anthem of the campaign in conjunction with the slogan “Fighting for Us.” Banks had previously worked with Mike Thompkins, a Canadian singer-songwriter whose found success releasing a cappella videos on YouTube , and she and Cohen enlisted him to help conceive and assemble the video. Visually, Thompkins suggested, its look should be simple, but also bold and graphic so that it would stand out. The actual production took place over the course of the past month. A couple of recording sessions were held in New York and Los Angeles, while other celebrities invited to participate shot their own self-videos and submitted them. Although the video has a heavy celebrity quotient -- from Aisha Taylor and America Ferrera to Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Kristin Chenoweth -- civilians, representing real people from various walks of life, like a young boy soprano who appears in a Hillary T-shirt, were also recruited. “Part of the concept was that everyone would appear separately,” says Cohen. “Because if we had needed all of those people together in one ‘We Are the World’ session, that would have been really hard to organize.” Watch Elizabeth Banks Use 'Hunger Games' Joke, 'We Are the Champions' Gag to Mock Trump at DNC Most of those who took part performed solo turns. A few, like Banks and John Michael Higgins, who sang together in front of a green screen at one of the recording sessions, and Rob Reiner and his daughter Romy, who provided one of the self-videos, turned in duets. “We actually liked the creative thinking that some people did at home when they sent them in,” says Cohen. Some of the participants sang the whole song, but everyone took a shot at singing the chorus, clapping and dancing. Thompkins then mixed and matched the individual video shoots together based on who sounded best on which parts. “There’s a great little bit in the middle when Ben Platt and Idina Menzel do this amazing duet,” says Cohen. “And Rachel Platten, whose song it is, she’s sort of the connecting tissue, singing the whole thing, and we were able to fill in around her.” To tailor the song specifically to the Clinton campaign, a few lyrics were adjusted “to have it on message with ‘The Fights of Her Life,’ which was the theme last night at the convention,”...