Adventures in sound design.

ultratwin · Post by **ultratwin** » Tue Apr 03, 2012 2:09 pm

This was a first for me: a pair of Wi-Fi camera promos for Youtube.

For this latest Samsung Camera project I worked on over the past month, I was given nothing more than a series of edited video clips, and a promise to get some on-site ambience to help facilitate the sound design process. Due to the staff clambering about while shooting the video, ambience never happened, and it turned into my first serious sound design + composition project to date. Armed with a Zoom H4N and a small sound effects library, I nonetheless found that the process has more to do with soundbite stereo effects, reverb, and relative volume of ambient effects when music is present.

The director was from another company, but fortunately was a minor fan of my work from previous projects was very fun to work with. The videos themselves were shot in Thailand, as they needed a forest/jungle to do one sequence in, and models were flown in from "nearby" Australia and surrounding countries. Robot bear with dude in suit 2 days of shooting in 36˚C weather, despite my love for Thai food I'm glad I wasn't there.

Music on the bear track was fairly straightforward: Somewhat obvious hat-tipping to Jurassic Park, Mission Impossible, and Raiders of the Lost Ark, the bigger problem being that the original 2:24 mix progressively turning into 1:52 (after four vexing mixes!), killing a lot of the orchestral flow that I worked days on end to craft [/amber switch tip'd], forcing me to make each section plow into the other with less emotional reserve, so to speak. The other "cable cutter" video was more sound design than music, but a fairly keen girl on our editing staff threw a funky house tune in the pre-edit that inspired me to do something simple and boring, to emphasize the overall point of the video. My boring house tune seemed to come out alright, in context.

The only disappointment I had after viewing this morning was from immediately noticing the way that compressing while uploading to Youtube has messed up the audio, delaying some sections up to a very noticeable (to me at least) 0.25".

[youtube][/youtube]

[youtube][/youtube]

lorez · Post by **lorez** » Tue Apr 03, 2012 2:33 pm

really good work Ultra, really like them and don't notice any of the issues you raised with the first one. The sound design module I did on my course years ago was one of my favourites. We had to use tape loops, chinagraph pencils and BBC radiophonics sound effects records though

</showingmyage>

also that bear is brilliant

ultratwin · Post by **ultratwin** » Wed Apr 04, 2012 4:38 am

lorez wrote:really good work Ultra, really like them and don't notice any of the issues you raised with the first one. The sound design module I did on my course years ago was one of my favourites. We had to use tape loops, chinagraph pencils and BBC radiophonics sound effects records though </showingmyage>

also that bear is brilliant

Thanks for listening!

Woah, scribbling chinagraph markings on tape...Are we talking about the '60s?

A friend of mine from over here was in London for about 4 years studying sound design and analogue synthesis, by the time it was over she was convinced that "making it yourself" was the way to go with most film work she headed into, when considering the power of natural acoustics in a given environment, along with not having to scour through volumes and volumes of recorded material. Thank goodness we've got teh intranetz and sites like www.freesound.org , as a lot of folks who put sounds up graciously either waive their rights or just asked to be noted (Shrubbery effects on the bear track taken from one batch).

Lucamo · Post by **Lucamo** » Wed Apr 04, 2012 6:08 am

This is so cool. What a wonderful job to have.

Never really imagined there were people composing the music in these ads, dunno why.

lorez · Post by **lorez** » Wed Apr 04, 2012 9:42 am

ultratwin wrote:Woah, scribbling chinagraph markings on tape...Are we talking about the '60s?

checky bugger, it was 1990 actually. the things I could do with a revox & tape loops

ultratwin · Post by **ultratwin** » Wed Apr 04, 2012 10:44 am

Oh, I see. Oops'd.

Seems either like such archaic work, or something John Cage/Edgard Varese fans would enjoy. We're so spoiled these days with fast computers and DAWs.

Lucamo wrote:This is so cool. What a wonderful job to have.

Never really imagined there were people composing the music in these ads, dunno why.

I agree. Music in commercials seems so "automatic", eh?

But yeah, going to work to make music every day really is a dream come true, I daily count my blessings on just to get paid to be creative and stuff.

And not unrelated to music embedded in commercials, random folks are always asking "what song is this?" on Youtube clips I've done for Samsung, and I've come to realize that the majority of commercial film music that's never been on the radio was probably a custom job. Sure, because our company does the video work and we hand over the entire project to each client I will never see royalty from nearly all of these things (that's the way it works in this country), it's a very stable job for me with some decent perks, including being able to record The Majestic High tunes with my wife (during office hours!) when there aren't any serious projects to work on...Which also happened to include a huge chunk over time dispersed over the last 5 months. All in all, finally getting a proper job at age 39 may have been only due to decades of mundane preparation, but it's totally been worth the struggle to get here.

Excuse my funky grammar, I hadn't spoke English for a few weeks prior to shooting this interview I put up on Facebook a few weeks back, describing some of the things that go on at work (and in my brain):

[youtube][/youtube]

cobascis · Post by **cobascis** » Tue Apr 10, 2012 1:17 am

Awesome. If that bear was real he would climb that tree with ease.

ultratwin · Post by **ultratwin** » Tue Apr 10, 2012 3:11 am

Another round of thanks for watching.

Although a really expensive rental suit from the States (two robotics operators and a groomer/saliva applier were flown in with the package), the poor dude in the suit was actually an unfortunate Thai chap who had to non-stop brave the 37˚C temps while really boogieing around (watch 1:11 to 1:20 or so) on multiple takes.

I'm so glad I wasn't there, in the meantime I was chilling(literally) in Seoul putting together a boring alt-pop BGM track with a "choo-choo train" drum loop courtesy of Big Fish Audio's very decent LA Drums. Cheapo acoustic, Kontakt4's upright piano module, Vienna Symphonic instruments on the strings and oboe d'more, Cindi's Televersary, Ric 360-12, and Moollon J-Classic on most of the other parts:

[youtube][/youtube]