Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/47583
[ ] AUDIO FOR COMMERCIALS these rivets over and over, to develop this build effect. I'd put sections of it together so that it seemed like there was a continuous flow in and out of each building." Aside from building up, the letters would also fall and scatter. For this, Hall used a conga drum and tim- bales to accent the bouncing of the blocks.To add to this sound, Hall also recorded additional Foley."An- other thing I did was to take some broken pieces of junk from our Foley room and put them in a card- board box and rattled them around as much as I could. Every time the blocks would fall and hit, it was actually the sound of this cardboard box being hit with a sharp attack and you'd listen to the insides of all these pieces rattling around. It made the blocks seems like they came to life. It gave them a bit more weight to them." The Foley was recorded into Pro Tools using a combination of Neumann condenser mics, such as the Neumann TLM 127 used to record the wooden lizard for the block stacking sound, and Sennheiser 416 shotgun mics.The spot was mixed on a larger mixing stage using the Fairlight Constel- lation system. Creativity is an important aspect to Hall's daily workflow."I'm lucky to get to work on the more cre- ative projects, such as the Nanoblock spots," says Hall."I personally think creativity is very important in advertising because people see so much advertising these days it's hard for things to stick out, to become an iconic advertisement in this day in age. With all the media that's thrown in peoples' faces they're not really going to remember too much of what they see unless it's entertaining, unless it's unique and original. So I think it's very important that advertising is enter- taining.These particular types of projects are going to be on the Internet so there's no timeframe, there's no media buy associated with this kind of stuff.They can do whatever they like with it. It could be a five- minute spot or a 31-second spot. It's nice to be able to have a group of people who are focusing on the entertainment aspect.This was a fun project with great creative direction." TOSHIBA'S MILK Ad agency Goodness Mfg. worked with sound de- signer Gary Zacuto, owner of Shoreline Studios (www.shorelinestudios.com) in Santa Monica and Mike Rodriguez, senior audio mixer at Trailer Park Studios (www.trailerpark-studios.com) in Hollywood to create several spot for the Toshiba "Ramifications" campaign. Most notibaly is the 30 second TV spot called Milk, which features a zombie invasion. The sound design started with Zacuto, and his partner at Shoreline Studios, Chris Trent.Their chal- lenge was to choose sounds that were immediately recognizable in under half a second to match the fast pace of the video edits. "This spot had a very staccato look, with quick cuts.We had to match that look with the sound," explains Zacuto. "We felt that simpler was better, so we would pick a more promi- nent element in the cut to focus on, instead of trying to hit everything. From the point that the first guy 46 Post • September 2011 starts drinking the milk and turning into a zombie, to the larger group of zombies, we didn't try to hit every image in the action because you're talking about shots that lasted only a number of frames.The idea was to make each element read individually and build as we go." To create the zombie invasion, Zacuto turned to his personal collection of zombie sound effects he had made for other projects over the years. "This isn't my first spin on the dance floor with zombies. I seem to have become the zombie king over the years. But for every project, we treat the sounds differently to alter them and make them unique. We used the Waves Morphoder plug-in a lot. I've also been using the Slate Digital FG-X mastering plug-in, just to get more punch out of the sound. It's very transparent. It allows us to maximize the sound level without distorting or peaking above a level that broadcasters will accept. I used the reFuse Lowender plug-in to create sub-sonic frequencies to add more weight to the zombie footsteps.We also used the SoundToys PurePitch plug-in to create a layer of monotone on top of the zombie sounds that had a lot of modulation to it." Once the sound design was built, Zacuto sent his entire Pro Tools session off to Mike Rodriguez at Trailer Park for further revisions and final mix.When sending a session that contains a large number of tracks, Zacuto always makes organization a priority. "We divide our session into very clear categories. Dif- ferent types of sounds are categorized and the tracks are labeled so if Mike is looking for a footstep, he can go to the footstep area and he's not trying to work through 45 tracks." Once Rodriguez at Trailer Park received the sound design session, he worked with the creatives at Goodness Mfg. to make a few revisions to the sounds. "The creatives were pushing to really get the sound dialed in because it played a big role in the funniness of the spot," he says."The sounds needed to be very familiar to people, because you only had a few frames to convey a message. So, essentially, it was a situation where everyone worked as a team to make the spot [ H I G H E R ] funny. For example, there was this one really great cow sound near the milk area that was a little too ob- vious, and so we pulled out the cow, but later on we added a layer of walrus sounds over the zombie inva- sion scene. It was really funny." During the mix stage, Rodriguez worked to give each sound its own space. Using cuts with fades last- ing only a frame or two, he was able to keep the sounds from overlapping scene to scene.This rapid- fire change of scenes is what added comedy to the spot. "All the sounds had to have their own little space, but it all had to happen very fast," explains Ro- driguez. "That's what keeps the tempo up and makes it funny. Everything had to have the same amount of weight to it, too.There were no weak sounds." The mix was completed on Pro Tools|HD 3 using M+K speakers to monitor, as well Yamaha NS-10s. The combination of zombies and comedy make Toshiba's Milk an entertaining spot, which was cre- ated for TV, but it has also found some success on the Web via YouTube. "I think where the entertain- ment value plays itself out is on sites like YouTube, where these things can go viral," says Zacuto. "It's to the advertiser's advantage because they're going to get more exposure for the spot when it's entertain- ing. Putting your dollars into really good creative like this, and seeing it all the way through the post process at a high level, makes sense because in the long run you're going to get a lot more mileage out of the spot because it has the potential for a viral reaction." For Rodriguez, creating entertaining advertising is essential for competing in today's market."Commer- cials have to entertain because there are so many of them now. It's kind of a double-edged sword because there are so many outlets for media that, for the pub- lic, everything is kind of like white noise.Whatever you can do to compete against YouTube and viral videos of kittens can only help the product to get no- ticed. I've gotten a lot of good feedback on Toshiba's Milk. Goodness Mfg. makes a lot of good and creative spots.There are several in this Toshiba "Ramifications" campaign, and they are all entertaining." L E A R N I N G completely different," Ku Lea says of her work on Thor. "The quality is hugely dif- ferent. Huge." For many of the shots, Ku Lea started with mo- tion-captured data. "You're always changing it," she says."You never use it as is. Basically, on top of fixing things that don't align and making movements more dynamic or smoother, often you'd have to throw out a whole section and hand-key a new animation be- cause that's what's needed in the shot. Also, a huge part was that the Frost Giants had to have facial per- formance added, and that was entirely keyframe ani- mation. All the emotions and facials were completely keyframed. Additionally, one of the unique things on Thor was the size of the shots with the Frost Giants — they were huge." www.postmagazine.com Ku Lea credits her classes at Animation Mentor with helping her understand the workflow. "And, dur- ing the Q&A with the mentors, I learned how to take feedback. At Digital Domain, I found it interesting to ask my supervisor how he would approach a shot, and ask the more senior animators how they would [do so], to learn from their workflow." NEXT UP Both animators are fully committed to their ca- reers in animation. After finishing her work on Thor, Matuszak now works at Prime Focus in Vancouver. Ku Lea is wrapping up on the first term of Animation Mentor's Animals & Creatures: Master Class. Barbara Robertson is a contributing editor for Post's sister publication CGW. cont. from 40 cont. from 16