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The Art of Sound Design Blast's Joe O'Connell was sound designer/mixer on Sony's One Block via agency McCann Erickson. 34 tener with a full-range sonic experience and avoiding the need to push the faders to fight for space in frequency ranges that were already used up. Since the series is on YouTube, most viewers will be listening over headphones, so the audio team built many little details into the track. For example, the beginning of Episode 18 is shot through the point of view of the character Mateo. We hear his breathing, as well as the rain outside. When Mateo gets up and carries a lantern down the hallway, even though we don't see the lantern after he picks it up, we hear the various squeaks of metal. As he moves through the house, we also hear the sound of the rain change. "I took the Foley sounds that Geordy Sincavage created at Sinc Productions — all the lantern squeaks he did — and I threw in some bass ambience to make it a little more unpredictable," says Kellough. "Then when we're going from that room and down the stairs, I wanted to give it some space, so the rain changes as you leave Mateo's quarters to the hallway to the stairwell and to the street. We have different rain sounds, and it's panning around with the viewer because we are Mateo in that scene; we are seeing through his eyes." Kellough designed the sound of the exoskeleton worn by Jason, the leader of a neoLuddite group, by recording hand generators, hand-crank flashlights and different types of pliers, and other small tools. In some scenes, for example outside the airport when Jason is walking away from Kenneth and his group, Kellough added the small detail of "spurs" to the exoskeleton sound. "I put in little tiny cymbals because I wanted Jason to have spurs, because I was thinking that this guy is like the sheriff of this town." Kellough didn't just think about the small sound details to put in, he also focused on what to leave out. He wanted to include elements that tell the story further, and not just elements that sound cool. Scaling things back, Post • June 2013 and seeing how little he could get away with while still driving the story was something that challenged Kellough. "There were scenes from the character's POV that would be a great opportunity to have some overlay of the H+ design, where we could hear the H+ malfunctioning or other sounds, but at the heart of it, what we're really hearing is this person's experience." Kellough gives an example of a scene in which the character Topi walks into a bunker and sees body bags and a dog. "We used little things like the gate creak, the dog's breath, the zipper on a body bag, and the fluorescent light. It didn't take much to give you that sense of isolation." Kellough, working on the series from his home studio with a Pro Tool|HD Native system, collaborated on the sound design with co-supervising sound editor Craig Henighan. He also worked closely with dialog editor Pauly McKinnon and composer Nathan Lanier. "I couldn't have done it without the crew," he notes. "It was a collaborative effort from the word go." SONY ONE BLOCK SPOT Blast New York (www.blastny.com) is a full-service audio post facility that has been churning out high-profile TV spots for over 10 years. Their talented audio team offers surround mixing, sound design, and original music all under one roof. Recently, Blast's Joe O'Connell, was sound designer/mixer on One Block, a :60 TV and cinema spot for Sony Xperia created by McCann Erickson, NY. One Block was recently shortlisted for the 2013 AICP awards. It also won both Best Sound Design and Outstanding Mix at the 2013 Amp Awards. In the spot, we follow an Xperia user as he leaves a diner and goes back to his apartment. On the way, he walks through four very different scenes, from a Matt & Kim concert, through a Spider-Man movie, through a mili- www.postmagazine.com tary-combat game, and finally into his apartment. The scenes highlight the features of the Xperia phone. The four scenes change fluidly, blending one into the other, creating the "one block" experience. "As a sound designer, this is the kind of spot you want to work on as often as possible," says O'Connell. "Every piece of it was interesting." He worked with assistant sound designer Mat Guido, divvying the scenes up and working on separate Pro Tools HDX systems. "When we both had some things to listen to, I would go check out what Mat was doing, and he'd come and check out what I was doing," says O'Connell. "When we thought we had something that was really working, I would have Mat consolidate his tracks into my session." After combining their sections, they began to fine-tune the sound. Creating smooth transitions between each scene was the biggest challenge, and O'Connell and Guido used key elements of the sound design to help blend the scenes together.They made conscious choices about which sounds from the upcoming scene to bring in, and which sounds from the current scene to fade out, in order for the transition to sound seamless. This was no simple crossfade. "It was all about finding key elements in the upcoming scene." In the first scene, the music track, "Let's Go," by Matt & Kim, creates the first transition. The Xperia ion user plays the song on his phone as he leaves a diner.The song is filtered to sound like it's coming through earbuds. When he steps outside, the song becomes full-frequency with added outdoor crowd sounds. Giving it the feel of being at a Matt & Kim concert on the street. According to O'Connell, "That filtering with his headphones to the full-frequency sound, and cross-fading the ambience from the interior diner to the concert, was something that we really worked at. It's what makes that transition work and makes the audience want to watch more."