Post Magazine

42 Post • October 2008 www.postmagazine.com is, if I find a piece I really like, I can choose different variations of it. I can use the song as given, turn off the solo guitar, for example, cut shor t the beginning, or turn off the ending and fade out. I can also take reference video out of Final Cut, drop it into SonicFire Pro and do a mood map of a song with keyframes. I can use the song as back- ground behind dialogue at some points, I can bring it up full level at others, or just play its drums and bass." He finds a lot of "great sonic cues" for Doing Indy in SmartSound's Producer series, whose tracks range from rock to funk to techno. "It's so upbeat; for a show like ours, that's what you want," he declares. But he also combs the other Smar t- Sound collections for the right piece. He selected the "Gods and Demons" clip from the Theatrical Impact series to give the feel of a classic battle to a segment on a Roller Derby bout; he chose the fiddles and Old West twangs of "Cowboy's Friends" from the Country Jamboree series for a piece on the Eiteljorg Museum and its renowned col- lection of Western art. He also turns to Smar tSound for music for tourism-themed commercials. When he was looking for something "calm and relax- ing" to accompany a spot promoting the In- dianapolis Museum of Ar t he searched those key- words online, auditioned tracks and opted for "A Night in Paris," which has "a nice relaxed beat with mandolin and accordion." Hancock notes, "There's no more cost effective way to go than SmartSound for the volume of music we need. It has really been a lifesaver, and it's ver y well received by ever yone in our office." O N L I N E F L E X I B I L I T Y An editor who cuts ever ything from film trail- ers to feature films on Avid and Final Cut Pro plat- forms, Yasu Inoue of bi- coastal Red Circle (917- 822-0512) prefers using online sound libraries for their speed and efficiency, and for those times when he's working late nights and weekends at home. He's a fan of the Gratis Music Library, an all-digital production music librar y offering over 5,000 tracks. Gratis users employ an advanced search engine and download tracks directly from the Web- site after an easy licensing process (they may also request tracks on a digital hard drive). "Gratis makes my job easier in tight deadlines," notes Inoue. "It has an awesome database software to refine searches. And I can music edit the tracks to make sure all the hits work perfectly with the picture. I usually download MP3s for temp tracks for features or AIFFs for higher-quality tracks for a TV mix. Then I impor t them into Avid or Final Cut and put them into the timeline." Inoue usually discusses with the project's director what sor t of music he or she prefers — from Hans Zimmer to Beck to Led Zeppelin. He might use that music as temp tracks for cer tain scenes or take cues from the director and search Gratis for a sound based on that style. Inoue was introduced to Gratis by com- poser Harry Manfredini, who's known for his work on Friday the 13th and other features, and also writes for Gratis. "I was cutting the indie feature iMurders and Harry was scoring the film," he recalls. "I prefer to work with some music for the rough cut so I used Harry's past tracks and his new contributions to Gratis for the temp track. Then Harr y took things to the next level and reinter- preted them for the final score." The editor is currently working on Dis- cover y Channel's Engineering Thrills series about the technology of theme park rides. This time he's using the online Audio Net- work librar y for tracks as diverse as classic Hollywood film scores to iconic rock. With an easy-to-use interface he can "find any kind of music in seconds" for the exciting new show which has no original music of its own. VA R I E T Y I S K E Y At Pluto Post (www.plutopost.com), a full-service boutique post house in Birming- ham, MI, which primarily ser ves the spot market, almost every project features music from the company's extensive array of sound libraries. From tracks for car dealer event promos with a short broadcast run to music evocative of current or iconic ar tists whose actual work is too pricey for the client to license, sound libraries can fill just about any need today. One of Pluto Post's much-used sound li- braries is Omnimusic, which audio engineer/ sound designer Tim Kelley and his colleagues access via Sound Miner. "We set up the Sound Miner software and Omnimusic sent us .WAV files on hard drives, which were en- coded with metadata," he explains. "We can search by track title, description or the com- pany that produced it and drag and drop the track into Pro Tools." Omnimusic often offers variations of tracks giving Kelley "a lot of options.They might have the track fully mixed, with or without vocals, just a drum mix, or just a guitar mix so I can cut between what I want to use," he says. Sometimes Kelley might even want to over- dub an instrument recorded at Pluto Post. He and his fellow audio engineers can also alter metadata to recategorize tracks or bet- ter customize the search."If something is clas- sified as rock but is really jazz, we can go in A U D I O V enice S O U N D E F F E C T S L I B R A R Y Easy-to-reference 2-DVD set of stereo ambient backgrounds and sound effects of Venice, Italy 1SWXGYXWEVIPSGEXMSRWTIGM½G • Detailed descriptions simplify your search • Electronic index shortens search time To order, visit www.VeniceSoundEffects.com Seth Hancock calls on SmartSound's music for the ICVA-produced Doing Indy. Editor Yasu Inoue of Red Circle (inset) uses the Gratis Music Library on projects like this indie film iMurders. Using Sound Libraries

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