Post Magazine

www.postmagazine.com October 2008 • Post 41 relate to The Today Show." Radice and his post audio department often access the 615 Music Library for Today Show promos. "The library is very deep," Radice notes. "Not everything on the show is warm and fuzzy; sometimes stories are sad and tragic, sometimes Today looks at financial or health topics.The 615 library offers great opportunities to find music appropriate to any type of story we're promoting." And when they find that music the audio department can further customize it. "We have an extensive post production operation here," says Radice, citing four Digidesign Pro Tools audio rooms, a recording studio, a dozen video editing rooms plus sound design rooms, all networked together. "Our composers can take a piece of music from the 615 library and add notes to heighten the sonic brand if appropriate. We can layer other music or sound design on top of it, move hits and add sound bites. "The music in the library is very accessible to our designers; it gives them a lot of opportunities to make adjustments to meet our production needs. It's what you could almost call 'liquid' — it's very easy manipulated.That's a hallmark of any good sound library today." With that in mind, the Video Helper and Megatrax libraries also "offer great flexibility and access," Radice observes."But we like to work with the 615 Music Li- brary because of the relationship we have doing custom music with Randy." C U S TO M I Z AT I O N As video production manager at the Indianapolis Convention & Visitors Associ- ation (ICVA), Seth Hancock keeps busy turning out a local TV series, tourism com- mercials, Webisodes and more. His award-winning video depar tment (www.indy.org) frequently taps the royalty-free Smar tSound Music Library, which offers tracks, atmospheric beds and clips in an array of styles and genres. Hancock estimates that 97 percent of the music he uses on the Doing Indy show comes from SmartSound. The series, now in its third season, originated as a video podcast. One year into its run it became available as Video On Demand on Bright House Cable and subsequently on Comcast Cable. Star ting this fall it will also air on local TV station WNDY. Hancock produces 40 episodes annually with shows ranging from five to 22 minutes in length. "The first season we showcased everything about Indianapolis," says Hancock. "The second season we looked at what makes Indy really unique. And for season three we've asked people to show us their Indy — what they love about Indy." Al- though the show's content continues to evolve and change, it was impor tant from the star t to have music in the series "even at negative 15dB," he says. "It helps drive the show." Hancock discovered Smar tSound at NAB 2006. Impressed with the ability to customize the library's tracks — something he hadn't been fully able to do with the sound library he was then using — he purchased 20 collections from Smart- Sound on disc. He has since added another 46 tracks purchased separately. Hancock uses the SonicFire Pro application to play Smar tSound tracks, edit them and map them to video, "almost like a timeline," he explains. "The best part NBC Agency's Frank Radice (center, inset) calls on the 615 Music Library to further enhance the network's news shows' — such as Today and NBC Nightly News With Brian Williams — sonic branding.

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