Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/161463
A similar campaign for BMW was created last year. It used sound design-based transition tags that focused on the Olympics. For 2013, they took the idea further, by broadening the scope to incorporate all sports, and also adding focus on the BMW cars themselves. The set-up of the tags is similar in that an action happens at full speed, then a slowmo section takes place, and then the action picks up to normal speed at the end. "We tried to inject something unique into that middle, slow-mo section, as short as it is," he notes. "Some of them use a heart beat or breath, something to take you inside the head of who ever is doing the action in terms of the sports end. For the slow-mo part in the car tags, it was about revealing something different, something that made it unique, like highlighting the surface it's driving on or the weather condition it's driving through." For the car tags, all the car sounds used are actual BMW sounds that the agency provided. Thibadeau would then stretch, repitch, effect and filter those to create the slow-mo sounds. In most instances, he would take the same sound and affect it in several different ways. He would slow down the core sound, both in terms of pitch and time, using the Digidesign Pitch Shift plug-in. Thibadeau also used the GRM Tools Doppler plug-in often. He notes that the BMW sound effects were recorded with mics that were attached to the car. Therefore, he didn't have any sounds with that sense of passingby. "I used the GRM Doppler plug-in to help create the sense of motion. It's one of the better Doppler plug-ins I've found. With that, I created the sense of the car passing by." Other plug-ins included SoundToys FilterFreak, the GRM Tools Bandpass, and the Digidesign Vari-Fi. Thibadeau mainly used reverb plug-ins on the sports tags. His favorites were Avid's TL Space plug-in and Waves IR-L plug-in. A good example for sports was the basketball end tag. "You saw the basketball flipped up in the air, and hands come in and tip it away. It had a nice swell coming up out of the moment, and a good impact on it. I liked that one a lot," he notes. Once all the end tags were created, Thibadeau was tasked with mixing them. The challenge was mixing the end tags without knowing what dialog would be over them, or what the spot preceding it might sound like. The agency did provide Thibadeau with an example of a voiceover and a piece of music that might be used. "I was mixing in a vacuum," he recalls. "I did a scratch final mix, and then I would just supply the sound effects stem. I could only cross my fingers that whatever voiceover they were using for that particular spot would fall in the same range as the sample VO, so that it would all work out in the end." So far, so good, notes Thibadeau. They haven't had any issues with the mix on-air. Fortunately, the tags were all mixed in stereo. "If they were 5.1, I think that would have been too many variables," he says. The end tags will be on-air for all of 2013. The first end tag this year was for the Oscars. It included a musical fanfare written by the on-staff composers at The Lodge. Thibadeau, and the other two engineers, James Panepinto and John Northcraft, all worked to create the sound design for the end tags. "We're a relatively slim operation," says Thibadeau. "We keep it pretty small. Between the three of us, we worked on all the end tags and I ended up mixing them all in the end." Johnston. "The workflow between the two rooms is very transparent." Johnston recently completed a 5.1 theatrical spot for ad agency Creative On Demand, located in Coconut Grove, FL. The :30 spot for Baptist Hospital uses the dark theater environment and the surround speaker setup to trick the audience into believing the theater is full of sick people. After an :08 intro, with no visuals or sound, a sneeze is heard coming from the far back corner of the theater. By isolating the sound discretely on one side, in the far rear surround, the audience doesn't register the sound as being part of a commercial.They are tricked into thinking an audience member has sneezed. After another pause of black and Engineer Eric Warzecha uses Avid Pro Tools 10 at Heard City. OUTPOST AUDIO Steve Johnston is owner/ senior audio engineer at Outpost Audio (www.outpostaudio.com) in Miami. Over the past 18 years, Outpost Audio has worked with every type of advertising client, from fast food to cars to beer to videogames. They also do their share of ADR for films, TV mixing, and documentar y work for clients like the Discovery Channel. Johnston found he shared a lot of the same clients with 2150 Edit. Ten years ago they combined forces and built a new facility where audio post and video editing could be done under one roof. Outpost Audio has two audio suites with identical Pro Tools HD systems. They also have matched iso-booths, mics, preamps and compressor/limiters on their front end. Any work done in one audio room can seamlessly be transferred to the other, right down to recording VO pick ups. "I'll work on something for a day or so, and then our other audio engineer here, Juan Dieguez, might pick it up the next day right where I left off," says www.postmagazine.com Post • August 2013 31