Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/161463
Audio for Commercials Steve Johnston in one of Outpost Audio's suites. 32 silence, a different sneeze is heard coming from the opposite side of the theater. Then one comes from the mid-side speaker. The sneezing and coughing start to happen faster and faster until the entire surround space is full of people sneezing and coughing. It's like their germs are being spread all over the place. By that point, a graphic comes up on the screen that says, "Feeling sick? Don't spread your germs around. Come see us at Urgent Care Center." When Johnston first heard the idea, he thought it was great, he says, "but I wasn't sure if it would work." He started pulling stock sneezes and coughs from the sound effects library at Outpost Audio. At that time, Johnston notes a co-worker was deathly ill and sounded terrible. So he put them in the booth so he could capture the real thing. "They had a great sneeze, and a really congested cough, and it made it really convincing. That really helped a lot.You can really tell the difference between someone who is faking a sneeze, and one that's for real." Johnston uses a Neumann U87 or a Sennheiser MKH-416 mic, depending on the project and talent. He runs the mic through a Universal Audio 6176 channel strip, and a Manley Variable Mu Limiter/Compressor. After recording the sick co-worker, Johnston confesses, "No one wanted to get in the booth for awhile after that." For Johnston, the real key to the spot is how it uses the surround space to tell the story. He feels that most surround work involves putting extra ambience or a little bit of music in the surrounds to fill out the sound, but it doesn't do anything to add to Post • August 2013 the story. In this case, Johnston notes that the whole purpose of the spot was to use the surround set-up to trick the listener into thinking the sounds were real. "When you put something that discretely in the rear speaker, you don't even register it as being part of the commercial if that's the first thing you hear," says Johnston. "So, it was an audio trick and it ended up working. From an advertising standpoint it seemed great, because it would be something that people would remember, and they'd actually talk about it." Having good surround speakers in the studio was vital to creating an effective surround mix. Johnston, who had worked on Genelec speakers for almost 20 years, decided to go with the JBL LSR4326P 5.1 surround system. It's a complete system with subwoofer and matched speakers that are self-calibrating. "After you've worked with a set of speakers for so long, you're very reluctant to switch over, but I got the JBL system on a recommendation," he notes. "I put them in, and they sound great. I'm very impressed with what JBL did with the system, and the redesign of their speakers." THE STATION Audio engineer Ron DiCesare at The Station (www.thestationmedia.com) in New York City became an early adopter of Pro Tools in the 1990s and remains at the forefront of commercial audio post today. The Station is a full-service post production facility that offers video, graphics and audio services. "It's great to be associated with the people at The Station," says DiCesare. "Man- www.postmagazine.com aging partner Hugh Broder really takes audio seriously. It's refreshing for me to see a fullservice facility where audio is not treated as an after thought but an important step of the overall process." DiCesare has a long history with advertising agency Avrett Free Ginsberg, and he continues his work on one of their most recognizable campaigns for Beggin' Strips. Their latest :30 spot, called Around The World, shows many different dogs across the globe, all asking for bacon. The talking dogs all have different voices. DiCesare first recorded the voices for the animatic, or test version of the spot, and then later modified those recordings for the full-up spot. "Many people recognize the voice of the dog, who is AFG's group creative director, Alex Bloom," DiCesare says. "Keeping with that tradition, Alex did all the different voices for all the worldly dogs, each with their own foreign accents. Some scenes required multiple dog voices in unison while still keeping the clarity of the words using the correct accent." The Beggin' Strips commercials are both on-air and on the Web. DiCesare is seeing that trend happen more often. He recently edited and mixed two :30 spots for Nair at The Station. The spots, conceived by ad agency The Joey Company, were originally intended to be Web-only, but actually ended up on-air too. "Initially, I did two Web-only commercials, but I wound up seeing the spots on broadcast TV," says DiCesare. "Thankfully, I made my stereo mixes within the requirements of the CALM Act, because you never know how or when your mixes will be heard outside of the studio." DiCesare is also seeing a difference in delivery specs, with more commercials being delivered as video files. As a result, he notes the audio spec is only stereo not 5.1, even for HD broadcast. "This is a little disappointing from an audio perspective, but I think it stems from the fact that file-based specs are still not standardized for delivering six tracks of audio into one video file. I know QuickTime is great for this, but not all HD broadcast [specs are] for QuickTime. It will be interesting to see how or if 5.1 can become standardized in this ever-changing world of video file formats." DiCesare points out the flip-side to a stereo delivery, as opposed to 5.1, is that clients have the option of using one final mix for standard definition broadcast, HD broadcast and for the Internet. "Clients are looking for something that can work across the board, despite the vast differences of broadcast and Internet. Once a spot leaves my hands, I can't control or guarantee that