Post Magazine

September 2013

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Pros give us a glimpse into their toolboxes. By Jennifer Walden Izotope's RX2 Advanced: The graphic display helps users easily identify and remove problem frequencies. ECHOLAB Sound designer/composer Gavin Little is the owner of Echolab (www.echolab. tv) in Dublin, Ireland. Before starting the studio, Little spent 10 years at Dublin's Image Now, where he worked on graphic design, motion design and audio for a variety of different projects. In 2001, Little established Echolab, which specializes in sound design and original music for TV commercials, show packages, theatrical trailers, short films and sonic branding. Everything is custom created to picture. "Often our projects are a hybrid of music and sound design," describes Little. "We compose music in the same way that we design sounds, building the entire soundtrack to serve the film rather than having a 'wallpaper' music track that is in the right tone and tempo for the picture." Echolab's client list includes many international brands, like Nike, Gatorade, Sony and Audi. Earlier this year, Little worked with the London-based design and graphics studio ManvsMachine on a launch video for Nike's new Kobe 8 sneaker. Little notes that the visuals are divided into dark and light sections that range from high speed to slo-mo. Little wanted to create extreme contrasts in the soundtrack, from intense speed and motion to the ethereal slo-motion soundscapes to match the visuals throughout. The track builds up to the final shot, where the shoe makes a snake-like figure 8. Little often works in Apple's Logic Pro, a DAW that composers often favor over Pro Tools. It also works great for sound design projects that incorporate a lot of MIDI. One of Little's favorite audio tools is the built-in Logic Channel EQ. In addition to being a versatile multi-band EQ, it has a frequency analyzer that allows you to see the frequency curve of your audio signal. Using the analyzer, you can adjust the graphic display, or the parameter controls, to dip out problem frequencies that are distorted or clipped, or EQ the audio in any way that best fits your mix. Apple's latest version, Logic Pro X, works with OS X 10.8.4 or later. Little recently updated to the new version. "It has been a very smooth transition. Before that I was using a combination of Logic Pro 9 and Soundtrack Pro. It was buggy as hell but amazing for sketching up sound design to picture, creatively and fast!" You can purchase Logic Pro X in the Mac App Store for $199.99. Just download and install. On the channel EQ, Little likes that the analyzer function gives him a visual representation of the audio. "As I come from a visual background, this is so intuitive for me to shape sounds and also to quickly remove frequencies that I don't need within sounds," he states. "That frees up space for other audio tracks that are struggling to cut through. Or, I can highlight one part of the sound to emphasize its character." For the Nike Kobe 8 launch video, Little wanted to keep the shoe sounds realistic in the basketball court scenes. He asked his assistant sound designer, Joe McHugh, to record sneaker skids and impacts on a wooden floor. Using the Logic Channel EQ, Little made those small sounds stand out in the busy track. "The Logic channel EQ was essential in shaping key detail sounds on each shot. It made it possible to have elements like the creaking floorboards and sneaker skids become hero sounds." PLUSH Michael Levesque, Jr. is a partner/senior mixer/sound designer at Plush (http:// plushnyc.com) in New York City. He's been around recording his whole life. He spent much of his childhood at Nutmeg Audio Post, which his father started in 1975. "I have pictures of me in the studio when I was five years old, playing the drums. It's been part of my life. Becoming an engineer was a natural progression for me. I always knew that this is what I wanted to do." Plush, started by Levesque and his father in 2008, has four full-up rooms, as well as a dedicated mix room, all outfitted with the exact same gear for seamless transitions between rooms. All their rooms are set up for 5.1 mixing and run the latest version of Avid Pro Tools 10. Another nice facility feature is their 3,000-square-foot deck, with available WiFi, exclusively for Plush clients to use. With a ton of audio post places in New York City, Plush prides itself on client service. Levesque notes that at Plush, the client is always put first. Plush provides audio post services for a variety of different projects, from highend ads to documentaries. For each type of project, they have an engineer who is an expert in that medium. Levesque does a lot of work on documentaries and TV shows. He recently finished the audio post for a Cooking Channel show called The Freshmen Class. To create the sound design for the show's graphical transitions, www.postmagazine.com Post • September 2013 33

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