Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/360038
www.postmagazine.com 30 POST AUGUST 2014 Soundminer. Gerbosi, and the other mix- ers at Another Country, can simply pull those effects directly into Pro Tools. The award-winning original music company Beta Petrol, which has lo- cations in Los Angeles, New York and Portland, supplied sound design as well as music for The Getaway. Since this is a commercial for a Die Hard battery, particular attention was paid to the sound of the car that wouldn't start. If they used the sound of the engine turning over but not starting, Gerbosi points out, then it would sound as if the battery was working and the problem with the car was something else. The solution? "We ended up agreeing that the sound of the alternator clicking for the car provided the most contrast with the pickup truck starting," he says. "The music on the spot was quite a long journey," says Gerbosi, "because the temp-music the editor put on the rough cuts created a lot of demo-love. There were elements in the initial rough mix that the agency creatives wanted to incorporate back into the final mix." In most cases, Gerbosi was able to use the editor's sound elements, but in one case, the editor cut in a piece of film score that was unusable for licensing reasons. The track-in-question happens after the fence falls, when the female lead and the male lead are racing to get to the vehicles. "In the rough mix, there was this really eerie 'swirly metallic' sound that I recreated us- ing flute trills from a stock music library track, a wind vortex sound effect, and a pitch-shifted, metal-scraping sound effect," explains Gerbosi. "As with much of the music, the horn crescendo that accompanies this sound came from an- other part of Beta Petrol's music." The end music on The Getaway is a licensed track from '60's artist Johnny Thunder titled, I'm Alive, which had lots of distortion and an overall '60's a.m. ra- dio quality. He says, "While some distor- tion is OK, this was pretty nasty sound- ing. I used the Waves X-Crackle plug-in from the Restoration Bundle to get rid of that. I also had to do a fair amount of EQ to make it blend in with what came before it since there was lots of energy in the 1k to 3k frequency range." Gerbosi mixed the spot in 5.1 in Pro Tools 10 on a Digidesign D-Control and used the Nugen Audio VisLM plug-in to meet the -24 dB LKFS broadcast spec. HUMMINGBIRD PRODUCTIONS Aaron Howard at Hummingbird Pro- ductions (hummingbirdproductions. com) in Nashville recently worked with Lawler Ballard Van Durand Advertising of Birmingham, AL, on the Alabama Power Lights TV campaign. According to Lawler Ballard Van Durand's executive creative director Rich Paschall, "The Alabama Power Lights [campaign] used illuminat- ed spheres to metaphorically represent the special type of energy that Alabama Power brings to the state of Alabama." Hummingbird Productions has been producing music for advertising clients since 1976. The company also writes original music for film, TV, documen- taries, Web videos, radio commercials, video games and more. Award-winning sound design work includes the Clio Hall of Fame Budweiser Frogs. The cre- ative team recently worked with top ad agencies on brands like Coca-cola, Audi, Tylenol and Purina. For the Alabama Power Lights campaign, Hummingbird Productions president/creative director/composer Bob Farnsworth worked with executive creative director Paschall to create music that would convey a sense of community. The music needed to not only support but enhance the swell and drama of the visuals. Farnsworth sat down at the piano with Paschall to hash out an idea. Then, Farnsworth fleshed out the track in Logic, building an arrangement with orchestral instruments. "The classical idiom gives a sense of importance and commitment, yet at the same time conveys a warmth and sincerity," notes Farnsworth. Hum- mingbird hired Don Hart to write the arrangements for a real orchestra. "It struck us that a real orchestra smokes out synthetic sounds," admits Farnsworth. "As hard as we try, we just can't seem to match the nuances of an orchestra syn- thetically. And even if the audience can't articulate the difference, it can almost inexplicably feel the difference." Don Hart, who often works on orches- tral arrangements for Phish front man Trey Anastasio, was also the conductor for the orchestra performing the music for the Lights campaign. They record- ed a 30-plus piece orchestra at Ocean Way Nashville Recording Studios. They brought all the tracks back to Hum- mingbird Productions, and co-producer/ mixer Aaron Howard pulled them into Pro Tools 11 for the final music mix. Howard notes the original track count was over 130. "We had to build stems for all those tracks to condense the session For Alabama Power's Lights campaign, Hum- mingbird Productions created music to convey a sense of community. AUDIO WITH A MESSAGE