Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/559853
NOW HEAR THIS! www.postmagazine.com 31 POST AUGUST 2015 clients, who become your friends, and this trust factor develops that makes the process very collaborative." Once they found the right vibe for Fastball, cut downs for :30 and :23 ver- sions were made. The Swish and Sharp spots followed suit. To perfectly sync the music and picture while still keeping the integrity of the music, Payne collaborat- ed with picture editor Paul Martinez from Arcade Edit in Los Angeles. "I don't cheat music edits, cutting in on half a bar or things like that," says Payne. "So I would call up Paul [Martinez], who is really one of the best guys in LA, and ask him if we could move a picture cut 12 frames to make certain hits with the music. Paul was great about that. There was a lot of frame shaving going on." Sound design for the baseball-inspired Fastball and the basketball-based Swish was supplied by sound designer Kim Christensen. Payne notes that initially the spots had full-blown sound design, but once the final voiceover was added, creative director Chavez started pulling out sound design elements, leaving just accents of the sports sounds. "It was the whole less-is-more thing. We found the music was really driving the spot, and with so much copy, we just started to strip the sound effects away and the spot felt better," he explains. Payne recently spearheaded the build of two new mixing suites at Eleven, one of which is a 1,200-square-foot room he's been envisioning for the past 16 years. His new suite features an Avid S6 M10 control surface. Payne, who was used to working on a large format AMS/ Neve console during his initial mixing days, welcomes the return of knob turning to his workflow. "I would use Pro Tools for all my editing and plug- ins, doing everything with a mouse and then mix with faders on the ProControl. I always mix everything with faders because that feels more musical to me," says Payne. "Now with the S6, I am re-incorporating knobs into my work- flow, learning to use the knobs to tweak my plug-ins instead of using a mouse. I also really love the S6's new touch- screen integration and being able to use my finger to pan sounds." Payne mixed the GMC "Precision" campaign in 5.1, using a Dorrough Loudness Meter to monitor levels, and the Dolby Media Meter to check CALM Act compliance. The goal for the mix was to keep the music powerful while not stepping on the VO. "The copy is king," says Payne. "The advantage of having all the music splits was that I was able to duck certain elements un- der the copy or accentuate elements that didn't get in the way. I could pull back some of the keyboard parts that were really big but still keep the bass and drums driving." LUCKY POST: METROPCS UFC CAMPAIGN The Richards Group ad campaign for MetroPCS focuses on how three UFC fighters — Urijah Faber, Ronda Rousey, and Cain Velasquez — use MetroPCS in their worlds. Lucky Post in Dallas (www. lucky-post.com) shot, edited, sound designed and mixed all three :30 spots. Handling post sound was senior mixer/ sound designer Scottie Richardson, who was able to work unsupervised to build out the sound design before presenting ideas to creative director Brian Nadurak at The Richards Group. The first spot, Urijah's World, helped set the tone for the rest of the campaign. "There was a little back-and-forth play because the client was still deciding what we should give sound effects to or not," says Richardson. "By the time we figured out Urijah's World, the Rhonda and Cain spots were set in place, and we knew the direction. We were able to support the action soni- cally, with hard-hitting moments of sound design and underlying, subtle audio, too." The final spot in the campaign, Cain's World, is a beautiful, brutal soundscape where music — created by Breed in Dallas — and sound design seamlessly mesh. Richardson, a musician himself, often strives to create musical sound design, or to embed the sound design into the music so listeners can't dis- tinguish between the two. For exam- ple, in Cain's World, Richardson used Omnisphere by Spectrasonics to manip- ulate a tiger growl, so it not only works Lucky Post's Scottie Richardson (inset) handled audio post for this MetroPCS campaign featuring UFC greats.