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NOW HEAR THIS! www.postmagazine.com 32 POST AUGUST 2015 with the growling face Cain makes on screen, but it also bleeds into the music. "Since that's a slow motion mo- ment, we wanted to take advantage of the audience's lingering gaze and go deep with sound and music layering. That's one of the coolest things that Omnisphere does, you can manipu- late a sound to the point that no one will know what it started out as while providing a subconscious connection," says Richardson. Additionally, he used Omnisphere to add a delay to the flashbulb sounds. "Omnisphere allowed me to lock the flashbulb delay to the track's tempo, keeping it in time with the music." Being long-time friends with the music crew at Breed, Richardson notes they have a very collaborative relation- ship. So when sound design elements — such as the guitar accent in Cain's World that happens when Cain smiles and exposes his mouth guard — get sent to Breed, they take that and build it into their music track. "That originated in my audio room first, and then the team at Breed ended up latching onto that detail. There is play back and forth that happens with the music and the sound design, with each of us adding and ed- iting until the track really works for the image and piece," says Richardson. With the sound design and music in a good place, it was time for Richardson to add in the final voiceover. "That is always king," he says. "Everything needs to be heard in the voiceover." So when it comes to the battle of sound design and music versus voiceover, Richardson's favorite tactic is to use panning to get things out of the voiceover's way. "I try to carve some space out so that the effect is still there. You may not hear it the same but you feel it. When the effect is gone, the absence is obvious." Richardson mixed the spots in 5.1 surround using an Avid ICON D-Control and Pro Tools 11, with a Dolby Media Meter for loudness meter- ing. "The hardest thing on the mix for the MetroPCS spots was having the nice, wry read of the voiceover cut through, but still have the impact of all of those sounds. You don't want to turn down the music or the effects. You want to keep it all where the listener is working just enough to hear the voiceover, but not too hard, while still keeping all the excitement in the track." ELIAS ARTS: MOBILE GAME CAMPAIGN New York ad agency Droga5 worked with Elias Arts (http://eliasarts.com), a bi-coastal original music and sound design company, to create a commercial TV campaign promoting their client's new mobile game. The series of spots feel like a broadcast of an arena sporting event, with two commentators discussing what's happening down in the ring as magical characters duel. Elias's East Coast executive creative director Fritz Doddy explains, "There was an overall concept in that they wanted to mimic the feeling of a sports highlight show and apply that to the videogame." Doddy chose composer Johannes Hammers to create the Fox Sports-style musical stings that lead and end the spots. "It needed to be big and broad, and make a really quick statement be- cause this campaign has both :30s and :15s. It had to feel like sports but wasn't quite so derivative, or vintage, that it sounds like a parody," says Doddy. Using Vienna Instruments, Hammers select- ed virtual horns and synths to give the stings a modern feel. "The clients landed on a sting that had a real sports feel and just a tiny bit of cheese factor. So that really informed the sound design." Knowing the music would be re- vised to be spectrally coherent with the sound design, Doddy chose composer Hammers for his heavy sound design background. "We didn't want the music to feel like it was tacked on. It really needed to mesh with the sound design. The crowd sounds come out of the mu- sical bumper, and it flows very nicely." Sound designer Dean Hovey built spot-specific crowd sounds by record- ing chanting and taunts relevant to the characters featured in the spots. These call-outs add a distinct flavor to the overall arena feel. "When you watch a baseball game on TV, there is always the sound of a large crowd but you will al- ways hear individual voices pop out here and there," explains Doddy. "We needed shouts to pop out of our crowd. For one character on-screen [whose name cannot be included in this article due to an NDA with the client], we have people shouting his name. These nuances here and there set the stage and make the crowd more relevant." For the character duels, Hovey com- bined original recordings and custom Foley for literal sounds — like explosions, sword clinks, rockets and sheep bleats. Most sounds were processed with iZo- tope Ozone and RX to add an element of magic. Doddy notes, "Dean [Hovey] also turns to a large collection of vintage ana- log synths to create rumbles and impact- ful low-end sounds that a literal recording of a mortar explosion lacks." Doddy says many of their creative decisions stemmed from getting the mu- sic and sound design working with each other — in terms of timing, frequency relationships, and even reverb tails — and getting those elements to play against the ever-present commentary. "There's so much going on visually, and there is a running voiceover commentary. We had to really pick and choose the moments to get the point across with the sound design and the music, so that it feels rich and immersive but it's not cumbersome or chaotic," he says. Once the music and sounds were designed and pre-mixed, the stems were sent to Final Cut in New York for the final mix and layback to picture. "There was a lot of stone turning for these spots, to find the proper vibe, but in the end we are really happy with them and I feel we really delivered on the concept of re-creating a sports show," concludes Doddy. L-R: Elias sound designer Dean Hovey, composer Johannes Hammers and executive CD Fritz Doddy. Cain's World: Lucky Post mixed this MetroPCS spot in 5.1.