Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/825852
www.postmagazine.com 6 POST MAY 2017 BITS & PIECES SOUND DESIGN FOR SPOTS DALLAS — Scottie Richardson, senior audio post mixer/sound designer (pictured, bottom right) at Lucky Post in Dallas, TX (www.lucky-post. com), shares his approach to sound designing a Promised Land Dairy campaign for Publicis ad agency. In one whimsical spot called "Meet Francine," we meet a cow who is a bit of a diva. Her demands for music, flowers and freshly misted tufts of grass are rewarded with an appreciative moo and, ultimately, extraordinary milk. Since the shoot required cow trainers to get the appropriate ac- tions from the cow, the spots were filmed without sound. As the sound designer, it was Richardson's job to "ground the action with a sense of place and to emphasize the hu- morous absurdity. Sound plays an instrumental role in the story with- out being a standalone character. It provides a subtle layering that when absent, feels...well...absent." In Richardson's design, tranquil wind, quiet birds and rustling hay add to the pastoral milieu. The cow's lip-smacking sounds are present but not distracting. As for the moo, he says, "You'd be surprised by the different emotions a moo can imply. Ours needed to be a satisfied, happy, coddled moo. Once the right moo was found, I increased the pitch for a perkier nod." To help the music sound as though it's coming from a small radio, Richardson turned to Audio Ease's Speakerphone plug-in. He says, "In addition to conveying a transistor radio sound, we modeled it to feel like the music was playing in a barn with the doors open. Speakerphone allows for that kind of hyper-specificity and worked well in this context." The greatest creative challenge for Richardson was the milk pour at the end of each spot. He initially recorded milk pouring but found that it sounded too thin. "It often happens that the organic sound alone doesn't translate authentically to the screen," he says. So how did he make it sound delicious? "The solution was to blend the true milk pour with thicker sounding layers to relay a sense of creaminess. "It is this kind of work that sound designers create most often, where you don't feel our presence unless you turned the volume down com- pletely. Only then would you know we were there," Richardson con- cludes. — By Jennifer Walden For more on "Sound Design," see Jennifer Walden's feature, beginning on page 28. PANAVISION'S MILLENNIUM DXL CAMERA MAKES NAB DEBUT WOODLAND HILLS, CA — The Millennium DXL 8K Camera from Panavision (www.panavision.com) made its NAB debut last month. Teams from Panavision and its subsidiary Light Iron (www.lightiron. com) offered attendees their insights and expertise during panel discus- sions, as well as hands-on demos at partner booths, including Lee Filters (a Panavision company), Vitec Videocom and Freefly Systems. The DXL camera, which was introduced in June 2016 and has been renting since January 2017, was developed through a collaboration of three companies — the Millennium DXL brings together large-format optics and modular accessories from Panavision; an 8K sensor from Red Digital Cinema; and new color sci- ence and optimized workflow from Light Iron. At the core of the DXL is a proprietary image mapping pro- cess called Light Iron Color, which provides a unique, cinematic look directly out of the camera. Light Iron Color integrates seamlessly with DXL's ultra-high resolution sensor, a new 8K imager manufactured by Red Digital Cinema, and with Panavision's large format lenses. According to Michael Cioni, senior VP of innovation at Panavision & Light Iron, "At NAB, we worked with several industry-leading companies to show how DXL fits seamlessly into a varity of production environ- ments. At the Freefly Systems booth, DXL was on a crane-mounted, new MoviXL rig. That smooth gimbal motion is so popular these days, and VFX pipelines can really benefit from the accelerometer and gyro metada- ta that DXL generates. At the Vitec booth, DXL was firmly planted on a new O'Connor tripod, where attend- ees were thrilled to look through our new Primo HDR viewfiner, which has six times the dynamic range than standard viewfinders. That's so help- ful for planning shots with an HDR deliverable in mind. Throughout the show, when attendees realized that was a DXL they were seeing in these setups, they got so excited to see this relatively new product, which has only been available since January."