Guardian ‘Three Little Pigs’ wins a Cannes Silver Lion for use of sound design!

June 25, 2012
commercial, tv, updates
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I just won an award for sound design on the Guardian advert I worked on with Sam Brock from BBH!

Strictly speaking it’s silver but I am pretty pleased about it… it was a great project to work on and I am extremely grateful to Sam Brock and Davud Karbassioun at BBH for getting me involved.

If you don’t know what the Cannes Lions are, have a look here.

Directed by Ringan Ledwidge from Rattling Stick and written by Matt Fitch and Mark Lewis at BBH, its a cinematic twist on a well known fable, check it out if you haven’t seen it already:

1 day 6 cities

May 31, 2012
music, my likes, short film
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I have just written a track for a great time lapse project that has been a labour of love for photographers Daniel Alexander and Patrick Dalton for many months.  The musical brief was gabba/grindcore but I figured it might be better to write something simple and relaxing to slow down the footage – I went with tape delayed pianos and washed out guitars.

The following info is ripped from their site:

1DAY6CITIES is a global photography project that took place on the 11th November 2011 – 11.11.11, in London, Dubai, Shanghai, Auckland, San Francisco and São Paulo. Using word of mouth, email and social networks we put together an international team of photographers to create a unique twenty-four hour snapshot of this day across six very different cities around the globe. At exactly 00.00 Coordinated Universal Time (world time/GMT) photographers in each of these cities captured their first image in an event that saw photographs being taken every 30 seconds for the following 24 hours. The brief was for the photographers to shoot the most interesting thing happening in their city, at the time they had chosen to shoot. The cities were chosen because they are roughly an equal time difference apart meaning the films show the sun travelling around the earth through the course of the day.

Daniel and Patrick are showing sequences of photos and also the film in various exhibitions around the world, starting with one running currently in Auckland… check the site here, particularly for the image sequences page which is awesome… and have a look at the film to hear my small contribution too:

[vimeo 42894460]

Waveform goodness

April 24, 2012
my likes
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Just seen this video directed by Us (Academy Films) for a tasty Benga tune and think it’s pretty special – a simple idea but a fresh one I reckon… anyway I am gonna find the whole track and stick it on my ipod for the journey home!

QI – Buzzers

April 19, 2012
promo, sound design
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I have been asked a few times to do tunes out of sound effects, a nice idea but often conceptually flawed… in this case Michaela Lowe from the BBC’s idea was a good one as the source material to work with was so rich in terms of pitched sounds. I completed the sound design and musical arranging in my studio before handing a Pro Tools session over to Envy for a final mix with the VO.

The brief was to take the buzzer noises from all the QI shows, and make a stirring British tune out of them. Michaela and I researched various classic British tracks and decided on Land Of Hope & Glory – I suggested that to underpin the sound effects track with a real recording would tie the whole thing together so we chose one and started by making a 60 second edit that would work in terms of buildup etc.

The next step was to take the buzzer sounds Michaela provided (dozens from several series), and edit/load them into samplers within Logic Pro (Kontakt) – I grouped them as per how I deemed they could be used: bells, horns, human, sfx tuned and rhythmic sfx. Then within each group I sorted them in to order of pitch, and then fine tuned each sample to match a note.
From that stage it was a case of trying different sequences out and getting the right balance between comedy effect and musical correctness – and also not giving the tune away too early. After getting the sequence right, I rendered the different tracks and took them into Pro Tools for fine tuning – have a listen to the end result.

Site for audionerds

April 19, 2012
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Turn off if you aren’t a tech head, I am just pointing anyone interested at this great blog – I must confess I check it most days.  It’s not just about Pro Tools, it’s mainly a great resource for hearing about new plugins and the like…

New blog, new beginnings

March 29, 2012
updates
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Damn them Apples – the approaching death of MobileMe means I am forced to start a new site… so without further ado, here it is!

Rather than re-work my old site, I will aim to keep up with the times by updating this blog regularly with all things I find sonically exciting, and try to put links up to what I am involved in more regularly too.

I can’t promise that initially it will look as pretty as my old site (which was thanks to designer extraordinaire Matt Knott) but content first, pretty stuff next. As a start I have uploaded some new stuff I have written and worked on, and some of my favourite old bits of work too so I continue to have a showreel online.

Keep em peeled…

Guardian – Three Little Pigs!

March 29, 2012
commercial, sound design
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I just finished the sound design and mix for this, check it out:

It was great to be involved from the start – building a sound bed from the storyboards before the film was shot, recording all the dialogue dialogue and sound effects, through to mixing the final tv versions and supervising the cinema mix (by Jamie Roden at Goldcrest).

I worked closely with Sam Brock (head of radio at BBH) throughout the creation of the sound design, initially recording dialogue with my location kit around London and working remotely from my own studio.  For the final dialogue recordings and sound effects work I dry hired a fantastic sounding Pro Tools room at Goldcrest Post attended by the whole creative team.

BBC 2 in concert

March 29, 2012
sound design, trailer
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I recently finished this promo for director Anthony Dickenson – the challenge in the brief was to make it sound like a pre concert tune-up, unmusical but in a constructive way…

[vimeo 39361256]

Most of the sound from the shoot was stripped out and re-recorded in my home studio.  The tune-up was rebuilt using guitars, valve distortion, and pulling drum and keyboard sounds from my sampler.  I close mic’ed some of my own gear to get the thick switch noises and brought this foley along the musical elements together in Pro Tools.

I took the session to Soho Square Studios where I did the final mix with Red Bee and Rainey Kelly in attendance.