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Trailer sound design for Africa – David Attenborough’s new BBC series

December 19, 2012
promo, sound design
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I have just finished up some trailers for this new BBC wildlife series coming out in January, I can’t lie it was f’ing good fun working on them.

They were directed by Claire Norowzian from Red Bee, and edited by Thomas Ioannou.

I always think of the BBC wildlife series as having really great sound design, hyper real stuff as if the sound recordist has a mic right in the subjects’ faces… in these trailers there was quite a bit of work left to do, so I picked through shot by shot and added details where I thought it would help that sort of macro look on things.  I spent a fair bit of time pitching elements of the sound to the track to try and stick it all together… you probably wouldn’t notice most of it but stuff like the pitched cicadas on the flower timelapse and the whale pitched up to match the vocal in the track as we go from the sea to the waterfalls kind of help stick it all together.

I also did a bit of filtering/effecting of the track to make it fit into the scenes – for instance filtered under the water, then a bit of uplifting washy stuff as we come out and over the waterfall.  Btw the track is ‘The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face’ by Roberta Flack… it’s a beauty.  Have a look at the teaser here and look out for the other trailers on the telly innit:

[vimeo 56367550]

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.

BBC Imagine

March 29, 2012
music, tv
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Imagine is a series of documentaries directed and presented by Alan Yentob, creative director at the BBC.  I wrote the music for the title sequences, all featuring animation by Bold Creative.  The music before the title sequence on the link is not mine, it’s the pencil drawn animation bit so keep watching past the guitar intro.

[vimeo 39361794]

I was lucky enough to be able to get the immensely talented Oliver Coates (cello) and Ruth Palmer (violin) involved – and I got to record them at the rather fancy Strongroom studios in Shoreditch.

BBC Jam

March 29, 2012
music, promo, sound design
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This is a real golden oldie, directed by Team Stush at Partizan back in 2006… half of them got food poisoning in the making of this.

I took the classic track ‘Hooray For Hollywood’ and remixed it adding a squelchy bass and some extra drums.  Then I sampled the end of the track and automated the end point of the loop in Kontakt (sampler) until it became a pitched note, finally squawking to a finish as the fruit dance enters the can. Add sfx et voila!  If that didn’t make sense, watch the film and that should clear things up.

[vimeo 39361815]

BBC Electric Proms

March 29, 2012
sound design, trailer
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Luc Janin from Annex films directed this amazing piece of stop frame poster magic.  It was a trailer for a series of concerts run at the Roundhouse in London called the ‘BBC Electric Proms’.

[vimeo 39361644]

One of the concepts behind the Electric Proms series was that bands, choirs and orchestras that didn’t usually perform together were being amalgamated for the concerts.  I tried to replicate this by mashing the music together within the sound design to create mixes that were out of the ordinary, but still worked… you be the judge!