Category Archives: TVC Sound Design

R to the adio production and RSPCA Big Beg

The Big Beg is a fund raising initiative for RSPCA that asks people to record a video of their pet begging to raise awareness and donations for the RSPCA.

Myself and some of the other engineers at Risk Sound helped to create and mix the soundtracks for the web and television commercials.

Here is the end result.

I also thought I would add some more radio ads which add to my radio ad ads…

1. Foxtel-Business-Radio-1.mp3     

Foxtel Business radio radio

2. deakin-SRI-LANKA.mp3     

Deakin International Students Radio

3. FOX3060-Live-OPT-2.mp3     

Foxtel Footy Radio

Some Not for Profit sound

I’ve been pretty crazy busy the last couple of months trying to juggle assignments, studying for exams, a bunch of sound projects, upgrading my apps for ios 6, developing some new app ideas, work, life etc

I haven’t had much time to update my blog as of late but there are a few projects I have worked on lately through Risk Sound that I thought were worth a mention.

I worked on Australian and American soundtracks for Movember’s 2012 campaign with the awesome crew from Urchin. This included TV, Radio and Web based commercials. This involved voice direction, editing and mixing and mastering. It was also fantastic to be able to work with the very talented Tyler Coppin who was very generous with his time.

I also worked on the Movember GAP initiative soundtracks for the UK, US and Australia

For more info check out Movember

 

I also worked on the TVC for Steps for Independence Day which is a charity aiming to raise funds and awareness for people with spinal cord injury. The was no location sound supplied for this one so I had to do all foley, atmos and sfx as well as the mix.

http://www.stepsforindependence.com.au

 

Sound Design work of late

Due to a holiday in the UK, a bunch of assignments for my Uni course, some iOS, java and ksp programming plus some short films I’ve been a bit busy lately. This is good although it was probably not the time to try to cut down of my coffee consumption.
Anyway caffeine addiction aside, I thought I would post a couple of the jobs I have been working on lately at Risk Sound.

Midnight Snack:

This I did a while back with the lovely crew from Active Motion but have just uploaded to my vimeo site so though I would repost it.

Bank of Melbourne TVC:

Santos World Tour:

 

 

 

 

TVC Sound Design

As I write this I am starting to realise that it’s a good thing that my sound design skills are more creative than my blog post titling skills….

I thought I would post a couple more TVC spots that I have created over the past couple of years while working at Risk Sound.

This first spot for Keno was done a couple of months ago. The voice over was recoded over ISDN with a studio in Sydney and the location dialog needed a bit of cleaning up with my new favorite audio restoration tool iZotope Rx 2. It’s pretty amazing what you can do with this plugin especially with the spectral repair where you can actually visualise sound and their harmonics then attenuate or remove them.

This second TVC I actually did a couple of years ago but I rediscovered it while doing some digital housecleaning on my drive at work. This spot was a bit of fun and enabled me to indulge my inner sci-fi geek. For the “kids-thought-a-screen” sound my tool of choice was audio ease’s speaker phone which is fantastic for creating speaker, telephone and announcements effects.

 

Tough day at the office

A couple of years ago we were approached by our good friends over at Active Motion asking if we would be interested in helping out on the sound of a TV commercial to raise awareness of the issues relating to the construction of the Wonthaggi desalination plant.
As the director and half the crew surfed, we drove down the day before and spent the afternoon surfing before retiring early to get up early to go for another surf but this time with pro surfer Tom Carrol and Nick Seymour from crowded house. We spent a couple of hours filming and recording the guys in the water and on the beach and luckily the surf was pumping. Afterwards we all hit the surf again before heading back to the city.
All in all, it was a fantastic project to be involved in although it was a little hard to go back to normal work afterwards. My location recording setup was pretty basic and consisted on a Marantz solid state recorder, Zoom h4 and a couple of Sennheiser mkh-416 with decent wind shield.

The red camera footage looks pretty amazing and this standard definition video does not do it justice.

Get Real On Climate Change – Sound Mix and Location Recording from Sandy Milne on Vimeo.

Birds Eye Super Crunch – Animated TVC Sound design and Mix

Working on a sound design and mix for an animated TVC is always a lot of fun but does provide some unique technical and creative challenges.
The atmospheres, movements, room sounds and sound effects all have to be created from scratch as there is generally no location audio. These also need to be given their own space in the mix so that they don’t overpower the music or voice over and need to be kept within the TV volume level guidelines (always the enemy of a good bass heavy explosion).
For this Birds Eye TVC I layered a lot of different sounds recorded by me and from the sound effects library at Risk sound to create the sound track.
The exploding potatoes were a good examples of this and were created by layering the sound of:
a lightning strike, snapping celery, crunching dry biscuits in my hands, crunching potato chips and a punching sound effect with the top end rolled off (filtered or EQed) for a bit of low end impact.
By EQing each individual sound effect, to make specific frequencies more or less prominent, and layering them on top of each other, the result is perceived single sound that works with the vision and is more sonically complex and interesting. It’s a bit like putting together a sonic jigsaw puzzle.
The internal oven sound was recoded by placing our Zoom h4 portable recorder in an oven and turning the oven on. Luckily I only needed a short audio snippet and I don’t recommend this at home in less you are after the sound of a melting Zoom h4!

Birds Eye Super Crunch TVC – Sound Design and Mix by Sandy Milne from Sandy Milne on Vimeo.

Tuna and Beans

When someone asks what you have been working on it’s always nice to be able to reply
“Oh you know just the standard creating underwater fart sounds kind of work”.
We tried a couple of different techniques for creating tuna style flatulence and the booth needed a good airing afterwards.
It’s always interesting creating underwater atmospheres as well as peoples perception of how it should sound is quite different from how it sounds in reality.

Here is the end result:

Tuna and Beans – Sound Design by Sandy Milne from Sandy Milne on Vimeo.